who don’t dabble on decentralized exchanges every day thousands of junk tokens are launched on chain they’re collectively called meme coins but most lack any of the properties like say humor or popular appeal that the word meme implies many are overspill from pump dot fun others are the work of teams operating like ramshackle fishing boats desperately casting hook after hook into the open ocean most never catch so much as a nibble from the market but no matter when the hooks cost peanuts and never run out there’s no need to waste bait or you know funny memes trying to make any of them stick really the less effort the better you simply check crypto Twitter to see what word is being mentioned the most that day scroll it on the side of a hook and cast your line all right all right enough with the fishing metaphor now most tokens launched like this will be lucky if they last 24 hours before they’re forgotten or destroyed in one way or another this is common knowledge but it doesn’t stop Traders competing to get in early if you can scoop up a significant chunk of the supply at very low cost before anyone else you’re almost guaranteed some amount of profit the earliest buyers are snipers sophisticated traders who aim to Corner the supply at launch once the snipers are in and out there is no more being early and the token can only sustain itself by competing for Market participants attention with the thousands of other new tokens launched every day in many cases holders who don’t exit quickly enough are put out of their Misery by a rug pool now strictly speaking rugging is the act of removing the liquidity pool which is what makes the token tradeable on decentralized exchanges and this is akin to taking all the money in the pot and simply running with it it nukes the chart and renders the token worthless in reality snipers or anyone else selling a significant proportion of the token Supply can have the same effect on the chart but whatever the cause is it’s common to describe the end result as a rug in most cases crime is painted all over the chart for the world to see but don’t worry nobody’s looking it’s just another hour in the trenches some make money most people lose money the token is abandoned and the world moves on or at least it did until this year it was all fun and games until January the 18th When Donald Trump announced the launch of His official meme coin and dropped the contract address on Twitter just two days before being inaugurated as president of the United States predictably Trump immediately became Front Page News around the world by the 19th of January it had reached a market cap of more than $4 billion flipping shib to become the second largest mcoin after Doge at its peak 24-hour trading volume reached $42 billion it was hailed by some as one of the greatest wealth creation events in crypto history until the blowoff top was complete and gravity duly set in in the end most investors lost money but the volume generated a fortune in trading fees for centralized and decentralized exchanges alike now things started moving very quickly after this on the 20th of January Melania Trump or others acting in her name followed suit with the Melania token Trump had already collapsed and this sequel was received very poorly still it attracted billions of dollars in trading volume and peaked at a market cap of almost $2 billion which is more than most meme coins will ever accomplish the same day Cuba’s foreign Ministry announced the launch of a national meme coin posting the contract address and Ticker on Twitter the token promptly rugged and it turned out that the ministry’s account had been hacked then on the 9th of February the Central African Republic launched a national meme coin which was authentic but rugged all the same losing 95% of its value within a should have been ready for the next installment of the new nation state mem coin meta but nothing short of Insider information could have prepared us for the explosive submission made by Argentine president Javier mle who promoted a mem coin called Libra on Twitter on the 14th of February M’s post described Liber as a quote private project dedicated to encouraging the growth of the AR Argentine economy by funding small Argentine businesses and startups and Julie dropped the contract address at the bottom of his Tweet now Libra barely gave anyone enough time to check if this characterization was accurate as it topped and began rugging violently within 50 minutes of launch this wasn’t before mle’s tweet had drawn in billions of dollars worth of trading volume though enabling the ruggers to extract well over $100 million the gast chart paired with an apparently authentic tweet from the pro crypto president of Argentina laid bare the scale of the crime this was a first even for crypto and you may be thinking what about Trump but these were two very different token launches Trump was met with a groan from observers in crypto and condemnation from observers outside of it the launch was sniped and it was recently alleged that a meeting of insiders in Washington DC was offered access to a pre-sale of some kind this was likely at the pre-inauguration crypto ball the timing of which coincided with the launch of trump we’ll need further details on this Washington cohort but for the moment it’s safe to say that the snipers at least influenced Trump’s hideous price action which looks a lot like a pump and dump scheme however for all the valid criticism it drew Trump was not a rug or a scam in the strict sense the sad truth is that most meme coins look like this sooner or later whether or not a scam actually takes place nobody involved in Trump’s launch sought to deceive investors about the nature of the token it was explicitly presented as a bit of fun and although the majority of buyers lost money and certainly didn’t have fun this probably does not constitute fraud for example Trump’s tweet announcing the launch says quote my new official Trump meme is here it’s time to celebrate everything we stand for winning have fun the token’s official website meanwhile Bears a quote from Trump that reads quote celebrate our win and have fun beneath the same disclaimer is plastered over and over quote Trump memes are not intended to be or to be the subject of an investment opportunity investment contract or security of any type the tokenomics are spelled out clearly so you get the idea now this is very different from a head of state presenting a meme coin as an Enterprise to encourage the growth of their nation’s desperately aien economy by funding local small businesses and startups hours after Libra had rugged mle deleted his original tweet and explained that he had not been quote aware of the details of the project when promoting it and that Having learned a little more about it he had quote decided Ed not to continue spreading the word mlay would return to damage control mode in the local media in the following days but before he did the plot thickened when a video emerged on Twitter of an odd character with cartoonish proportions claiming to be the very Malay adviser who had pulled the rug on Libra to the tune of $100 million this was Hayden Davis the 28-year-old CEO of kelia Ventures an obscure family run crypto Market making and Venture Capital firm who had orchestrated the launch of Libra and as it would later transpire also Melania Davis’s video was highly unusual he was exposing his identity and publicly confessing to a crime of historic proportions all while seemingly cosplaying as a Pokémon character yet the point of the video was to reassure the community of his good intentions the message was don’t worry I’m totally as up guy and I’m only holding your $100 million until my client Javy sees the error of his ways and comes back to support Libra then I’m going to pump the money back into the chart and then this is all going to be mu Buena on trust me it wasn’t long before Hayden’s brother father and sister all Executives at kelia started wiping their social media accounts possibly because of death threats possibly to obscure their role in the crime perhaps both now Hayden’s odd confession and demeanor were explained somewhat by subsequent interviews he did with investigative YouTuber coffeezilla and pizza fancying Sports troll turned mem coin grifter Dave pornoy in the first interview with coffeezilla Davis made clear that he believed mle would release a previously agreed upon follow-up video promoting Libra now to anyone who had witnessed any part of the Libra launch this was inexplicable how could he possibly expect mle to double down on shooting himself at in the foot well secretly Davis had reason to believe that mle would indeed come to his rescue this was revealed shortly after when coindesk leaked text messages from Davis provided by an anonymous source close to the situation Davis sweet also we can have mle tweet and meet in person and do promo I control that N word reply that’s sick Davis I send dollar to his sister and he signs whatever I say and does what I want craziest now Javier M’s sister Karina mle is his General Secretary akin to his chief of staff if these messages are to be believed she is renting out the president of Argentina to foreign business interests which is a kind of Scandal in itself anyway Davis apparently had reason to believe he controlled president mle hence his belief that mle would return to fulfill his side of the deal this appears to be Davis’s rationale for suggesting that he could simply re-inject the $100 million he stole into the Libra chart and wash his hands of the situation now whether or not mle returned this was always a stupid idea however as mle went deeper into damage control mode and sought to distance himself further from Libra his return became even less plausible this no doubt contributed to Davis’s initial calm turning to panic in his second interview with Dave pornoy Davis was asked to whom the $100 million belonged and he was surprisingly disarmed by the question after much stuttering he said it belonged to Argentina a response so hairbrained it offends the senses of anyone paying the slightest bit of attention the notion that Libra was intended to accomplish anything for Argentina’s economy was a lie intended to deceive an audience of one namely Javier Malay Davis when went on to say that he didn’t feel comfortable transferring the funds to his Connections in the Argentinian government I.E Karina Malay at the time of making this video he has not revealed what he intends to do with the $100 million oddly the scandal in Argentina appears to have been surprisingly transient however the Argentinian stock market fell by around 5.6% only to recover its losses the next day more than 100 legal complaints were filed against President mle and the opposition signaled its intent to have him impeached and tried for a variety of crimes alleged in connection with Libra however at the moment the votes are not there to make this happen so it appears to be a symbolic move and at least on crypto Twitter when the question of mle’s Fate is raised a common response is this is nothing compared to the average political scandal in Argentina so no mle is not cooked for example the Revelation that Davis accessed the Argentine president by paying off his sister seems to have come as less of a shock in Argentina than elsewhere according to Bloomberg quote Karina is not only mle’s top advisor and strategist but his gatekeeper talk to Curry is one of the most common phrases tossed around the President’s Circle when it comes to accessing the man himself if anything mle may have to be more concerned about being implicated in a legal complaint filed in New York Americans lost a lot of money in a clearly fraudulent investment scheme that crashed and burned in broad daylight and if Justice is to be served the heads of those responsible for orchestrating and promoting it are going to roll then again he’s a sitting president and it’s not like his own government is going to extradite him to New York in reality the Scandal has shamed crypto more effectively than it has havay this was largely thanks to a series of Revelations about rampant insider trading that began with Hayden Davis and spiraled outwards implicating top salana dexes Jupiter and Meteora in his coffeezilla interview Davis explained how kelia had sniped its own launch of Libra and orchestrated the rug he claimed that it was a benevolent maneuver intended to counter the inevitable damage that would otherwise be caused by third party snipers capturing the token Supply upon launch from the moment the interview went live kelia was condemned for its supposedly well-intended Act of Insider trading but the mood soured considerably after further leaked texts from Davis surfaced in a conversation about another token launch in mid January Davis was asked about his goals for the launch quote I also don’t know your long-term goals you want continue pump or you want to distribute all of the token ASAP to which Davis replied quote Yeah fellas TBH we’re trying to Max Extract on this one observers on crypto Twitter were quick to Herald this statement as this Cycle’s defining villain quote akin to do Quan’s deploying more Capital steady Lads tweeted amid the collapse of Terror in May 2022 others lamented how buffoonish our new villains are by comparison Sam bankman freed and do Quan appear to be almost Evil Geniuses or at the very least sincerely interested in crypto Hayden Davis and Co are amateurs by comparison and there’s something embarrassing about crypto being made to look bad by people who are not not just Reckless and criminal but also really really stupid for example Davis claimed quite believably to have little technical understanding of sniping he expressed amazement at the ability of third parties to snipe launches without access to Insider information he pointed to the launch of trump where a single sniper apparently unconnected to the Trump team managed to profit around $8 million after spending $1 million as the very first buyer of the token he also described his disbelief that anyone with the exception of these mysterious snipers could profit from any Dex token launch without access to inside information by the end of the coffeezilla interview viewers were left with the impression that the tiny number of meme coins that end up going anywhere are decided in advance by project insiders and the only reason they do go anywhere is because those same project insiders engage in rampant insider trading Davis suggested that insider trading is not only ubiquitous but the only possible way to make money on mcoin launches reactions were split between those who were disgusted by this shocking Revelation and those who were disgusted to have confirmed what they always suspected was true of the mcoin economy all were grossed out by Davis saying the quiet part out loud and so matter of factly but as I mentioned Davis and kelia were merely the players stupid enough to talk candidly about the game in public perhaps the most damning artifact to emerge during the Libra Fallout is a secret recording of a call between MTI povolotsky a crypto founder acquainted with Davis and Ben Chow a co-founder of Meteora for reference Chow’s metora co-founder is the owner of Jupiter who goes only by meow now meow recently announced an independent investigation into activities at Meteora under Chow’s leadership meow claims to be confident that quote no one at Jupiter or Meteora committed any insider trading or financial wrongdoing now in the call between pavlotsky and Chow pavlotsky described witnessing rampant insider trading and price manipulation perpetrated by the people behind Libra and Melania the influencers paid to promote them and top salana projects including Meteora and Jupiter quote the whole thing just looks rotten to the very core like I don’t have words to Express and the worst thing of all is it’s a president that gets a bad image and whenever presidents get involved and if they become angry you know you don’t want to be there not only that this is international this isn’t $20 this is not $100 million this is like $2000 to this is FTX type of Chow’s response doesn’t Inspire confidence in Meteora nor Jupiter by extension quote man I feel sick I feel so sick man holy I feel really really sick oh my God the call is 26 minutes long and this is just a sample chiao adds later that he is quote really fuing scared man around the time the call surfaced he duly resigned as head of Meteora all in all this whole business is a pretty low point for crypto the criminals of yester year look charismatic and dare I say it almost competent by comparison and our only consolation at the moment is the new wave of memes about Gary gendler disappearing just when crypto needed him the most of course if The Regulators had done their job properly over the last decade we might not be experiencing this Collective embarrassment if the SEC had gone after genuinely Bad actors like Hayden Davis Ed how rather than harassing legitimate crypto businesses then the scumbags behind Libra and countless other Shady mem coins like it might not have felt so comfortable acting the way they did but they thought they could get away with it and so far they mostly have so no we don’t really miss Gary Gensler but we can sure use a meme that actually makes us laugh right now the words crime season are not funny anymore because they’re True Crime is indeed now legal and the tokens did indeed get launched if we want the words crypto and scam to be decoupled in the public imagination something around here has got to change okay let us know what you think about libbre gate in the comments smash that like button if you’d like to see less crime on your timeline and make sure you’re subscribed and have pinged the Bell so that you don’t miss our next video about where this crazy story leads to as always thank you for watching and I’ll see you next time this is guy over and out [Music]
