Svmuu News: Blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps released a report on the Solana meme token LIBRA, stating that on February 14, 2025, Argentine President Javier Milei posted a message supporting LIBRA’s launch, the token’s market capitalization briefly reached approximately $4 billion in less than two days before crashing rapidly, resulting in investor losses exceeding $250 million. This incident has been dubbed “Cryptogate.”
Bubblemaps noted that multiple red flags emerged within the first hour of LIBRA’s launch:
82% of the token supply was concentrated in a single cluster of wallets, a stark departure from typical meme coin issuance patterns;
There was no information on the token’s economic model, and no details were disclosed regarding token locking, fund allocation, or a roadmap;
Liquidity pool fees were anomalous, generating over $25 million in fees within the first hour of launch—far exceeding normal retail trading levels.
Investigations revealed that the deployers did not directly sell $LIBRA on the open market. Instead, they achieved low-slippage fund transfers by adding one-sided liquidity pools containing only $LIBRA to Meteora, while simultaneously withdrawing USDC and SOL from the original pools. Bubblemaps reported that, as of the time of the public alert, the team had extracted approximately $87 million in assets through this mechanism. Subsequently, Bubblemaps discovered a financial link between LIBRA and another controversial token, $MELANIA. Based on on-chain evidence—including cross-chain transfers and overlapping exchange deposit addresses—the analysis firm believes the two may be operated by the same team, which has been linked to Kelsier Ventures and its head, Hayden Davis.
The report states that the team was subsequently linked to multiple meme coin projects, including $HOOD, $TRUST, $KACY, and $VIBES. Their common modus operandi included: concentrated token holdings during the deployment phase, front-running purchases via multiple wallets, rapidly inflating market capitalization, and subsequently exiting to cash out.
Bubblemaps noted that what sets the LIBRA incident apart is not the technical methods used, but rather the public endorsement from Javier Milei, which elevated what would otherwise have been a routine meme coin operation into an event of global significance. The firm believes that risk signals were evident early on through metrics such as wallet cluster analysis, supply concentration, and on-chain fund flows, and it will continue to monitor the activities of relevant addresses in the future.