Odaily reported that blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps released an investigation report on the Solana Meme token LIBRA. On February 14, 2025, after Argentine President Javier Milei publicly supported the launch of LIBRA, the token's market cap briefly reached approximately $4 billion in less than two days before rapidly crashing, resulting in investor losses exceeding $250 million. The incident has been dubbed "Cryptogate."
Bubblemaps stated that multiple abnormal signals emerged within the first hour of LIBRA's launch:
82% of the token supply was concentrated in a single wallet cluster, a stark deviation from typical Meme token issuance patterns;
No tokenomics information was provided, with no details on lock-ups, fund allocation, or roadmap disclosed;
Abnormally high liquidity pool fees were generated, with over $25 million in fees accumulating within the first hour of trading, far exceeding normal retail trading levels.
The investigation revealed that the deployer did not directly dump $LIBRA on the open market. Instead, they added a one-sided liquidity pool containing only $LIBRA on Meteora while simultaneously withdrawing USDC and SOL from the original pool, enabling low-slippage fund transfers. Bubblemaps noted that, by the time the public warning was issued, the team had already extracted approximately $87 million in assets through this mechanism. Subsequently, Bubblemaps discovered a financial link between LIBRA and another controversial token, $MELANIA. Through on-chain evidence such as cross-chain transfers and overlapping exchange deposit addresses, analytic firms suggest both projects may be operated by the same team, which has been traced back to Kelsier Ventures and its head, Hayden Davis.
The report indicates that this team has subsequently been linked to multiple Meme token projects, including $HOOD, $TRUST, $KACY, and $VIBES. Their common pattern includes: holding a large concentration of tokens during the deployment phase, using multiple wallets to front-run purchases, rapidly inflating market cap, and then exiting to cash out.
Bubblemaps stated that the uniqueness of the LIBRA incident lies not in its technical methods, but in securing the public endorsement of Javier Milei, which amplified a routine Meme token operation into a globally watched event. The firm believes that indicators such as wallet cluster analysis, supply concentration, and on-chain fund flows had already flashed risk signals early on, and it will continue to monitor related address activity in the future.
