Who launch presidential meme coins? Who is behind them?

Zeus gave Pandora a mysterious box (actually it was a pythos – a large vessel) and forbade her to open it. But curiosity got the better of her, and when Pandora opened the box, all the world’s ills flew out: disease, war, suffering. Only hope remained at the bottom.

On February 15th and 16th, the LIBRA token was launched, briefly promoted by Argentine President Javier Gerardo Miley himself. The rapid growth to $4.5 billion FDV, followed by a rapid decline and a series of high-profile scandals led to the opening of Pandora’s box – the main vices of the crypto market came to light: manipulation, scandals, fraud, insiders and snipers. Theories about the presence of a secret group of people in the industry, who would commit the dirtiest and most disgusting fraud on honest and well-meaning fans in order to earn a few X’s on a new meme coin, appeared on the web.

Does this group exist? Who is so powerful that they can manipulate presidents? What does Gotbit have to do with it? And the big question: Is there any hope left for a normal altcoin season because scammers are taking hundreds of millions of dollars from crypto investors?

In the footsteps of Gotbit
Meta about “presidential” scams
The connection between LIBRA, TRUMP, MELANIA, CAR
How this group works
Jupiter and Meteora connection
Who is behind all these scams?
Conclusions

In the footsteps of Gotbit

Until recently, the scandalous market maker Gotbit was one of the most prominent figures in the meme coin market. It became particularly popular thanks to the successful BONK case. Alexey Andryunin’s company provided marketing and consulting services to the team behind the token since July 2023. Towards the end of the year, the asset began to grow strongly, which lasted through cycles of ups and downs until November 2024.

Gotbit strengthened its position as a major player in the crypto space while being branded as a manipulator. The market maker had more than 500 tokens in its portfolio and an internal team of more than 200 people who not only helped “draw” the right chart, but also operated social networks, coordinated announcements and publications with the price reaction on exchanges, and provided infrastructure. The complex work allowed meme coins to demonstrate a rapid rise, but the flip side of the coin was an equally sharp fall.

In October 2024, the result of near-illegal activity led to a natural outcome – federal prosecutors in Boston filed “the first-ever criminal charges against financial firms for manipulating the crypto market and sham trading.”

Andryunin’s argument that meme coins were unregulated and therefore subject to manipulation did not save them from the law.

Andryunin’s arrest created a hole in the manipulator sector, and it appears to have been filled by another, even more powerful group of individuals.

Meta about “presidential” scams

The first president to enter the meme coin arena was Donald Trump. On January 18, two days before his inauguration, he announced the launch of TRUMP.X and Truth Social.

The token skyrocketed to 75 billion FDV, followed by a long decline.

Trump himself quickly distanced himself from the project, confirming that the token is indeed his, but that the president doesn’t really follow it. Apparently, it wasn’t the politician himself who did the launch and marketmaking. Rather, there is likely a team behind the token that methodically sold the asset after the launch. But there was also some buying observed, which is not the case with Miley’s digital asset.

There was different information about the income of the developers on the net. The figures ranged from $100 million to $800 million.

On January 19 a token of Trump’s wife Melania appeared. Its fate turned out to be less successful, and the fall – faster. Developers unloaded on the first rising candles.

And this is not the beginning of the unlocks. Starting on February 19 and 20, 3% of the issue will be unlocked, a month later – another 3%, and then 2.25% every 30 days throughout the year.

The LIBRA token put the final nail in the coffin of meme speculators. Insider and sniper selling was the most aggressive here, and the subsequent decline was even faster.

On February 16, hours after the token’s launch, the Argentine president deleted the announcement post, later stating that he was “spreading information about the token, not promoting it. He also confirmed that he met with the people who proposed and ultimately launched LIBRA.

24 traders lost more than $1 million and 61 lost more than $500,000. The largest loss was $5.17 million.

At the same time, the man behind the launch of LIBRA, Hayden Davis, withdrew $100 million, allegedly to save the money from snipers.

The patience of crypto users reached its limit when they started talking openly about fraud, hiding behind the protection of users.

The connection between LIBRA, TRUMP, MELANIA, CAR

Researchers have uncovered a connection between the teams responsible for launching the LIBRA and MELANIA meme tokens. Bubblemaps claims that both coins were created by the same developers or their inner circle.

According to the company, the suspicious activity began on January 19 at the time of the MELANIA token launch. The main wallet, labeled 0xcEA, received $2.4 million from the US First Lady’s coin. These funds were quickly transferred to another address on the Avalanche network.

After the appearance of LIBRA, the wallet used similar tactics and earned an additional $6 million. Such actions, according to Bubblemaps, point to a single team behind both projects.

Experts emphasized that 0xcEA and the wallets used to fund LIBRA are linked by a chain of transactions running across several blockchains, including Solana and Arbitrum.

In addition, 0xcEA has been linked to a number of other pump and dump type schemes. These include the launch of the fake token Robinhood (HOOD), which initially reached a capitalization of $120 million before dropping to $12 million.

Hayden Davis – CEO of Kelsier Ventures, which effectively serves as LIBRA’s custodian and liquidity provider – said in a video message that the coin’s exchange rate collapsed due to the actions of the country’s president, Javier Miley. However, onchain data indicates that insider selling was the main factor in the price collapse.

Davis also announced his willingness to return $100 million and insisted on the innocence of the “LIBRA sponsoring company” – KIP Protocol. KIP, in turn, called LIBRA a Kelsier project.

In a separate interview, Davis said that the real problem was sniper bots buying the token right after it was listed.

According to him, almost every meme coin launch is accompanied by insider trading – this is already standard procedure. He also admitted to being involved in the launch of Melania Trump’s token and noted that there was a sniper team operating there as well.

If the team behind MELANIA and LIBRA are the same people, they are probably also responsible for TRUMP. A symbolic launch of this magnitude does not happen in a few hours. It takes a lot of preparation and reaching out to the actors, in this case Trump and Milea, and coordinating social media posts with them. It’s hard to imagine a situation where TRUMP was launched by one team and MELANIA the next day by another.

Launching a meme coin itself is a fairly complex process that requires careful preparation. Here is an example scheme:

How this group works

According to rapper YE, who turned down a $2 million reward for promoting the meme token, the above team works according to the following scenario:

It reaches out to famous faces and offers them money to promote the meme token.
The token is launched, and the celebrity posts the deal on his or her social media accounts.
The team sells tokens through retail and makes money.

It can be difficult to get in touch with the head of state, so his inner circle, such as relatives, comes in handy. For example, Davis boasted that he could “control” the president of Argentina thanks to payments to his sister, Karina Milay. This was in mid-December, two months before the launch of LIBRA.

Davis’s spokesman, Michael Padovano, denied the authenticity of the correspondence and called its online leak a political attack on Milay.

According to Stream Finance co-founder Diogenes Casares, at least one person in the politician’s entourage received a $5 million bribe to arrange an introduction to the president.

“To be clear, this does not mean that Miley received money to promote the token, but rather someone close to him,” he explained.

Casares stressed that the high profile and proven reliability of his source make it necessary to take the allegations seriously.

Dave Portnoy, founder of the sports media company Barstool Sports, said he knew about the launch of LIBRA in advance. He was offered payment for promoting the token.

He said he was willing to join the project as an advisor and bought the token after the launch, but returned the gift of about 6 million LIBRA after the meme-coin creator told him not to disclose the bonus.

Portnoy said he trusted Davis because of his past experience with cryptocurrencies, and hoped his involvement in the project would help him reach the president. The token creator proposed the idea of an interview between Portnoy and Miley to “introduce the world” to the Argentine leader.

Portnoy later mistakenly bought the wrong LIBRA token and lost $170,000. He decided to recoup the loss by creating the GREED meme coin. After the capitalization grew to $37 million, the businessman sold 35% of the coin’s issue to his own audience, making a profit of ~$258,000.

The coin collapsed by 90%. After that, he had the nerve to launch Greed 2 under the pretext of “don’t invest more in the coin than you can afford to lose”. He himself bought back 26% of the issue.

Jupiter and Meteora connection

Users also suspect that the large decentralized platforms based on Solana – Jupiter and Meteora – are connected to the scandalous launch of LIBRA.

There is a theory in the network that an unknown group of scammers has their own person in the teams of both projects.

Several Jupiter employees were aware of the launch of the token promoted by the President of Argentina. The information came two weeks in advance from Kelsier Ventures. At the same time, the exchange denies involvement in internal processes and transactions with market makers.

The launch of the Argent coin was no secret in meme coin circles, but no one on the Jupiter team received tokens or launch-related compensation, the team claims.

A separate statement was issued by the co-founder of Jupiter and Meteora under the nickname meow.

His allegations:

No one at Jupiter or Meteora engaged in insider trading or financial misconduct;
The company hired the independent firm of Fenwick & West – one of the most respected law firms in the world – to investigate and report;
Meteora has been operating as a separate entity from Jupiter for more than a year, and its chief executive, Ben Chow, resigned because he “demonstrated a lack of judgment and concern about some key aspects of the project.”
Chou noted in his own statement that neither he nor the team ever received tokens or inside information about LIBRA.

He admitted to recommending Davis and Kelsier Ventures as token developers for several projects, including MELANIA.

Meanwhile, the news resource SolanaFloor published a video of an alleged conversation between the founder of the DefiTuna platform under the nickname Dhirk and Chou.

Dhirk apparently recounted the abuses that Davis and Kelsier had committed in launching Meme coins, citing personal testimony. Chou denied his and Meteora’s involvement in the misconduct in the interview, but was visibly shaken by the information he received. He admitted that he had “messed up” and “had to go.

Who is behind all these scams?

Let’s move on to theories that are not supported by hard facts.

Davis’ correspondence with his market maker, a certain Vlad Poznyakov, has surfaced online. Its veracity remains in question.

In the correspondence, Davis urges to “get the most” out of the token, which indicates a lack of desire for long-term development of the project and a desire to sell the maximum at the highest prices.

Who is Vlad Poznyakov and what is his role in the scandalous launch of meme coins is unknown.

Another theory is that Donald Trump’s son Barron, the son of Donald Trump, provided an outlet for the president.

The connection with Donald, Melania and the possibility of asking them to support the token is obvious. His interest in cryptocurrencies is also known: he is behind the World Liberty Financial project.

The younger Trump has four cryptocurrency wallets and is well versed in DeFi, judging by his father’s words. Moreover, Barron’s has been implicated in the DJT token – in June 2024, the obnoxious businessman Martin Shkreli admitted to creating it with Trump’s son.

Another element not completely unraveled is the mysterious LeBron wallet, created in December and successfully earning on all the tokens discussed in the material – TRUMP, MELANIA, LIBRA. This once again confirms the presence of an insider or a group of insiders who have/have information about the launch of high-profile meme coins in advance and are ready to buy in the first seconds.

The connections can be far more extensive and complex than meets the eye. For example, in 2022, former White House Senior Technology Advisor Steve Espinoza joined the team behind the NFT collection Kanpai Pandas. And in August 2024, there were rumors that this organization was responsible for launching Trump’s future meme coin.

Conclusions

It turns out that Pandora’s box is overflowing with bad players who are ready to kill the cryptocurrency market for profit.

Through their actions, scammers are undermining trust in the entire industry. The community is increasingly claiming that Solana has become toxic due to memes, and the losses of high-priced TRUMP users are being discussed outside of the industry.

As a result, Solana has recently lagged behind other coins in terms of price momentum, with trading volume on DEX dropping 25% in one week. Santiment analysts have noted a drop in community sentiment to its lowest level in a month.

There are even theories about the end of the bull cycle due to the whole situation, although some traders expect a “revival” of Ethereum.

Good users who came to the industry for freedom and decentralization can only ignore all this noise, continue to build and accumulate hard assets, and avoid the desire to get rich quick on the next scam coin.