Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Wenser ( @wenser 2010 )
This week, the controversy over the LIBRA incident, which Argentine President Milley had endorsed, continues.
The latest news, according to YouTube reporter Coffeezilla: The team behind LIBRA (Odaily Planet Daily Note: To be precise, this refers to Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures) admitted to sniping its own tokens. Not only that, members of the team also participated in the launch of Mrs. Trumps token MELANIA, and also sniped the tokens to sell for arbitrage.
At the same time, members of the Meteora and Jupiter teams were also caught in a storm of public opinion because they learned about the launch of the LIBRA token in advance. Argentine President Milley, as the face of the LIBRA token, was also criticized by domestic political forces and crypto industry practitioners for this matter and had to take compensatory actions.
In the fog, what is the truth about LIBRA? Who is the black hand behind the LIBRA token? Are the Jupiter and Meteora teams innocent? Odaily Planet Daily will analyze the above questions one by one in this article for readers reference.
The Freedom and Shackles of LIBRA: The Reconciliation Between Crypto Powers and Politicians
Since the release of Trump’s authentic Meme coin TRUMP, it can be said that Trump has become the man who “opened Pandora’s Box”.
Since then, the reconciliation between crypto forces and politicians has no longer been focused on political donations, lobbying and regulation, but has moved towards participating in the market and jointly harvesting. LIBRA is the product of this trend, and as time goes by, the costs behind this trend are also coming one after another.
Libra: From the presidents support to the presidents betrayal, more than $4 billion evaporated in 6 hours
In our previous article Argentine President issues Meme coin and then denies it, sparking public outrage. Who benefits and who loses? , the opening of LIBRA was already dramatic.
Argentine President Milley first released information about token promotion on both X platform and Instagram, then directly deleted the corresponding tweets and turned against the government, saying that he was maliciously exploited. Affected by this news, the LIBRA token spiraled downward. In less than half a day, the market value dropped from about 4.6 billion US dollars to less than 200 million US dollars , just like the bubble was emptied in an instant, and more than 4 billion US dollars evaporated quickly in 6 hours.
As a result, KIP Protocol, the development team behind LIBRA as shown on the official website of LIBRA, was put under the market spotlight and became the target of criticism.
The subsequent response from the official account of KIP Protocol (Odaily Planet Daily Note: the main content is LIBRA is a private enterprise project, and Argentine President Mile did not participate in its development) made the situation even more tense; and the news that the team behind LIBRA cashed out $107 million (Odaily Planet Daily Note: According to LookOnChain monitoring, 8 wallets related to the LIBRA team obtained 57.6 million USDC and 249,671 SOL, equivalent to approximately US$49.7 million, by adding liquidity, removing liquidity and charging fees, with a total cash out of approximately US$107 million.) became the fuse for the anger of market participants, making many people feel extremely angry and deceived - Argentine President Miles issuance of currency turned out to be just a cover, actually to stage a Rug scam to defraud our trading funds?
Chaofan Shou, a trader who lost millions of dollars and a member of the Solayer team, even chose to open the box directly and disclose relevant information about the KIP Protocol team members in order to track the true identity of the team behind LIBRA and the initiator of the Rug scam.
However, the response of the KIP Protocol team was beyond the market’s expectations. Its co-founder and CEO Julian responded several times:
He first explained the KIP Protocol team’s role in the LIBRA token incident and the profit funds of LIBRA tokens, saying that the LIBRA project funds are still on the chain, and KIP only assists in management as a fund distributor; then, he emphasized that “it has not profited from LIBRA, nor has it hidden.” Regarding the statement released by the official account before, he also forwarded and clarified : “The previous statement was inappropriately worded, but it will not be deleted to show transparency.”
It is worth mentioning that there is a very intriguing sentence in Julian’s multiple responses. He mentioned: “The main role of KIP Protocol in this project is to help allocate funds to Argentine companies, not a token issuer, let alone a market maker. It should be noted that LIBRA has no pre-sale, and all tokens are sold through a one-sided liquidity pool.”
Amidst curses and doubts, the controversy over the LIBRA project continues.
LIBRA becomes Werewolf: KIP and Kelsier Ventures pretend to be prophets
In the early morning of February 16, the official account of KIP Protocol posted again, and the identity of the LIBRA token issuer and market maker was finally revealed.
The official account of KIP Protocol mentioned : “LIBRA issuance and market making are entirely the responsibility of @KelsierVentures, represented by founder Hayden Davis. The relevant profit wallet does not belong to KIP or co-founder Julian. After the token is released, KIP is invited to manage/supervise the selection of funded technology projects and provide technical infrastructure for AI programs. All matters related to the token release should contact Kelsier, as they are handling this matter and plan to transfer the token to a foundation.”
Just as the market was speculating that KIP Protocol might be trying to divert trouble and confuse the public, Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures could no longer sit still.
Hayden Davis, founder of Kelsier Ventures
At around 8:00 am on the 16th, Hayden Davis posted a video and text statement directly on Kelsier’s official account , in which he mentioned:
He is an advisor to Argentine President Milley (Note from Odaily Planet Daily: Kelsier’s official account tweeted on January 31 about the two men’s meeting also confirmed this), but the development of the matter has gone beyond his control;
Miley’s team had assured Hayden Davis that they would continue to support the LIBRA token issuance, but they deleted the tweet without informing Kelsier, their partner, in advance. LIBRA token traders felt deeply betrayed, which led to a series of subsequent market crashes and market value plunges.
The KIP team and co-founder Julian did not commit any bad behavior. He speculated that the Argentine President Milleys team tried to shift the blame to KIP and Julian in order to evade their own responsibilities;
We will try to recover all funds related to LIBRA tokens - including all recoverable parts such as returns, liquidity, etc. - and inject them all into LIBRA token trading pairs within the next 48 hours.
If the above content is a response to the LIBRA token project itself, another piece of information mentioned involves a larger potential scandal - according to Hayden Davis, Photon, Bullex, Meteora, Jupiter, Moonshot and other projects have all made profits on LIBRA.
Hayden Daviss statement in response
As soon as the news came out, the industry was in an uproar.
Previously, when the TRUMP token was released, the fact that platforms such as Moonshot and Jupiter were certified and launched in a short period of time caused market speculation that a number of infrastructure projects in the Solana ecosystem might have conflicts of interest with the team behind the TRUMP token; the launch of Mrs. Trump’s token MELANIA also triggered suspicions such as a scam launched by a conspiracy group, but it was not until the emergence of LIBRA and Hayden Davis’ direct revelations that people once again focused on projects such as Jupiter, Meteora, and Moonshot, and speculated on the role these projects played in the Meme coin incidents of many politicians.
The Solana Ecosystem Trial Involving the LIBRA Token: Are Jupiter and Meteora Innocent?
It is worth mentioning that Chaofan Shou, a member of the Solayer team mentioned above, lost more than 2 million U.S. dollars in the LIBRA incident together with another engineer in the team, Tony. Therefore, he conducted an in-depth and detailed tracking and analysis of the on-chain information related to the LIBRA token. Finally, he sorted out a project relationship diagram . The main information is as follows:
The conspiracy group behind the coin issuance launched LIBRA through the issuance consultant Hayden Davis (Kelsier Ventures), and it is suspected that the market maker was outsourced to an Indian company. Kelsier and the market maker are also insiders of MELANIA, ENRON, BOB, RAG, M 3 M 3, OGME, and AIAI. In addition, the group owns M 3 M 3 Launchpad .
Token relationship diagram involving LIBRA
Moreover, blockchain data company Bubblemaps also published a statement later stating that after a series of on-chain behavior analysis, it is certain that the same team is behind MELANIA and LIBRA. The creator of the MELANIA token or an insider personally participated in the token sniping. The address subsequently provided funds to the LIBRA token creator address and also made a profit of $6 million by sniping tokens, in the same way as MELANIA. In addition, similar profitable token projects include TRUST, KACY, VIBES and HOOD.
Of course, this information can only explain the relationship between the LIBRA and MELANIA token projects, and has little to do with Solana ecological infrastructure projects such as Jupiter and Meteora, but subsequent on-chain information brought different twists and turns.
Meteora: The first werewolf? Limited doubt
According to Arkham monitoring , 70% of LIBRAs supply is in 2 addresses, while 15% of the supply is directly deposited into Meteora LP by developer addresses. The developer addresses have collected more than $20 million in transaction fees from these deposits.
This move triggered market speculation that Meteora might be an accomplice of the LIBRA token team, but later Meteora team member benchow.sol issued a statement to clarify : The Meteora team is not involved in the deployment, market making or release of LIBRA. The LIBRA team uses Meteora, which is a permissionless platform. We have never had any contact with the token or Argentine President Mile. Many teams create Meteora pools through CLI/SDK/CPI, and there are many configuration options, so we do often use our technology to help them. As we learn more, we will share further information in the future.
It is worth noting that benchow.sol had previously left a message in the comment section of Hayden Davis’ tweet about his meeting with Argentine President Miley, saying “It looks like something is going to change the world,” and the market questioned whether it had already known about the LIBRA token project and personally participated in it.
Ben Chow then responded to the doubts again. He mentioned : Meteora and I personally have never received or managed any tokens privately, nor have we participated in any off-chain transactions. We maintain the highest level of confidentiality for any token launch on the platform. For confidentiality reasons, only a very small number of people within Meteora have access to the launch information. Usually, only I know the launch time, and the token/pool address will only be provided to me and one or two engineers on duty (if any) a few minutes before the launch. The complexity of DLMM means that non-crypto native users (such as celebrities, politicians, etc.) usually need to hire deployers and/or market makers when they want to launch tokens. We do not provide these services, but issuers usually ask me for recommendations on deployers and/or market makers.
Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures is one of the deployers/market makers I have recommended to projects in the past few months. We have no special relationship with Kelsier, except that we worked together when M3 was launched that year. In that collaboration, they appeared trustworthy, so I recommended them to a number of projects, including the team behind MELANIA. As with the other projects, our role was limited to technical support, and we did not purchase, receive or manage any tokens related to MELANIA. For LIBRA, although we learned about its possibility through Hayden a few weeks ago, we are not involved in the project other than providing IT support. Neither I nor the Meteora team have compromised the launch of LIBRA by leaking information, nor have we purchased, received or managed any tokens. ”
To sum it up simply: we provide technical support, and occasionally act as a pimp to introduce resources to our partners. We stay out of the LIBRA token incident.
Jupiter Moonshot: The Second Werewolf? Found Not Guilty
In the LIBRA incident, Beanie, the founder of Gm Capital, wrote that Moonshot, as a coin listing platform under Jupiter, had listed the token, causing some people to believe that it was the official token of the Argentine president and buy it, resulting in losses, and then questioned Moonshot and Jupiter.
In response to this matter, Kash Dhanda , a member of the Jupiter team , first spoke out : The Jupiter team did not participate in the release of the LIBRA token. We did not deploy, make markets, or participate in the issuance. We did not pre-verify the token, but only verified it after its market value exceeded 1.5 billion US dollars. Dozens of fake tokens have emerged in the process. In view of the official public statement of the disclosure CA, we want to ensure that users can identify the correct tokens.
He later clarified : “ LIBRA has never been listed on Moonshot, it always shows a warning. Since Moonshot is a DEX, all tokens are technically tradable on it, but they have never ‘listed’ LIBRA, which is in the trending page due to volume indicators, but always shows a warning.”
This information has been verified by many community members. Previously, LIBRA tokens were not certified by the Moonshot platform, but were displayed with the help of the platform’s recent “token registration function” . This function supports searching for corresponding projects through token contracts, but the Moonshot platform has not officially verified this and has marked a corresponding warning.
Moonshot Platform Warning Page
Jupiter co-founder Siong also made a statement later, saying, Jupiter has not joined forces with projects such as LIBRA and ENRON to do evil. We have no direct financial interests in these projects.
At present, the Jupiter and Moonshot platforms should be innocent, but the inadequate supervision problem caused by the platform function update is also to blame.
LIBRAs future direction: The Argentine government, KIP Kelsier Hayden Davis, and Argentine crypto professionals
After the LIBRA incident, the subsequent developments showed a trend of each party sticking to its own opinion and proceeding separately. Odaily Planet Daily summarized this as follows:
The Argentine government: Not familiar with Hayden Davis, will launch an anti-corruption investigation
The Argentine Presidential Office issued a statement on the LIBRA token incident, saying : On October 19, 2014, President Milley met with representatives of KIP Protocol in Argentina, where he was informed of the companys intention to develop a project called Viva la Libertad to use blockchain technology to finance private enterprises in the Argentine Republic. The President attended this meeting, which has been officially recorded in the Register of Public Hearings, and the participants included KIP Protocol company representatives Mauricio Novellli and Julian Peh and Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni. In this context, on January 30, 2025, the President held a meeting at the Rose Palace with Hayden Mark Davis, who, according to KIP Protocol representatives, will provide the technical infrastructure for his project. Davis has no relationship with the Argentine government in the past or present, and KIP Protocol representatives introduced him as one of the partners in the project. Finally, on February 15, the President shared a post on his personal account announcing the launch of KIP Protocol project, as he does every day with many entrepreneurs who want to start projects in Argentina to create jobs and obtain investments. Since he is not involved in the development of any cryptocurrency, after the reaction to the launch of the project, in order to avoid any speculation and not to spread it further, he decided to delete the post.
In light of the facts, President Milley decided to immediately request the intervention of the Office of the Anti-Corruption (OA) to determine if there was any wrongdoing by any member of the national government, including the President himself.
On the other hand, the President decided to set up an Investigative Task Force (UTI) within the Presidential Palace, composed of representatives of institutions and organizations related to crypto assets, financial activities, money laundering and other related fields, who will integrate information and conduct an urgent investigation into the launch of LIBRA and all companies or individuals involved in the above actions. All information collected during the investigation will be handed over to the court to determine whether any company or individual related to the KIP Protocol project has committed a crime. President Milley has demonstrated his commitment to the truth with his actions, and he is committed to thoroughly clarifying the truth of this incident until the final results are revealed.
KIP Protocol: The President’s statement was wrong
In response to the statement from Argentine President Milei, KIP Protocol responded : “Mauricio Novelli has never been a member of the KIP Protocol team, but is the founder of TechForum Argentina, and KIP Protocol became its sponsor in October 2024. KIP Protocol never held any meeting with Argentine President Milei in January 2025.”
Kelsier Hayden Davis: We just want to end this farce as soon as possible and use funds to exchange for peace
According to an online interview conducted by YouTube reporter Coffeezilla with Hayden Davis, founder of Kelsier Ventures, the latter is currently willing to use all funds obtained from LIBRA tokens to repurchase tokens or inject them into liquidity pools. This is also in line with the statement previously released by KIP Protocol.
But how to deal with it specifically still needs time to verify.
Argentine crypto people: Being implicated and deeply ashamed
Regarding Argentine President Miles support for LIBRA, Federico Carrone, founder of the well-known Argentine development team LambdaClass, posted : I wonder if Lambda should file a lawsuit. I will discuss this with friends and lawyers. I dont want to make money from it, but this matter cant end like this. This has ruined Argentinas cryptocurrency market. Many friends asked me why I was in this industry. What happened in the past few days made all the cryptocurrency companies in Argentina look like scammers. Many integrity builders who have been engaged in this industry for ten years have been passively implicated in this stupid behavior.
In addition, there are reports that Argentine President Milley may face legal problems because of the massive losses suffered by users due to the promotion of LIBRA tokens. Burwick Law, a cryptocurrency litigation company, is now providing agency services for victims of the project. Analysis shows that the Argentine government is worried that the losses of foreign investors may lead to OFAC sanctions or even asset seizure.
But the news subsequently released by Bloomberg may have dispelled this concern. Due to Milleys previous excellent political performance, he will most likely be able to avoid paying a major political price.
Conclusion: Whether LIBRA can reach the other side depends mainly on Hayden Davis performance
While Binance co-founder CZ was stirring up the crypto market with his own dogs name, Argentine President Milley also made the crypto market, including a number of crypto KOLs, retail investors, and exchanges, feel as if they were being teased and uneasy with his erratic attitude.
It has to be said that after celebrities have great influence, their impact on the crypto market, which particularly values the attention economy, is sometimes disastrous.
In view of this, I personally think that perhaps the crypto market can establish an unwritten rule in the future: the president and dogs are not allowed to enter. What do you think?
