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

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

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

While there’s no direct evidence connecting Nigerian President Bola Tinubu to the project, sources close to the matter claim that some of his team members were involved. “The project was well advanced,” said an undisclosed source close to the situation to The Big Whale.

Kelsier Ventures got into the spotlight after its involvement in 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 under 50 cents shortly after, leading to speculation about a possible rug pull.

However, the CEO of Kelsier Ventures, Hayden Davis, denied the pump-and-dump accusations. He explained that the project’s team “sniped” the coin to deter others from doing it. He insisted that the project was not a scam but rather a “plan gone miserably wrong,” with approximately $100 million currently sitting in an account under his custodianship.

In a YouTube interview with Coffeezilla, named several individuals, including Mauricio Novelli, Manuel Godoy, and Kip Protocol, as central members of the Libra team.

Davis also acknowledged his involvement in the launch of the Melania Trump memecoin, which, like Libra, had also been sniped at launch. Blockchain analysts from Bubblemaps, an on-chain data provider, previously identified wallets connected to the creator of the Melania memecoin, which were also involved in transactions related to the LIBRA coin.

As for Kelsier’s plotted project in Nigeria, it’s unlikely to come to fruition not only because of the negative press surrounding it after the LIBRA and MELANIA incidents, but also because of the country’s fraught relationship with crypto. Nigeria has cracked down on crypto activity in recent years, with its Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) freezing over 1,100 bank accounts of crypto traders in a Sep. 2024 in its efforts to curb crypto fraud.