- Libra creator Hayden Davis had a hand in Melania Trump's memecoin launch.
- Davis holds $100 million from Milei-promoted memecoin.
- Man at the centre of crypto scandal made his case in a pair of YouTube interviews.
This week, the crypto market convulsed in the biggest scandal since the downfall of FTX.
Even as investors reckoned with the $600 million collapse of the Libra memecoin and the crisis engulfing its most famous supporter, Argentina President Javier Milei, one figure seemed lost in the shuffle — First Lady Melania Trump.
It turns out that the brains behind Libra, a 28-year-old Texan named Hayden Davis, also helped the First Lady launch her memecoin on January 19, which briefly skyrocketed before plunging and vaporising $1.6 billion.
Now following a YouTube interview that went viral, Davis has morphed into the face of memecoins, a once-funny phenomenon that has rapidly come to epitomise the dodgy side of the $3.3 trillion cryptocurrency market.
Deleted posts
Critics have accused Davis of scamming investors in Libra, a memecoin that Milei promoted on social media the moment it launched on Friday.
Milei’s endorsement sent the token soaring, and Davis promptly withdrew crypto worth about $100 million from a pot of tokens where investors could buy and sell Libra.
Libra cratered, and Milei deleted social media posts promoting the token. A federal judge in Argentina is investigating Milei’s ties to the project.
Davis says it’s all a big misunderstanding.
“I’m just custodying money that should be for the government or at least the country of Argentina,” Davis told Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy on a live video stream Monday.
“I was a facilitator. I am the intermediary between parties. … I don’t want [the money].”
‘Our goal was, can we take enough liquidity off to get all the snipers out.’
— Hayden Davis
He has now hired a local attorney who specialises in white-collar defence, according to Argentinian newspaper La Nacion. He also denied to CoinDesk that he bribed Milei or members of his inner circle.
“Recent media reports claiming I paid President Javier Milei or his sister, Karina Milei, to launch the Libra memecoin are completely false,” he told the crypto publication.
“I never made any payments to them, nor did they request any. Their only concern was ensuring proceeds from Libra would benefit Argentina’s people and economy.”
Davis did not respond to a DL News request for comment.
Melania memecoin
Not much is known about Davis at this stage in the memecoin story. A native of Plano, Texas, he studied business and played soccer at Liberty University, the Virginia school founded by the right wing evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell.
These days, Davis is the CEO of Kelsier Ventures, a self-styled “web3 innovation” firm based in Los Angeles, according to a since-deleted LinkedIn profile.
And Libra wasn’t his first memecoin.
Davis helped Melania Trump launch her own memecoin in January, he told independent journalist Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla.
That token has also had a troubled run: The value of all Melania tokens topped $2 billion moments after its launch. Within 24 hours, however, its value had fallen by 75%, and it has declined steadily since.
According to Davis, he was tasked with “ensuring liquidity” for Libra and support[ing] its price.” He controls “all associated fees and treasury funds,” he said in a statement shared via Kelsier’s X account.
That mandate, he told Findeisen, meant Davis had to resort to a questionable practice: sniping.
Massive profits
Sniping is crypto slang for purchasing a large percentage of a token’s supply immediately after its launch.
That allows the buyer to enjoy massive profits if the token goes viral and shoots up in value. But it also means the buyer could crater the token’s price by selling their stash all at once.
Increasingly sophisticated snipers pose an existential threat to memecoins, Davis said. To defend Melania and Libra from the practice, he said he has resorted to sniping them himself.
Blockchain data collected by Bubblemaps details the link between Libra and Melania.
One wallet netted a $2.4 million profit after sniping Melania, according to Bubblemaps. It sent its profits to an address beginning with the characters 0xcEA, which has ties to the one that deployed the Melania token.
‘I have no desire to run off with the money.’
— Hayden Davis
Several weeks later, that same 0xcEA wallet provided seed funding to the one that would deploy Libra, according to Bubblemaps.
Libra had lined up endorsements from “other high level people” and was set to release a video featuring Milei, Davis said.
To protect the token’s price ahead of these attention-grabbing promotions, he withdrew crypto from a pot of tokens known as a liquidity pool, where investors could buy and sell Libra using other crypto.
Mega Trump launch
“Our goal was, can we take enough liquidity off to get all the snipers out, or at least control them so that when the chart dips down, it’s not going to crush the whole project,” he said.
After Milei’s video, he would “inject all the capital back in, or at least the vast majority, and create a mega Trump launch, basically,” he said, referring to the memecoin launched by the US president just two days before his January inauguration.
Instead, blockchain observers slammed Libra as a scam. Milei deleted his first post promoting the memecoin and tried to distance himself from the project.
Davis and his partners have given conflicting accounts of the project’s origins.
According to its website, Libra was created “to boost the Argentine economy” by providing small businesses in the country with grants.
The project was developed by KIP Network Inc, according to a note at the bottom of the website.
But KIP CEO Julian Peh has attempted to distance himself from Libra.
“KIP was invited post-launch to manage / oversee the selection of funded tech projects and provide technical infrastructure for AI initiatives,” he wrote on X.
Primary sponsor
Davis, in turn, called KIP the “primary sponsor” of Libra. But he has dodged questions about the decision to withdraw crypto from the digital marketplace where investors were buying and selling Libra.
“The question is, what to do with money that’s not mine — I’m never claiming it’s my money, I’m not running off with the money, I have no desire to run off with the money,” he told Portnoy.
When asked whom the money belongs to, Davis was at a loss for words.
“It’s definitely not mine — it’s Argentina’s,” he said after a moment.
‘I don’t need to make shitloads of money.’
— Hayden Davis
Davis claims he was “instructed” to withdraw the liquidity. But he hasn’t publicly revealed who gave the alleged instructions.
Davis believes “people near” Milei convinced the president to withdraw his support. Nevertheless, he’s still a fan.
Something bigger
Davis also insists he wasn’t going to get paid for his work on Libra, describing it as a prelude to something bigger.
“I’ve made some money. I’m 28, I have objectives that are way past 28. I don’t need to make shitloads of money at this very moment,” he said.
“This was an experiment. There were much bigger things happening in the background. Tokenising a country.”
Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi reporter. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.
