The Long Silence
A public chronology of the Alkimi token: brand pitches, buyback promises, the Sui relaunch, and the “unimpacted” line once the UK operating company went into administration.
This article assembles publicly available material into a chronological account. It is not a court finding, not legal advice, and not an allegation that any named person committed a criminal offence or broke the law. Quotes are reproduced as published. On-chain figures come from a reproducible public-chain rebuild and may be updated if better data appears. Readers should verify primary sources. Over the past year, the hardest questions about wallets, buybacks and token status were put to the team in public on LinkedIn and in their Telegram. On those points they largely stayed silent, while community guidelines steered the chat away from challenging the official narrative.
On 2 July 2026 Alchemy Exchange Ltd, UK company 13237946, entered administration. The same day, administrator papers describe a sale of the operating business to Alchemy VC Ltd, the founders’ parent, for about £93,926. A Statement of Affairs later filed at Companies House, as at that administration date, puts the company’s total deficiency at about £1.71 million. In Telegram, chief executive Benjamin Putley wrote four words to holders still asking about unlabelled wallets from the Sui token launch: “You’ll be proven wrong.” He said he would speak later, once the work was “completed,” not “whilst it’s in flight.”
Public statements that week described the ALKIMI token, held through a British Virgin Islands company called XSM Limited, as “unimpacted.” The UK operating company was in court. The coin was not. What follows is how that split, and the years of public messaging around it, appear in the record.
Who was on the map
At the centre sat Benjamin Putley, the chief executive, and Adam Chorley, the chief operating officer: both founding directors on the UK companies. Putley and Chorley did most of the Telegram-facing work.
Neil Bruce served as CCO and board director. On his LinkedIn he wrote that after launch “the market cap of Alkimi’s $ADS token reached 9 figures,” and that he “exited following sale of shareholding in June 2022.” Companies House records his directorship at Alchemy Exchange Ltd ending in spring 2022 (appointment terminated 9 May 2022; officer lists also show late April). He was a founding director of Alchemy VC Ltd and later left that board as well. Putley and Chorley remained. The Statement of Affairs filed in September 2026 still lists Bruce as a creditor of Alchemy Exchange Ltd for £75,000.
Chandrashekar Narayana, known as Chandru, appears later on the Companies House record. He was appointed a director of Alchemy VC Ltd on 28 October 2024, and a director of Alchemy Exchange Ltd on 5 June 2025. He was not a founding director on those filings. The same Statement of Affairs lists him as an unsecured creditor for £17,176, and Putley for £1,561. Richard Mark Pearce served as UK general counsel and, for a period, as a director; Companies House records him ceasing as a director on 2 July 2026, the administration day. On Telegram he posted as Talon_Strike.
Two companies, one brand family
Alkimi was presented as UK-registered, with UK directors and a UK general counsel. In November 2024 Pearce posted on X that a company registered with the UK authorities, with UK directors and a UK general counsel, could not “possibly be a rug pull,” and that they would “all go to jail very quickly.”
The corporate map was wider than one UK room. XSM Limited was registered in the British Virgin Islands on 25 August 2021. Public BVI records show a previous name: Alchemy VC Ltd, the same words as the UK parent. Administrator papers later described a historical split of token-sale proceeds holders did not vote on: about 70 percent to the UK operating company, about 30 percent retained by XSM, which minted and managed the token.
Brand names in the pitch
Alongside the legal framing, public materials named large advertisers and brands in connection with Alkimi: Coca-Cola, Samsung, TikTok, Visa, Publicis, AWS, Kraken. The list appeared in docs, in press, and in a Sui Foundation write-up. Putley told an interviewer Coca-Cola “is a partner.” On X, Pearce regularly tied the same brand story to the token price. Early 2024 posts set targets and celebrated short-term moves; late 2024 posts put named integrations and market-cap landmarks in the same scroll as price cheer.
In Telegram the same autumn, posting as Talon_Strike, he framed a large ad-spend deal as the company’s most lucrative win. Holders were hearing scale: big names near the exchange, fees into the system, value into the token. Client representatives did appear with Alkimi in public settings.
December brought a concentrated week of that messaging on X: price, contracts, exchange volume and a market-cap landmark, posted days apart.
Buybacks, promised early
From around 2023, project materials described on-chain, verifiable buybacks funded by fees, with purchased tokens returned as rewards. Docs updated in February 2026 still called the loop “fully transparent and verifiable on-chain.” Into early 2025 Pearce kept posting the revenue and buyback case in public: year-end metrics in January, then “daily verifiable revenue buybacks” in March.
On 29 May 2025 Chorley told Telegram that buybacks were on hold because of a “potential move to a new L1,” with rollout after any switch and timing TBC.
August 2025 — the Sui move
Soft staking, described publicly as built with Eidgensi and pitched as reducing sellable supply, was already part of the materials. Companies House shows Putley and Chorley as directors of Eidgensi Ltd from November 2021, and in the same roles at Affiniti Lifestyle Ltd. A published tokenomics table mapped a billion-token supply across community, ecosystem, AdFi liquidity, strategic partners, marketing and existing holders.
On 7 August 2025, twelve days before the stated public launch date, one distributor wallet sent exact 12.5 million ALKIMI transfers to 79 addresses in about half an hour: 987.5 million tokens, nearly the entire supply, into ordinary wallets. Supply on the new chain was stated at about a billion ALKIMI, up from about 250 million $ADS on the prior chain. An unlock chart was published. By early September 2026, of those 79 addresses, eleven were still nearly full, sixty-three were empty, and five held residual balances.
On migration day, 19 August 2025, Pearce posted a public celebration of the move. In replies the same week he pushed back on holders who said capital had been lost in the switch, and on concerns about future dilution from the new supply schedule.
Community members asked for the wallets to be labelled against the published map. A project reply said there was “no legal obligation to label wallets,” citing XSM’s BVI status and that token holders are not shareholders, and noting that labelling market makers or treasury might invite front-running.
The wait continues
On 25 October 2025 Chorley told Telegram that true on-chain buybacks on Sui were hard, that a proper audit would be expensive, and that DefiLlama was enough for now.
Through late 2025 and early 2026, admins told the room the company was self-funded and did not need to sell tokens to fund operations. On 27 December 2025, and again on 3 April 2026, Admin Mike repeated that line. On 5 April he described exchange revenue and “actual business revenue” as separate streams.
In January 2026 the project published community guidelines for Telegram. On 14 April Putley told the chat that Q1 had been the second-highest quarter ever for bookings.
June 2026 — marketplace week
On 2 June Chorley paused buybacks again, citing automation testing and Sui and CEX issues, and said missed buys would be caught up.
On 11 June Putley posted: “So today, we are Alkimi Marketplace.” The same day, WPP Research published Agree. Transact. Verify. under its Agentic Media Buying pod. The authors were Putley and Chandrashekar Narayana. The contact line pointed to Alkimi. A WPP product lead described the work as research from Alkimi’s founders. Putley told Telegram that together with WPP they had released “joint research.” In the same update he said exchange revenue had softened and that campaigns booked in Q1 had been shifted later.
Into administration
On 1 July Putley posted on buybacks, citing market-maker investigation and exchange restructure. The next day the court appointed administrators. Twelve days later, on 14 July, Pearce was still in the chat as Talon_Strike. Asked how charging would work on the agentic marketplace, he said the design was revolutionary, that he did not understand most of it, and that legalising whatever the higher-ups agreed would come down to him and “WPP’s legal team.”
In August Pearce, as Talon_Strike, wrote that aside from who receives the token-sale split, “nothing has changed with respect to the token,” and that the token was unimpacted.
September 2026
On 1 September Chorley published a community update. Alchemy Exchange had entered administration on 2 July. XSM, under Alchemy VC, was described as unaffected. Buybacks were suspended; staking rewards would come from the XSM treasury for a time. The same update said that when revenue fell short, tokens were unlocked ahead of the original schedule “to ensure the future of the business” — a line that sat against earlier admin messages that the company was self-funded and did not need to sell tokens. Published tokenomics had been withdrawn on legal advice while they took counsel on UK rules. Parts of the token, staking and “what comes next” were still unresolved. Another update was promised before 19 October, “even if the answer at that point is that we’re still working it through.”
On 3 September Pearce, as Talon_Strike, said he would answer only matters of first-hand knowledge; that as a lawyer he owes duties to the company; that he no longer sat on the board; and: “I am not a signatory on wallet transactions and have not been involved in a single token sale throughout my time in the business.” The day before, on 2 September, he had signed the company’s Statement of Affairs as at the administration date — the filing that later put the total deficiency at about £1.71 million, with HMRC listed for about £575,230 in secondary preferential PAYE/NI.
Mid-September brought that Statement of Affairs onto the public Companies House record (filed 17 September). On 22 September a replacement administrator’s proposals document was registered because the original, the filing says, had contained “unnecessary material.”
Who counted as negative
Through much of this period the chat also sorted people by tone. Holders who asked where the buybacks were, why wallets were unlabelled, or why the unlock chart did not match the chain were often framed as the problem: negative, panic, bad vibes. Those who kept the room upbeat were easier to treat as loyal.
In January 2026 the project put that preference into written community guidelines. Ask respectfully. Trust official channels. Do not create “false narratives about secrecy” when information is “simply not yet public.” Do not assume silence means bad news. “Panic posts” and “blame games” were discouraged. Rules against harassment are ordinary. The same lines also narrowed what a holder could press for in public without being told they were spoiling the mood.
Official-looking handles repeated a comfort script: still building, big things coming, wait for the founders update. In March 2026 a LabAssistant-tagged account posted exactly that: the team was still building; wait a few days for a founders update.
Chorley’s X bio still carries “Don’t trust, verify.” When a holder asked in Telegram to remove that line while the project offered little that could be checked on-chain against the pitch, Chorley replied that holders ask the team to come chat more and then “behave like this.” Elsewhere, a community member wrote that the team stays away “because of you cry babies.”
That pattern did not end with the 1 September update. Into mid-October, official moderation and the same “positive” voices still pushed holders not to spread “negative theories,” and to wait for the date Chorley had named.
19 October 2026
The date arrived. Chorley’s update did not publish a finished tokenomics map. It said the UK was bringing in new crypto rules: an application window open from 30 September 2026 to February 2027, with the rules themselves due to take effect in October 2027, covering a range of activities including staking. Guidance was still being written. XSM, “the company behind the token,” remained in the BVI. What was unclear, the update said, was how those rules apply to a company based outside the UK but owned by a UK entity — and that Alkimi would not “guess in public.” Options were under review with legal advisers; no decisions yet. Staking: no decision whether it would stop. Holders were promised a written Telegram update on the token every month.
The same message pointed to product work: Concourse (concourse.agency), framed as a controlled test of AI agents buying advertising — eight models, one brief, one budget; many buys completed, many contracts leaving the buyer “poorly protected”; a stricter second round already running. Separately, the claim contract for the rewards pool that closed on 18 October had been disabled; anyone with “extenuating circumstances” was told to contact Alkimi Labs.
That was the delivery on the named date: not a finished token plan, but “still working it through,” BVI structure under new UK rules, staking unresolved, a claim window closed the day before, and a marketing benchmark for agentic media buying. The UK operating company remained in administration.
What the public record still leaves open
By late October 2026 the same pieces sat in one place: UK administration papers, including a Statement of Affairs signed by Pearce showing about £1.71 million total deficiency; the “unimpacted” token line; an offshore vehicle that once shared the Alchemy VC name; brand names and a WPP Research paper co-authored by Putley and Chandrashekar Narayana; seventy-nine identical TGE wallets, most later empty; years of buyback language; bookings talk that softened; two different buyback pauses in June and July; Putley’s “You’ll be proven wrong”; early unlocks “to ensure the future of the business”; and, when the September deadline for a token update landed on 19 October, regulatory uncertainty around XSM, no decision on staking, Concourse as the product story, and a disabled rewards claim contract.
None of this is a verdict. The critical questions have been on the table in public for a long time. Corrections of fact, additional public documents, and comment from Alkimi or named individuals can still be reflected here if they choose to answer them.
Sources: Companies House filings for Alchemy Exchange Ltd (including AM01/AM03 administration papers, the 17 September 2026 AM02 Statement of Affairs, and the 22 September 2026 replacement AM03); BVI name records for XSM Limited; Neil Bruce LinkedIn (CCO / co-founder exit note); Alkimi documentation; Eidgensi’s public case study; WPP Research Agentic Media Buying pod and the 11 June 2026 Agree. Transact. Verify. post; a Sui GraphQL rebuild of the 7 August 2025 12.5M distribution; the project’s Telegram and X posts, including the 1 September 2026 and 19 October 2026 community updates; CoinGecko $ADS chart to the August 2025 relaunch and ALKIMI Max chart after migration (screenshots, September 2026); concourse.agency (Alkimi Concourse Bench v1). Quotes unchanged. Not a court judgment. Not an allegation of criminal conduct.