Fantasy.top founder pushes back on 'soft rugpull' allegations after angel investors claim team went silent

Onchain trading card platform Fantasy.top is facing accusations of ghosting angel investors and pivoting away from its main product following a multimillion-dollar revenue run.

On Tuesday, X user and investor "varrock" claimed in a post that the SocialFi platform is refusing to refund around $50,000 in angel investment.

"[I] will never see it while they use the money they made to pay themselves salaries," the X user wrote. "I've been promised a roadmap and financial statement, never got anything."

Several high-profile crypto investors echoed the claims, reporting similar experiences with Fantasy.top in response to the post. Some X users described the situation as a "soft rugpull."

Ethos Network CEO Trevor Thompson, who goes by the pseudonym "Serpin Taxt" on the social media platform, wrote, "+1, never once received comms from the team." However, Thompson also said that he never expected the project to repay his angel investment.

Mike Dudas, managing partner and co-founder of early-stage venture capital firm 6th Man Ventures, wrote that he put a "token check" in the platform as an angel investor and called on Fantasy.top's pseudonymous founder, Travis Bickle, to respond to the claims.

"What's your plan? You cleared millions, you haven't repaid your angels or communicated with them, have you any honor?" Dudas wrote.

Fantasy.top — the Blast Layer 2-based game that lets users trade NFT-style "hero" cards of crypto influencers — once broke into DeFiLlama's top 10 crypto protocols by fees and revenue generated, alongside pump.fun in 2024, after raising $4.25 million in a seed round led by Dragonfly and previous backing from Alliance DAO.

In an attempt to address community concerns, the team said in a post last November that Fantasy.top was not shutting down its core game feature. However, recent posts from investors and other crypto community members allege that the platform has shifted from the trading card game to prediction markets.

On Wednesday morning, Bickle said there was "a lot of misinformation" circulating online.

"For the past 2 years, the company has been fully self-funded through product revenues," he wrote in a post on X. "Revenues were reinvested into development across multiple products and systems built under the Fantasy app. No investor funds have been used for company operations during this time."

Bickle said the platform has over 50 angel investors and the Fantasy.top is doing its best to keep everyone updated, "though some structural changes take time to put in place."

"Over the past months, we've significantly reduced burn, streamlined the team, and reduced founders' salaries," the post continued. "The company has multiple years of runway without needing to touch investor funds. We remain fully committed to building the company long term and will share more about the next phase soon."