The disastrous launch of the memecoin by Argentine president Javier Milei was not unprecedented.
Each memecoin that goes viral tends to gain value before rapidly losing it. Over the years, so-called “snipers” have bought up new tokens prior to the general public getting involved. Celebs and “key opinion leaders” Many crypto users engage in pay-to-play. Heck, in just the last month alone, memecoins were launched by two more presidents.
After Melania Trump’s token pumped, and then dumped the world had moved on. Crypto seems to be less willing than before to forget and forgive. Perhaps it’s due to how outrageous the entire thing was.
LIBRA raced above $4 billion in market cap before dropping under $200 million in a matter of hours — a pump and dump far more drastic than, say, the MELANIA coin. Popular crypto figures have spoken out about the trading of insider knowledge afterward. Barstool Sports’ CEO Dave Portnoy reportedly received a refund of the $5 million that he invested in LIBRA. This is a luxury not available to many traders.
This celebrity-backed memecoin launch had real world consequences. Most surprisingly, it was announced that Ben Chow, CEO of Jupiter-linked DeFi platform Meteora, chose to resign — although Chow and Jupiter’s pseudonymous CEO meow both maintain that he did nothing tangibly wrong apart from showing a “lack of judgement.” Meow said Jupiter would be hiring the tech law firm Fenwick & West to investigate what happened.
Milei is facing a lawsuit. The stock exchange in Argentina fell by 5% yesterday after it opened. SOL has fallen nearly 20% from Friday. KOLs began issuing mea-culpas.
Crypto’s Twitterati has also gone crazy, with some insisting that Solana must focus again on positive use cases like DePIN. All of this feels a little bit insincere, much like when investors and VCs explained why they had never trusted Sam Bankman Fried only after FTX failed. I expect Kelsier Ventures CEO Hayden Davis — a LIBRA and MELANIA kingmaker who is doing a bizarre amount of media for someone accused of impropriety — to face some sort of legal action following all this collective ire.
While I am sure that lawyers’ billable time will increase as a direct result of LIBRA (and the resulting impact on memecoins), I do not believe it will have a significant effect on trading. I asked Sphere’s CEO Arnold Lee if he thought the LIBRA aftermath hints at crypto drawing a line against memecoins.
“An elephant never forgets, but crypto is not an elephant,” Lee said.
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