Todays Top Stories

Editor: @PhoenixxDown

The $LIBRA Rug Has Exposed the Ugly Truth About Memecoins

The fallout from the $LIBRA collapse continued over the weekend, finally exposing on a mass scale the deeply rigged system where insiders and influencers profit at the expense of retail investors.

While the "L.A. Vape Cabal" has taken most of the heat, the real orchestrators—figures like Hayden Davies—are now in the spotlight.

Last night, Davies sat down with Coffeezilla for an interview that left many stunned by how openly he incriminated himself. Some are calling this the worst crypto event since the collapse of FTX.

How $LIBRA Was Rigged

From the start, insiders controlled $LIBRA’s price action and liquidity, sniping the launch with their own wallets. Influencers were given large allocations for free in exchange for promotion, while retail investors unknowingly bought into a rigged system.

Media personality Dave Portnoy was reportedly gifted 6.5 million $LIBRA tokens but returned them. Later, he bought in, lost $5 million, and was personally refunded by Davies.

This blatant double standard proves what many already knew: if you’re not part of the insider club, you’re just exit liquidity. Davies has run similar schemes before, including the Melania token, which drained liquidity and enriched early investors at everyone else’s expense. Do you see a pattern emerging?

President Javier Milei initially promoted the token, then deleted all traces of his involvement when it collapsed. Davies claimed Milei was fully aware, but the Argentine government has since distanced itself.

Now, $100 million sits in limbo, with Davies proposing vague solutions: donate it, refund investors, inject it back into the market, or simply keep it. Insiders will likely benefit first—if anyone does at all.

Meme Coins: The Ultimate Wealth Extraction Tool

$LIBRA confirms what many suspected—meme coins are a playground for insiders. The formula is always the same: early access for whales, manipulated price action, and structured dumping onto retail investors.

Even Davies admitted meme coin launches are “rigged casinos” where the house always wins. And the influencers? They know exactly what they’re doing.

Why This Goes Beyond Davies

While Davies is clearly the main villain here, focusing only on him misses the bigger picture. He just went big enough to get caught.

Crypto influencers have been running these scams for ages, but they’ve escaped scrutiny because the amounts weren’t large enough to make headlines. And in the Solana casino, people move on so fast that nothing ever sticks. The reality is, some of these rugs happen multiple times a week—sometimes even multiple times a day—by the same people.

It just so happens that a lot of noise is being made about $LIBRA because the influencers got dumped on this time. No noise was made for thousands of rug pulls that came before this.

If you check KOLScan, where top influencers have their public wallets tracked, you’ll see the same cycle on repeat. They throw $1,000 into a fresh PumpFun launch, then dump everything within 20 seconds, walking away with a quick profit. They do this multiple times a day, their wallet makes the leaderboard, and people assume they’re some kind of trading genius.

And just like that, another influencer has roped in a fresh wave of copytraders to continue the exit liquidity cycle.

Are copytraders dumb? Yes. But that’s not the point. These influencers aren’t good traders. They just use their following to create the illusion that they are.

And so, what’s followed has been a mass sell-off across the board, even in legit projects with real communities. Whether you got caught in $LIBRA or stayed away, you’ve been affected. Not just by Davies, but by the entire culture that’s allowed scams like this to thrive.

How do we recover from this? I don’t know. But we always do. Still, it’s enough to make you want to sell everything and go all in on Bitcoin. It’s all so tiring.

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Todays Markets

Ordinals

As mentioned in our headline story, even if you didn’t buy $LIBRA, you’ve likely felt its impact. The broader crypto market has taken a confidence hit, and that sentiment is bleeding into Ordinals.

While it’s absurd to see people panic-selling their NodeMonkes just because a Solana memecoin rugged, some investors seem to have had enough of the constant shenanigans in this space. Many are opting for safer assets, either stabling up or rotating riskier holdings like Ordinals back into Bitcoin itself. And honestly, who can blame them?

That said, Ordinals—while volatile—are well-established now. They’re not disappearing overnight like freshly launched shitcoins.

The key takeaway today is the sharp 21% drop in OMBs. There’s been mixed sentiment around the mint price of OMB Black Eyes, with some arguing it won’t sell out.

That seems unlikely given OMB’s hardcore cult following and the fact that the mint is only open to current holders, but for now, the floor price reflects the uncertainty.

Runes (Bitcoin Memecoins)

Compared to the absolute bloodbath in Solana memecoins, Runes are holding up surprisingly well.

Runes may have their issues, but what if those very problems—the friction, the complexity—have acted as guardrails against the mass influx of scammers? Right now, it feels a lot safer to be holding assets on Bitcoin than anywhere else.

$GIZMO is the standout today, pumping 32%, while most others posted small gains or minor losses. In the grand scheme of the market, Runes are looking far more resilient than usual.

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