Remember when Solayer developer Chaofan Shou said that he and Solayer engineers lost more than $2 million on LIBRA? And the phrase Lets see what two hackers and a free weekend can bring us.
The weekend has just ended, and many dramas have indeed been exposed in the LIBRA project. BlockBeats has compiled the currently known stakeholders and their statements related to the issuance of LIBRA based on public information, trying to piece together the entire process of this LIBRA farce.
Related reading: The Argentine president refused to admit his decision to issue a currency, and his team earned hundreds of millions of dollars in 4 hours
Currently, there are several parties involved in LIBRA, including President Milei, project owner KIP Protocol, market maker Kelsier Ventures and its founder Hayden Davis, insiders close to the Argentine government, and multiple project owners including Jupiter.
The team staged an internal conflict, and many parties exposed themselves
In the early morning of February 16, KIP Protocol published a statement on X stating that the issuance and market making of LIBRA tokens were entirely the responsibility of Kelsier Ventures and the project initiator Hayden Davis, and no related wallets belonged to KIP or co-founder Julian. KIP was only invited to manage and oversee the selection of funded technology projects after the launch. KIP publicly acknowledged its role in the project because the project information was listed on the official website and recognized the potential of the plan.
At 8 a.m. on February 16, Hayden Davis released a three-minute clarification video and related announcement. The main messages he conveyed in the video were as follows:
1. Hayden Davis confirmed that he is an advisor to Argentine President Javier Milei;
2. All funds that are managed to be recovered - including all fees, income, liquidity and everything else that can be recovered - will be fully injected into the Libra trading pair within the next 24 to 48 hours;
3. It was revealed that projects such as Photon, Bullex, Meteora, Jupiter, and Moonshot made profits on LIBRA;
A document announcement is also attached below the video, the main information of which includes:
1. Hayden Davis’ responsibility is to ensure the liquidity of LIBRA while still controlling all related expenses and capital reserves;
2. Javier Milei’s team had assured Hayden Davis that they would continue to support LIBRA during its launch, but Milei deleted his tweet without informing the team in advance;
3. Julian Peh, the founder of KIP Network and the main sponsor of Libra Token, has not committed any wrongdoing. Davis speculated that the Milei team tried to shift the blame to Julian in order to evade their own responsibilities;
An hour later, the official Argentine presidential office account released an announcement explaining the background information of the LIBRA project, saying that on October 19, 2024, Argentine President Javier Milei met with representatives of KIP Protocol in Argentina. At the meeting, KIP introduced to the president its plan to develop a project called Viva la Libertad, which aims to use blockchain technology to provide financing support for private enterprises in Argentina.
On January 30, 2025, the President met with Hayden Mark Davis at the Presidential Palace. According to the KIP Protocol representative, Mr. Davis will provide the technical infrastructure for the project. It is stated that Hayden Davis has no relationship with the Argentine government and was only introduced by the KIP Protocol representative as one of the partners in the project.
The above is the response of the main participants in the LIBRA project. During this process, Chaofan Shou, a developer of Solayer who suffered losses, first claimed that the market maker/creator of the LIBRA token was directly related to Arunkumar Sugadevan and another Indian serial withdrawal scammer, and questioned whether Kelsier Ventures outsourced the token issuance to an Indian company. By tracking the flow of funds through time series analysis, it was found that the creator of the LIBRA token was also an insider of the MELANIA and ENRON tokens, and was a developer of the OG.FUN project, and had laundered more than 15 million US dollars in funds.
Later, he deleted the post and said that Arunkumar Sugadevan had nothing to do with LIBRA, but just shared the same market maker. However, he made an infographic to integrate the relevant content of his investigation, saying that the LIBRA-related issuance market making team manipulated multiple meme coins.
Jupiter, Meteora and others are in crisis of public opinion
The most explosive content in Hayden Davis video is that he said that projects such as Photon, Bullex, Meteora, Jupiter, and Moonshot all participated in the issuance of LIBRA and made a lot of profit.
Photon and Bullex are popular meme trading platforms in the English community, while Meteora, Jupiter, and Moonshot are one-stop service providers for Solana meme coins that became popular after the TRUMP coin. Many investors who rushed to LIBRA this time made heavy positions because they could search for contract information on Moonshot.
In the comments section of Milei President’s tweet about his meeting with Hayden Davis on January 31, the founder of Meteora commented on “changing the world”, which was used by the community as evidence that Meteora was also involved in LIBRA’s internal planning. Therefore, Meteora founder Ben issued a clarification statement even before Hayden Davis released the video, stating that the LIBRA team used Meteora, a permissionless platform, but Meteora had never controlled any tokens and had no direct contact with Milei.
Jupiter and its team members also issued clarifications, stating that several members of the Jupiter team learned directly from Kelsier Ventures about two weeks ago that there might be a token project related to the Argentine president at some point in the future. No member of the Jupiter team has ever received LIBRA tokens or any related compensation. Jupiter founder Meow did not know the contract address or the specific release time, nor did he participate in any related operations. He was in Tokyo at the time and was sleeping when the token was issued.
In Jupiter’s statement, it stated that Meteora’s founder Ben learned the contract address a few minutes before the token issuance for verification, but did not share it with the Jupiter team until the information was made public.
After Davis video went viral, several of the project owners he mentioned issued clarification statements. Almost all of them stated that they would provide more detailed information to the community in the future, including Hayden Davis who also stated that he would continue to release videos to disclose the information behind the scenes. However, the token price is still there. After two days of fermentation, LIBRA still has a market value of only $300 million.
Insider reveals: The president is being manipulated
The most explosive news about LIBRA is that in the early morning of February 16, community developer @DiogenesCasares published an article titled Bribery, Insiders and Manipulated Presidents | The Truth about the $LIBRA Incident, claiming that he was an insider of the LIBRA coin issuance plan and that he had received news a week ago that there were rumors circulating in the market about the upcoming launch of Milei-related meme coins. And the rumors came from traders and industry insiders who had reliable sources of information.
In the article, he wrote that he had contacted several core figures in the Argentine crypto community, mainly executives of large crypto exchanges and platforms. They all said they had not heard of the project. One of them mentioned that an idea led by American investors had been proposed, and some people, including JUP CEO, wanted to create a token called $afuera, but the plan did not land.
He then learned that a close associate of Milei had received a $5 million bribe to push the token project in front of the president. This does not mean that Milei himself accepted the bribe, but that his close associates received funds to facilitate Mileis support for the token.
The author claims that the team behind this project is highly similar to the tokens launched by Trump’s wife Melania, and on-chain evidence shows that many wallets that bought $LIBRA early were associated with Melania tokens. It also states that the Meteora team is involved with the Melania token and played an important role in the LIBRA project, or at least knew something about the token’s plans.
Moreover, many key players in the crypto industry and Solana ecosystem have long had inside information about LIBRA and obtained token addresses in advance before most ordinary buyers (who usually only rely on public data on the chain). In addition, another $20 million was transferred by multiple wallets that first received LIBRA from developers and then quickly sold it for profit.
The author speculates that a group of foreign VCs, traders, intermediaries and KOLs in the crypto circle tried to sell this token to the Argentine government, and the MIlei government became their target because of its openness to new ideas, which gave a sense of absurdity like the King of Chu likes thin waists.
In the supplementary information, the author also emphasized that Milei himself was not directly involved, and the person involved was more likely a member of his government team.
In line with this information, President Milei asked the Argentine Anti-Corruption Office to intervene in a statement to investigate whether there was any misconduct by government members, including the president himself. At the same time, a special investigation team (UTI) was established, with members from regulatory agencies in related fields such as crypto assets, financial activities, and money laundering. The team will integrate information and urgently investigate the issuance of the cryptocurrency LIBRA and all companies and individuals involved. All evidence obtained from the investigation will be handed over to the judicial authorities to determine whether the companies or individuals related to the KIP Protocol project have committed a crime.
The collapse of the meme cabal?
Some people in the community are reflecting on why they lost money, while others are actively defending their rights. Developer Farokh (@farokh) expressed the hope that LIBRA project leader Hayden Davis would expose the list of KOLs who received LIBRA token marketing remuneration, and called on crypto media and capable people to investigate the matter together.
Previously, Dave Portnoy stated in Space that he had obtained 6 million LIBRA tokens for marketing, and that he knew the token issuance contract in advance and bought them in advance through a small wallet. The KIP team had discussed with him how to help him issue his own tokens.
Crypto KOL Beanie (@beaniemaxi) jokingly said that when Dave Portnoy started to play the role of a righteous whistleblower KOL, you can imagine how deep this matter is and how dirty the trench is. (Authors note: Dave Portnoy once launched the spoof meme coin JAILSTOOL. Before that, CZ also retweeted Dave Portnoys tweet, To all the meme coin players who are crying now: We all know the rules of the game, everyone is here to make money, and no one is cheating anyone. If you are buying and selling junk coins, you should be prepared to lose all your investment. This is the risk.)
Beanie stated in the investigation surrounding Kelsier Ventures that meme coin KOL champ is a partner of the Kelsier Ventures team.
Crypto KOL NDF is a member of both the Kelsier Ventures team and the Fantom Troupe, which explains how the early news of LIBRA flowed into the inner circle. It is equivalent to being a mergers and acquisitions (MA) investment banker on Wall Street and working part-time as a day trader in the same company, which is obviously a conflict of interest.
Beanie said Kelsier Ventures is like a family-run crime syndicate. In addition to CEO Hayden Davis, his father Tom Davis is the chairman and his brother Gideon Davis is the COO. Currently, Gideon has cleared the X profile and logged out of Instagram.
