Former BlockDAG CEO Antony Turner has launched a YouTube channel accusing the crypto project of misleading investors, restricting his access to its finances, and failing to complete a promised transfer into community ownership. The channel, BlockDAG Truth & Transparency, was created on August 11, 2026. At the time of writing, it contains seven videos published in September.
In its early days, BlockDAG operated without public leadership. Turner joined in mid-2024, months after BlockDAG began promoting its presale to investors, and was presented as the project’s founder and CEO. He became one of its main public faces as it raised money through a presale of BDAG tokens and mining equipment. Gurhan Kiziloz was later revealed as the project’s actual founder and owner. Turner was fired in December 2025.
During a December 29, 2025, investor broadcast, Kiziloz said Turner had been fired for breaching confidentiality agreements by disclosing details of Kiziloz’s involvement. Chief Marketing Officer Nic Van Den Bergh replaced him as CEO.
Turner says he created the channel to help existing and prospective investors understand what happened inside BlockDAG and assess its current offers. His criticism extends to the project’s token buyback program, advertised wallet balances, and continued fundraising.
In his introductory video, Turner describes a marketing operation controlled by Kiziloz and run separately from his team. The groups used different Slack workspaces, and even his own access to the marketing workspace was difficult to obtain.
Despite holding the CEO title, he says he was not allowed oversight of the presale or the project’s treasury. He accepted those restrictions and focused on development because he believed the technology was real and the project could still succeed.
But marketing increasingly made promises it knew it could not deliver, or had no intention of fulfilling. He describes pushing back against escalating bonuses, warning that increasingly cheap offers disadvantaged earlier buyers. He alleges that token sales and bonuses totaled more than twice the 50 billion BDAG allocated to the presale.
Turner acknowledges that BlockDAG was his first blockchain and token launch and that he and his team made mistakes. He initially suspected BlockDAG was a scam, but seeing real development work convinced him the project could succeed. He stayed because he believed he could help fix its problems and protect employees and investors.
His assessment changed as the project cut staff, accelerated launch plans, and continued selling additional tokens, and he now considers the project a scam and calls for a regulatory investigation.
On December 1, 2025, BlockDAG announced a signed letter of intent to transfer the project from private ownership into community control. The proposed handover covered remaining presale funds, intellectual property, code, and infrastructure, with completion promised within four to eight weeks.
BlockDAG presented the move as a way to give investors control over the network before launch. Community members would vote on its governance structure, while the existing leadership temporarily managed operations. “Nothing is being partially transferred,” the announcement stated. “Nothing is being withheld for future negotiation.”
In his video about BlockDAG’s finances, Turner explains that he pushed for community ownership as unpaid bills mounted, hoping to persuade Kiziloz to hand over the project and its remaining funds.
The project prepared a profit-and-loss statement showing $35 million in profit intended for the transition. Part would cover outstanding bills, with the rest transferred to the community in stages. Growing unpaid bills and the proposed payment schedule led him to conclude that the funds were not available.
The handover never happened, he says. “None of the IP was handed over. Certainly, no money was paid over.” Commitments to pay outstanding mining equipment bills also went unfulfilled.
Turner also claims he personally covered project expenses and $50,000 in staff salaries. At the end of December, he discovered that his email and Slack access had been disabled. The team was locked out, although some developers were subsequently brought back. He viewed the cuts as another sign that BlockDAG could no longer afford its staff.
He connects those payment problems to the project’s later sales campaigns, unrealistic buyback promises, and additional tokens, describing them as desperate attempts to bring in more money. He also questions how BlockDAG could claim access to $60 million in advertised buyback wallets while leaving staff and suppliers unpaid.
“The project has zero money,” Turner concludes. He calls on BlockDAG to prove it controls the advertised wallets.
Since at least May 2026, BlockDAG has repeatedly promoted token sales alongside promises to buy tokens back at higher prices. The advertised purchase prices, bonuses, and buyback terms have changed across successive campaigns, encouraging investors to buy more BDAG in anticipation of a future payout. Early promotions offered tokens at $0.0000003 and advertised a $0.001 buyback starting June 1.
Turner attacks that approach as another attempt to persuade investors to put more money into the project. In “The Buyback Fiasco,” he questions why a project raising funds would offer to repurchase tokens for vastly more than buyers paid.
Using an offer advertised when he recorded the video, with a purchase price of $0.000000045 and a 300% bonus, Turner calculates that $100 would purchase 8.89 billion BDAG. Repurchasing all those tokens at $0.04 would cost BlockDAG $355.6 million. He calls that prospect “absolutely baloney.” His calculation assumes every token qualifies, but it illustrates his central criticism: the headline figures suggest returns the project could not plausibly pay to everyone.
He also disputes whether the four wallets advertised as buyback funding belong to BlockDAG. Turner says he found no outgoing USDT transfers and, after tracing incoming funds through several steps, no connection to project wallets he recognized. He concludes that the displayed wallets likely belong to other people, while acknowledging that his tracing was not a full forensic investigation.
In a September 17 video, Turner says YouTube removed his introductory video following a copyright complaint targeting its thumbnail. The disputed image featured a shattering glass cube, which he says he generated with AI to represent BlockDAG falling apart.
Turner rejects the complaint and claims BlockDAG arranged it through a third party. “The video criticizes BlockDAG, so they’re trying to now silence it,” he says.
He submitted a rebuttal and requested details of the alleged infringement. He also removed cube imagery from his thumbnails to avoid further disputes. The introductory video has since returned to the channel and is available for the public.
Turner connects the incident to earlier copyright complaints against the BlockDAG Investors YouTube channel in January 2026. He says those complaints used his name without permission after he had been dismissed, and that he supplied a written statement denying involvement.
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