Being accused of spending money to "bribe" the president's sister, the mastermind behind multiple "Rug Pulls", what is the origin of Libra issuer Kelsier Ventures?

Author: Weilin, PANews

Argentine President Mile has recommended LIBRA tokens many times on social media X platform, and the token price has also plummeted due to the removal of tweets. As Libra's coin farce fermented for several days, the trader token market maker Kelsier Ventures and its CEO Hayden Davis emerged and were accused of being the co-founder of LIBRA tokens, and with insider trading, political involvement and Hayden Davis was accused of being a "rugger" with multiple operation plans and other more information exposed, including in-depth trading of tokens such as Trump's wife's MEME MELANIA. In a recent video interview, Hayden Davis responded to various issues related to the founding of LIBRA.

Hayden Davis is one of the core figures in the Argentine president's coin issuance storm. This article will approach Hayden Davis and Kelsier Ventures to learn about their background and their roles in the Libra scandal.

Hayden Davis denied it

Hayden Davis is accused of opening up the core circle of Argentine President Javier Milei through bribery.

On February 19, Coindesk reported that Hayden Davis had said in a text message last December that he could "control" Argentine President Milei because he had been calling Milei's sister Karina Milei (now Secretary-General of the Argentine Presidential Palace) money. "I send money to his sister and he will sign whatever I say and act as I wish." The information disclosure is the latest development in the LIBRA token scandal that has fermented for several days.

However, Davis' spokesman Michael Padovano immediately responded that the media reports were "politically motivated" and he did not remember sending such text messages, and there were no relevant records on his phone.

The story goes back to the morning of February 15, when Mile recommended a little-known token on X platform $LIBRA, which fell to $827 million after the market value rose to $4.24 billion in half an hour. But as more insider addresses revealed huge profits, Mile deleted the post a few hours later and denied any connection to the cryptocurrency, the price of the currency quickly fell to $0.2 after that. This farce of the president's coin issuance has become increasingly serious, including Kelsier Ventures, KIP Protocol, Meteora, Jupiter and other projects.

Among them, Kelsier Ventures, as the issuer of Libra, was pointed out that it involved insider trading of various meme tokens such as MELANIA, ENRON, and BOB, and harvested more than 200 million US dollars.

The large amount of investors' losses caused by Libra this time has further pushed Kelsier Ventures to the forefront.

According to El Eonomista's estimates, 44,000 users were affected by the "rug pull" incident. According to crypto lawyer wassielawyer, this number may reach nearly 75,000 users, with a total loss of about US$286 million. But Argentine President Mile said it was fake to say that 44,000 people were affected, with a maximum of only 5,000. The possibility of involvement of Argentines is very small. PANews' survey shows that nearly 30% of large investors took over at high levels, and early buyers became the hardest hit area for losses.

Participate in multiple "rug pulls" and the restaurant owner transforms

into a crypto family business

On February 17, blockchain data company Bubblemaps posted on X platform: "LIBRA and MELANIA and other short-lived tokens are actually the same group of people. After analyzing the cross-chain transfer and time patterns, we are highly convinced. One guess is correct. It all started with our investigation of sniper activity on MELANIA. "On-chain analysis shows that Kelsier Ventures' wallets are involved in MELANIA, TRUST, KACY, VIBES and the recently hyped HOOD tokens Played a core role in the scam.

Kelsier Ventures has been kept mysterious before. Nevertheless, an industry insider recently contacted by PANews said, “This Kelsier market maker is a well-known meme rugger in Dubai.”

Currently, Kelsier Ventures is still operating actively, but there is uncertainty in its location. An investigation video by BoDoggos Entertainment CEO Nick O'Neil revealed that he received a offer. The service process of Kelsier Ventures is divided into these steps:

• Wash, deploy, snipe
• Market make
• dump the market make tokens, 20%)
• shuffle and extract (wash & extract)

90% of the "snipers" come from inside Kelsier Ventures. They distribute tokens to friends or set up actions for their bots. Kelsier Ventures sets a 2% token allocation and sets a maximum daily sales limit of 0.1%. In addition, the daily charge is US$3,000 or 20% of the withdrawal amount, whichever is higher.

According to Kelsier Ventures' official recommendation, the company "invested, provided consulting and brought cutting-edge technologies of blockchain, cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence to the market." At present, its official website has deleted team information, and its homepage and Other Web3 projects don't seem to have much difference.

Public information shows that Kelsier Ventures was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Delaware, USA. The company focuses on investing in companies in the financial services industry. Since its inception, Kelsier Ventures has completed five investments, including DeFiTuna, Scallop Group and UpRock. In addition, in November 2023, Kelsier participated in the financing of Saturn, a non-custodial P2P order book service provider. On June 1, 2024, E Money Network announced on the X platform that the project has completed a bridge round of US$3.3 million, and Kelsier Ventures is one of the leading investors. Kelsier Ventures' latest investment occurred on January 26, 2025, targeting DeFiTuna, a company in the financial services industry.

Kelsier Ventures' official website previously showed that Hayden Davis's father, Tom Davis, is the chairman of the company. He once served his sentence and later ran a restaurant chain on the East Coast of the United States. When he expanded his business, he read about the news that Dubai planned to establish a "crypto valley" and came up with the idea of ​​starting a blockchain company in Dubai. He then began to reach out to top figures in the crypto field, build connections, and get involved in venture capital funds, investing in multiple early stage projects. In the early days, Tom once called himself the CEO of Kelsier Ventures. Kelsier Ventures team COO Gideon Davis is presumed to be Hayden Davis' younger brother. In 2022, as a college student, he has already begun to enter the crypto industry and works in the DeFi project Unlock and its metaverse project NeoNexus. But the project claimed in March 2022 that it had run out of funds and failed to continue operating, and the community accused it of "soft rug".

Hayden Mark Davis' LinkedIn page is currently inaccessible. But according to public reports, his previous information shows that he has been the CEO of Kelsier since October 2020. Since May of the same year, he has become the founder of Luxury Drip, a company with an unknown industry. According to Davis, he has started a business since August 2017, running a company called Leaders Elevate, which looks like another family business of the Davis family.

Acknowledging participation in MELANIA sniping, saying that Libra is not

Rug but the plan failed

In addition to posting a video statement after the incident, Hayden Mark Davis also spoke with crypto blogger Coffeezilla. He said, "In the original LIBRA launch plan, Mile would post another video and then some other high-profile people would interact with it. So when we thought about it, can we drive away by extracting liquidity's sniper' ', while retaining funds to prevent the project from collapsing after the price drops, let Mile release a second video and reinvest the funds, copy the TRUMP-like 'explosion feast'. I don't know why Mile will Deleting the first update, I guess he was under great political pressure, which caused him to panic. Given where he is, I can fully understand how he feels.”

Despite the token plunge, he said, "People say this is a rug again. This is not an objective fact. There are still tens of millions of dollars in liquidity locked in, and the token market value is still $300 million. This is not a rug, it's just The plan failed. As a custodian, I still have $100 million in the account I control, but I really hope someone tells me what to do with it. I don't want to be the target of public criticism, I didn't benefit from it, but I But his life is in danger.

Speaking about insider trading, host Coffeezilla said that people’s frustration is that they are not angry because you are good at trading, but because you know information that the public doesn’t know and use it to trade. In the open market, this is illegal and is an insider trading.

Hayden Davis said, "But it's not illegal in the meme market. That's what happens in every transaction. That's the rules here, people know this, agree with this, and make money on that. If you're going to blame You have to blame everything else. To be honest, I don't actually object to this. But I think the vast majority of people who bet on meme tokens, especially retail traders who take action in the early stages Yes, this is the game rule of this market. This is not the capital market, this is the casino."

During the interview, Davis also admitted to being involved in the sniper attack on the president's First Lady's token MELANIA.

Refunds for participating projects "avoid suspicion" and legal storms may

follow

Affected by the Libra coin issuance scandal, on February 17, DefiTuna's founder Moty publicly announced through the X platform that DefiTuna has refunded Kelsier, an investor who invested $30,000 in the project on January 16, 2025, and cut off the issue from it. all connections.

Not only that, the Libra incident also caused legal risks. On February 15, the Argentine Presidential Palace announced that Mile had directed the Anti-Corruption Office to immediately participate in the investigation to determine whether any Afghan government member, including Mile himself, had committed improper behavior in the incident. The opposition plans to impeach Mile.

On February 17, an Argentine law firm filed a criminal lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), accusing the LIBRA token crash and demanding an investigation into the role of Argentine President Mile. On another legal battlefield, the Citizen Alliance ARI also filed a criminal lawsuit on February 17, demanding that the Justice Department investigate allegations of bribery and fraud that President Milei allegedly promoted, adding that "the government cannot be both an athlete and a referee."

As the LIBRA token scandal continues to ferment, Hayden Davis and Kelsier Ventures’ roles and motivations have become the focus of public and regulators’ attention. Although Davis tried to clarify his position and emphasized that his behavior was in line with market rules, doubts about his suspected market manipulation and insider trading did not dissipate. As more evidence emerges, this incident could have profound impacts on the regulatory environment of the cryptocurrency market. PANews will continue to track and follow the latest developments.