These new technologies really show off how much the financial and political elite of society is just aping each other with no actual idea how anything works.
But it’s gone the worst, by far, for Argentina’s President Javier Milei, whose promotion of a crypto memecoin that later rugpulled has resulted in calls for his impeachment and criminal charges. And the fiasco has exposed what appears to be a huge memecoin insider trading ring.
Hayden Davis, the man who helped launch the Milei-promoted LIBRA token, also helped to launch the MELANIA memecoin by the now First Lady. Davis claimed in text messages to “control” Milei, writing “I send $$ to his sister and he signs whatever I say and does what I want”.
Davis outright admitted that he and the LIBRA team had “sniped” their own token — a type of insider trading involving buying up huge quantities of LIBRA immediately upon launch, which left them with tokens notionally worth around $100 million.
The rot exposed here seems to go far deeper than a random blockchain VC firm. Those behind massive Solana projects including Meteora and Jupiter have been accused of involvement in a massive insider trading scheme. Meteora’s cofounder has already resigned.
A crypto founder confronted Meteora’s Ben Chow on a call that later leaked, stating “whenever presidents get involved, and if they become angry, you know, you don't want to be there”.
“This isn't $20. This is not $100 million. This is like 200 to— this is FTX type of shit.”
The whole call, between crypto founder Moty Povolotski confronting Meteora co-founder Ben Chow after witnessing the insider trading in person, is so bonkers that I just transcribed the whole thing for you.
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“This isn't $20. This is not $100 million. This is like 200 to— this is FTX type of shit.”
https://www.citationneeded.news/meteora-ben-chow-call-transcript/
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