LIBRA coin team explored Nigeria for meme coin launch before the Javier Milei scandal

The workforce behind the LIBRA meme coin has allegedly explored launching a meme coin with members of Nigeria’s administration.

Kelsier Ventures, the corporate on the heart of the Javier Milei meme coin scandal, has allegedly thought of launching a meme coin on the Solana (SOL) blockchain in collaboration with members of Nigeria’s administration.

Whereas there’s no direct proof connecting Nigerian President Bola Tinubu to the challenge, sources near the matter declare that a few of his workforce members had been concerned. “The challenge was nicely superior,” stated an undisclosed supply near the scenario to The Big Whale.

Kelsier Ventures bought into the highlight after its involvement within the LIBRA meme coin launch. After Argentinian President Javier Milei promoted the coin on X, it skyrocketed from 0 to over $4 and collapsed to underneath 50 cents shortly after, resulting in speculation about a possible rug pull.

Nonetheless, the CEO of Kelsier Ventures, Hayden Davis, denied the pump-and-dump accusations. He defined that the challenge’s workforce “sniped” the coin to discourage others from doing it. He insisted that the challenge was not a rip-off however moderately a “plan gone miserably fallacious,” with roughly $100 million at present sitting in an account underneath his custodianship.

In a YouTube interview with Coffeezilla, named a number of people, together with Mauricio Novelli, Manuel Godoy, and Kip Protocol, as central members of the Libra workforce.

Davis additionally acknowledged his involvement within the launch of the Melania Trump memecoin, which, like Libra, had additionally been sniped at launch. Blockchain analysts from Bubblemaps, an on-chain knowledge supplier, beforehand recognized wallets related to the creator of the Melania memecoin, which had been additionally concerned in transactions associated to the LIBRA coin.

As for Kelsier’s plotted challenge in Nigeria, it’s unlikely to come back to fruition not solely due to the detrimental press surrounding it after the LIBRA and MELANIA incidents, but additionally due to the nation’s fraught relationship with crypto. Nigeria has cracked down on crypto exercise in recent times, with its Financial and Monetary Crimes Fee (EFCC) freezing over 1,100 financial institution accounts of crypto merchants in a Sep. 2024 in its efforts to curb crypto fraud.