At 15:01 UTC on February 12, 2018, ICO Alert posted a report on a token sale2. Forty Seven Bank, a fintech start-up based in Estonia, was selling the tokens. The byline read Ryan Dennis. A token sale, also called an ICO, sells new crypto tokens to the public to fund a project. ICOData counted $1,303.27 million raised in such sales in February 201811.
Ryan Elliott Dennis, the subject of this piece, is CryptoLately's editor, and he asked The CryptoLately.com Desk to report on his work. The CryptoLately.com Desk reported it from public records. On October 13, 2026, The CryptoLately.com Desk asked whether he holds any of the seven tokens his reports covered. "I do not hold any of those cryptocurrencies," Dennis said.
Dennis worked at ICO Alert as its relationship manager, his General Assembly instructor page says1. “In his current role, he investigates blockchain firms and interviews leaders as the Relationship Manager and head of visual media for ICO Alert,” the page reads. On its Medium publication, ICO Alert described itself as maintaining “the only comprehensive database of ICOs, with 5,000+ ICOs in our system”5.
What the reports asked
Each ICO Alert Report ran as a set of written questions and the team's answers. In the report under Dennis's byline, ICO Alert pressed Forty Seven Bank on its plan for legal help2. “How do you intend to allocate legal help in order comply to all regulations over time?” ICO Alert asked.
On February 15, 2018, the ADAMANT report quoted the project's own chat back to it4. ICO Alert cited an admin's Telegram post about Apple's TestFlight and asked what encryption issues it meant.
Several questions checked claims against the record. The TrustedHealth report of March 20, 2018, quoted the website's count of 80 doctors from 40 hospitals6. Next it quoted a February 5, 2018, Medium post by Greg Jarzabek, the CEO and founder. “Within 10 days we have realized our soft cap with contributions from across the world! And no marketing even!” Jarzabek had written. A soft cap is the minimum a sale must raise to go ahead.
Other questions probed the math. ICO Alert asked DeepWater Systems how hands-on data review could scale5. FanChain got a question about what would happen to unsold tokens7.
The video posts ran short, with a written intro above the video. Dennis introduced the LetBet video Q&A on March 24, 2018, in these words19. “We chatted with Bill Healey, Business Development Manager and Advisor with LetBet, about his team’s zero-chain protocol and the beauty of anonymity within their revolutionized online gaming and gambling experience,” he wrote.
Both sides, in their own words
Can a paid report still ask the questions a buyer needs?
“So here on the podcast, we love to chat with new projects, to find out how ready they are and to kind of investigate what they’re working on, but when we’re talking to you, we kind of have already seen you guys have already negotiated some partnerships”
“As the SEC’s order finds, Coinschedule presented potential investors with seemingly independent profiles about token offerings when in fact they were bought and paid for by token issuers”
Who paid for the reports
Each of the seven reports discloses a fee. “ICO Alert receives a promotional fee for the production of this ICO Alert Report,” the EBCoin and Forty Seven Bank reports say23. The ADAMANT, DeepWater, TrustedHealth and Dbrain reports carry the same words in a banner image45618.
The FanChain report of July 31, 2018, goes further. “ICO Alert has received compensation in the amount of $5000 from this ICO for writing this Report,” the FanChain report says7. “This ICO paid this fee in full before ICO Alert began its review,” it adds.
Token sales in numbers
Dennis wrote into a falling market. ICOData counted $6,226,689,449 raised across 875 ICOs in 201710. For 2018, it counted $7,852,477,043 across 1,257 ICOs11.
The monthly figures show the turn. December 2017 brought $1,661.80 million, the highest monthly total of 201710. January 2018 brought $1,522.11 million11. In September 2018, the month of Dennis's last archived byline, sales raised $242.40 million. December 2018 brought $74.53 million.
Token sales raised $1,661.80 million in December 2017 and $74.53 million in December 2018
Money raised in completed ICOs each month, per ICOData in March 2019, in millions of US dollars
- Feb. and Sept. 2018: first and last archived Dennis bylines
- Other months, 2017 and 2018
- Height: Raised, $ millions
Sources: ICOData [10]; ICOData [11].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Jan 2017 | $2.17M |
| Feb 2017 | $14.00M |
| Mar 2017 | $4.64M |
| Apr 2017 | $102.63M |
| May 2017 | $199.42M |
| Jun 2017 | $654.92M |
| Jul 2017 | $454.64M |
| Aug 2017 | $442.93M |
| Sep 2017 | $847.87M |
| Oct 2017 | $885.09M |
| Nov 2017 | $995.44M |
| Dec 2017 | $1,661.80M |
| Jan 2018 | $1,522.11M |
| Feb 2018 | $1,303.27M |
| Mar 2018 | $1,051.11M |
| Apr 2018 | $563.59M |
| May 2018 | $883.63M |
| Jun 2018 | $912.97M |
| Jul 2018 | $450.52M |
| Aug 2018 | $337.95M |
| Sep 2018 | $242.40M |
| Oct 2018 | $243.97M |
| Nov 2018 | $312.09M |
| Dec 2018 | $74.53M |
His output in numbers
How much did Dennis publish? Medium blocks direct reads of the old pages. On October 13, 2026, ICO Alert's own disclaimer link redirected to clend.io, a different site, The CryptoLately.com Desk found. So every page here was read as the Internet Archive saved it. That archive's index lists 237 dated pages from ICO Alert's Medium site9. Opening each one, the CryptoLately.com Desk found 16 with his byline, from February 12 to September 7, 2018.
By the CryptoLately.com Desk's count, seven were written reports9. Five were podcast posts, three were video interviews and one was an essay, by the same count. February 2018 was his busiest month, with five pages. Of the 32 archived ICO Alert Reports dated 2018, the CryptoLately.com Desk counted seven under his byline.
Of 16 ICO Alert pages Ryan Dennis bylined from Feb. 12 to Sept. 7, 2018, 7 were reports
Archived pages on ICO Alert's Medium site under Ryan Dennis's byline, by month and format
- Written reports
- Podcast posts
- Video interviews
- Essays
- Height: Bylined pages
Source: Internet Archive [9].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Written reports | Podcast posts | Video interviews | Essays |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2018 | 4 pages | 0 pages | 0 pages | 1 page |
| Mar 2018 | 1 page | 0 pages | 1 page | 0 pages |
| Apr 2018 | 0 pages | 0 pages | 0 pages | 0 pages |
| May 2018 | 1 page | 0 pages | 0 pages | 0 pages |
| Jun 2018 | 0 pages | 1 page | 0 pages | 0 pages |
| Jul 2018 | 1 page | 1 page | 1 page | 0 pages |
| Aug 2018 | 0 pages | 2 pages | 0 pages | 0 pages |
| Sep 2018 | 0 pages | 1 page | 1 page | 0 pages |
What became of the projects
Only one of the seven tokens sits on CoinGecko's list today. On October 13, 2026, that full coin list held ADAMANT's ADM17. ADM traded at $0.01124 at 06:15 UTC on October 13, 2026, with a market cap of $1.29 million, CoinGecko showed15.
EBCoin has only a "preview page" on CoinMarketCap, with a "last known price"16. Forty Seven Bank, DeepWater Systems, TrustedHealth, Dbrain and FanChain are missing from CoinGecko's list17.
A case for the questions
Dennis described his job on air. “So here on the podcast, we love to chat with new projects, to find out how ready they are and to kind of investigate what they’re working on, but when we’re talking to you, we kind of have already seen you guys have already negotiated some partnerships,” Dennis told Adam Curry of Dench Music, in a transcript ICO Alert posted on September 7, 20188.
He also asked Curry about the law. “Can you explain why you chose to not do a regular token sale and how profit caring and ICOs can actually be legal,” Dennis asked Curry8. The FanChain disclosure says the project could comment before publication, but "ICO Alert had final editorial control"7.
The case against
Regulators warned about paid promotion. On November 1, 2017, SEC staff wrote about paid promotion of ICOs12. “Any celebrity or other individual who promotes a virtual token or coin that is a security must disclose the nature, scope, and amount of compensation received in exchange for the promotion,” the statement said.
The SEC later charged two ICO sites. In August 2019, ICO Rating agreed to pay $268,998 to settle charges over payments from issuers it left undisclosed13. “The securities laws require promoters, including both people and entities, to disclose compensation they receive for touting investments so that potential investors are aware they are viewing a paid promotional item,” said Melissa Hodgman, associate director of the SEC's Enforcement Division.
Coinschedule's operator settled in July 202114. Kristina Littman, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division's Cyber Unit, spoke for the agency. “As the SEC’s order finds, Coinschedule presented potential investors with seemingly independent profiles about token offerings when in fact they were bought and paid for by token issuers,” Littman said.
Both orders named other companies1314. Set against the 2017 statement, Dennis's record splits. All seven of his archived reports disclosed that ICO Alert took a fee23456718. Six of the seven left out the amount, the third thing the statement says a promoter of a security must disclose12.
What to watch
Read the fee line first on any token review. The SEC's 2017 statement asks for "the nature, source, and amount" of any payment12. Then check the token's later record on a tracker such as CoinGecko17.
Sources
- General Assembly, "Ryan Dennis | General Assembly," General Assembly, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/ryan-dennis/16793
- Ryan Dennis, "Forty Seven Bank (FSBT) — ICO Alert Report," ICO Alert, Feb. 12, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Nov. 11, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191111202347/https://medium.com/ico-alert/ico-alert-report-forty-seven-bank-3e4a7b2d550
- Ryan Dennis, "EBCoin (EBC) — ICO Alert Report," ICO Alert, Feb. 12, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Nov. 11, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191111211207/https://medium.com/ico-alert/ico-alert-report-ebcoin-eb606e37831a
- Ryan Dennis, "ADAMANT (ADM) — ICO Alert Report," ICO Alert, Feb. 15, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Nov. 11, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191111150245/https://medium.com/ico-alert/ico-alert-report-adamant-d762ee37710e
- Ryan E. Dennis, "DeepWater Systems (DWT) — ICO Alert Report," ICO Alert, Feb. 19, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Dec. 18, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201218184144/https://medium.com/ico-alert/ico-alert-report-deepwater-systems-a5d964f612b2
- Ryan Dennis, "TrustedHealth (TDH) — ICO Alert Report," ICO Alert, March 20, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Nov. 11, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191111141614/https://medium.com/ico-alert/trustedhealth-ico-alert-report-219c3e170ff2
- Ryan Dennis, "FanChain (FANZ) - ICO Alert Report," ICO Alert, July 31, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Nov. 27, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191127100152/https://medium.com/ico-alert/fanchain-fanz-ico-alert-report-997567694515
- Ryan Dennis, "Dench Music’s Adam Curry Podcast Interview [Transcript]," ICO Alert, Sept. 7, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Nov. 18, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191118182259/https://medium.com/ico-alert/dench-musics-adam-curry-podcast-interview-transcript-11ac5100abf8
- Internet Archive, "Wayback Machine CDX capture index for medium.com/ico-alert/*," Internet Archive, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=medium.com/ico-alert/*&output=json&fl=original,timestamp&collapse=urlkey
- ICOData, "ICOdata - ICO 2017 Statistics (Internet Archive capture)," ICOData, capture of March 7, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190307030631/https://www.icodata.io/stats/2017
- ICOData, "ICOdata - ICO 2018 Statistics (Internet Archive capture)," ICOData, capture of March 1, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190301031900/https://www.icodata.io/stats/2018
- SEC Division of Enforcement and Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, "SEC Statement Urging Caution Around Celebrity Backed ICOs," SEC, Nov. 1, 2017, https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-potentially-unlawful-promotion-icos
- SEC, "SEC Charges ICO Research and Rating Provider With Failing to Disclose It Was Paid to Tout Digital Assets," SEC, Aug. 20, 2019, https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-157
- SEC, "ICO “Listing” Website Charged With Unlawfully Touting Digital Asset Securities," SEC, July 14, 2021, https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-125
- CoinGecko, "ADAMANT Messenger (ADM) coin data (coins API)," CoinGecko, read 06:15 UTC Oct. 13, 2026, https://api.coingecko.com/api/v3/coins/adamant-messenger
- CoinMarketCap, "EBCoin price today, EBC to USD live price, marketcap and chart," CoinMarketCap, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ebcoin/
- CoinGecko, "List of all supported coins (coins/list API)," CoinGecko, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://api.coingecko.com/api/v3/coins/list
- Ryan Dennis, "Dbrain (DBR) - ICO Alert Report," ICO Alert, May 11, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Nov. 12, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191112205951/https://medium.com/ico-alert/dbrain-dbr-ico-alert-report-eb1b08146f27
- Ryan Dennis, "ICO Alert Video Q&A: LetBet," ICO Alert, March 24, 2018, Internet Archive capture of Nov. 13, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20191113064919/https://medium.com/ico-alert/ico-alert-video-q-a-letbet-b20d8644bdb9