500 Million Dollar Price Tag for a Meme Coin Tweet? Presidential Endorsement Price Exposed

Author: Eric, Foresight News

Original Title: How Much Money Does It Take to Get a President to Endorse Meme Coins? Milai: $5 Million

On March 17, Beijing time, Argentine media outlet El Destape broke an exclusive scoop: investigators recovered data from the phone of an Argentine cryptocurrency lobbyist, revealing that President Milai tweeted about LIBRA a year ago because he accepted a $5 million bribe. The mastermind behind this was previously suspected to be Hayden Davis.

Opposition lawmakers pushing for the investigation called this a “sensational scandal” and demanded further inquiry. However, as of the time of writing, Milai and the presidential office have not responded.

Promotion of Meme Coins Sparks Backlash, Blames “Political Struggle”

On February 15, 2025, Argentine President Milai promoted a meme token called LIBRA on X, with the caption “Free Argentina is growing!!! This private project aims to promote economic growth in Argentina and provide funding for small businesses and startups. The world wants to invest in Argentina.”

At that time, the hype around the meme token of former U.S. President Trump had not yet subsided, and a new “presidential concept coin” reignited market enthusiasm. The FDV of LIBRA surged to a peak of $4.56 billion within 30 minutes of launch.

This project claimed to invest token profits into Argentine entrepreneurs and education. After Milai boosted the token’s price, there was a large-scale withdrawal of liquidity and token sales, with some investors cashing out over a hundred million dollars within one or two hours. By midday Beijing time, Milai deleted the tweet and stated that his previous actions were merely supporting private enterprises and unrelated to the project. After clarifying the situation, he decided not to spread the message further.

Following the deletion, the price of LIBRA plummeted to zero. The entire incident started early in the morning Beijing time and was over before the afternoon.

Even figures like Trump only dared to issue meme coins before taking office, but Milai openly promoted a rug pull project while in office. This blatant corruption drew widespread criticism. Under mounting pressure, Milai was forced to respond, but his replies appeared more like excuses.

The Argentine presidential office initially stated that Milai met with Mauricio Novelli, the Argentine representative of KIP Protocol behind LIBRA, in October 2024. At that time, Novelli indicated plans to launch a project called Viva la Libertad to support financing for Argentine private enterprises. Milai’s retweets of KIP Protocol’s LIBRA after its launch were merely expressions of support for Argentine entrepreneurs; he claimed to be unaware of the details.

In other words, Milai believed LIBRA was a project to help Argentine entrepreneurs, and his retweets were well-intentioned.

Later, Milai reiterated on a TV program that his actions were driven by good intentions, hoping to support projects that could improve financing for tech entrepreneurs. He claimed he was “duped” because he did not understand the project. Additionally, Milai shamelessly stated that most of the investors who were scammed were Americans and Chinese, and he had done nothing wrong to his own citizens.

Finally, Milai even claimed that the defamation against him was politically motivated and vowed to pursue legal action.

Such flimsy explanations clearly fail to convince: why would a president promote a private company’s project without investigation?

Taking Money, But Not Fully Covering the Damage

Following this national scandal, Argentina’s anti-corruption office and Congress launched investigations. The anti-corruption office considered Milai’s actions as personal conduct, not violating public morality laws; the congressional investigation committee accused Milai of providing “key cooperation” in the LIBRA incident and suggested evaluating whether he committed dereliction of duty.

However, these investigations did not reveal detailed findings, and the public remains unclear about what exactly happened.

El Destape’s revelations provided key evidence, exposing the gray dealings between LIBRA’s issuer and the president.

According to reports, investigators recovered from the phone of Mauricio Novelli, Argentina’s representative of KIP Protocol—who was identified as a crypto lobbyist—the agreement with Milai, confirmed to be Hayden Davis.

The agreement showed that Hayden Davis would pay Milai an advance of $1.5 million in liquidity tokens or cash, after Milai announced on X that Hayden Davis/Kelsier/Davis family were his advisors. The remaining $2 million was contingent upon Milai signing a blockchain/AI consulting contract.

This document was created three days before Milai’s tweet promoting LIBRA, originating from an expert report by Argentina’s Criminal Investigation Technical Support Bureau, but it only appeared in an attached folder.

There was more secret material found on the phone, including documents related to Milai teaching cryptocurrency courses at school, which proved that Milai’s claim of being unaware of cryptocurrencies a year ago was a complete lie.

The investigation also revealed dense call records between Mauricio Novelli, Milai, and Milai’s sister (who is the Secretary-General of the Argentine presidential office) during the minutes and hours before and after Milai promoted the token. Although the call contents are not disclosed, the timing confirms that LIBRA was part of an organized, premeditated financial scam involving the president.

From Milai’s tweets, it appears that their cooperation was only at the initial stage. Before Milai even posted the tweet declaring Hayden Davis as his advisor, the LIBRA incident spiraled out of control. Milai had to quickly clarify and distance himself. It’s no wonder that Hayden Davis, in an interview with crypto YouTuber Coffeezilla, said that Milai was supposed to have more interactive tweets, but for some reason, their cooperation suddenly ended.

Unrestrained “Open Looting”

In fact, after the LIBRA incident, on-chain data suggested that Hayden Davis and his firm Kelsier Ventures were behind the scam, and they also manipulated the token MELANIA, issued by former U.S. First Lady Melania Trump.

El Destape reported that on January 30, 2025, Hayden Davis met with Milai and Milai’s sister at the Argentine presidential palace, signing a contract making Davis an advisor to the Argentine government in blockchain. This contract was also found on Novelli’s phone but was concealed by Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, preventing relevant parties from knowing.

Following this agreement, a bank account related to Davis transferred $1 million to an unknown account.

This gives us a rough outline of the story:

In October 2024, Mauricio Novelli introduced KIP Protocol (controlled by Hayden Davis) to President Milai, claiming it would launch Viva la Libertad to support Argentine private sector financing, thereby strengthening ties.

By late January 2025, Hayden Davis, through Novelli’s introduction, established contact with President Milai and became a blockchain advisor for the Argentine government. Subsequently, Davis reached an agreement with Milai, paying a total of $5 million in exchange for Milai promoting the Viva la Libertad project and its LIBRA token on his X account.

Between October 2024 and late January 2025, Davis and Milai likely communicated multiple times via Novelli, discussing how to promote LIBRA. Milai probably knew this was a pure crypto scam, but he agreed, as Davis mentioned in an interview, that their plans would prevent the token from “dumping” too quickly.

Unexpectedly, after Milai’s tweet, the scam investors quickly cashed out over $100 million, triggering widespread criticism. Facing mounting pressure, Milai chose to cut losses rather than continue cooperation. As public opinion intensified, the situation turned from a potential win-win to Milai being the sole victim, with Hayden Davis cashing out and leaving.

The most frightening part is that Hayden Davis never considered this a scam. In his interview with Coffeezilla, he said, “In the meme market, this isn’t illegal. It’s just what happens in every transaction. That’s the rule here. People know it, agree to it, and make money from it. If you want to blame that, I think most people betting on meme tokens—especially retail traders early on—are just playing by these rules. This isn’t capital markets; it’s a casino.”

The industry’s development has never been afraid of speculators’ participation. What’s frightening is when speculators genuinely believe the industry is just a gambling hall for speculation.

This perhaps explains some of the chaos in the Web3 industry over the past two or three years: when the manipulators don’t see themselves as cheating, they lose all bottom line. Ultimately, projects no longer compare their quality in a straightforward way but compete over who can “grab” more aggressively.