Source: Lydong BlockBeats
Author: shushu
On January 31, Argentine President Milei tweeted on his X account: “He is providing me with advice on the impact and application of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence in the country,” accompanied by a photo with a young man in a suit and gold-rimmed glasses.
This individual is Hayden Mark Davis, a key figure in the Libra token issuance controversy.
Table of Contents
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Who is Hayden Mark Davis?
Kelsier Ventures Operation Revealed
Shipping
Pricing Standards
Hayden Mark Davis’s LinkedIn profile shows that he has been the CEO of Kelsier since October 2020; he became the founder of Luxury Drip in May of the same year, a company with an unclear industry affiliation (though there is an Italian brand of the same name in the urban fashion sector); according to Davis, he began his entrepreneurial journey in August 2017 with a company called Leaders Elevate. A Google search for this latter company leads to a coaching-focused company founded by another individual named Tom Davis, who resides in Barcelona.
Hayden Mark Davis’s personal account still fails to reveal his story. The last photo was uploaded by Javier Milei from the presidential office, and another dates back to February 2022, showing the young man with several others named Davis, with their names tagged. Thomas Davis and Gideon Davis appear in the roles of CEO and co-founder of Kelsier, respectively. This account has now been locked and made private.
The team members of Kelsier Ventures found in a web snapshot have been deleted.
The following content is from a investigative video by Nick O’Neil, CEO of BoDoggos Entertainment:
In this video, I want to delve into Kelsier Ventures, which remains actively engaged in providing token issuance services, despite one of its founders, Hayden, currently facing risks and being embroiled in an international scandal. Today, I can understand the entire process of how Kelsier conducts token issuance, including costs, how the company is involved in money laundering, token laundering, and internal manipulation for friends and family. I will now switch to my computer screen to showcase my understanding of Kelsier Ventures and their current operational methods, breaking down the four key components of Kelsier Ventures.
I interacted with team members to learn about their actual fees and operational processes. Firstly, Kelsier Ventures is still actively operating, and Hayden is currently in a non-public location. While I have a rough idea of his whereabouts, I prefer not to disclose this information.
I received a quote from the team today, and their core business model clearly remains discreet. You will soon see what I mean by the “launch and extraction” process, which is designed to extract as much money as possible from their tokens. When you pay for their services, they will discuss how to shuffle deployment and target “sniping.” I will elaborate on the fee structure later, but essentially, they want this entire process to be untraceable and will engage in “money laundering” operations during the inflow and outflow.
Some may call it wire fraud; I do not know how they would define it, leaving it to the judicial system to judge. However, from my understanding, it can essentially be considered as such.
They will also engage in market making after the token issuance and offer different options, including short-term operations, notably Melania, as well as long-term market making, which requires them to use 20% of the tokens for market making. The “shuffling” process I mentioned earlier is completed in these operations, extracting funds from them.
Next, let’s look at pricing. The prices are quite standard. If you have interacted with market makers in this field, you will know it is straightforward. They charge 2% of the token share and plan to sell these tokens in the future.
I saw a recently leaked internal video mentioning that this percentage might be 1%. In fact, they may distribute this 2% share among different people, but regardless, they are charging this 2% of the token share and plan to liquidate a maximum of 1.1% of it daily. That is to say, if you provide 2% of the tokens for a service period of 20 days.
Calculating at a daily service fee of $3,000, or charging 20% based on the amount you withdraw. If you request them to sell $1 million today, they will charge a 20% service fee, amounting to $200,000. So the fee structure is based on higher amounts.
However, there is also a cost to initiate these operations, which is a chart provided for internal use to customers, reflecting the latest pricing today.
I do not intend to delve deeper here, as it is not important, but I will provide an example. Suppose you want to set the market value of the tokens at $1 million and plan to perform a 94% token “shuffle.” They typically execute this “shuffle” operation at each issuance, with a percentage usually ranging from 85% to 97%. If you check the issuance of Melania tokens, you will find it fits within this range. Through this method, they essentially enter the market before it officially opens, effectively “sprinting” ahead of all other buyers.
For a $1 million market value, if you spend 333.33 Sol to initiate this process today, that is 333.33 times $180, totaling $60,000, plus 20 Sol as initial costs, and additional fees, resulting in a final cost of $63,500.
Why choose a higher market pricing? It could be due to high demand, aiming to start from a high price. Of course, for some smaller projects, market pricing may be lower, but larger projects like Trump tokens or Melania tokens will have higher prices, and their pre-shuffle percentage is also greater.
From my perspective, this approach can be considered almost illegal, but that is their structure. I recommend you take a closer look at this chart to understand how they operate.
Finally, I want to mention a key point, which I will further demonstrate in the video. According to my sources, 90% of the “snipers” come from within Kelsier. They distribute tokens to friends or set up operations for their bots. While I cannot confirm this, it appears to be how they operate, which is absurd.
As I mentioned, they are still continuing these activities. The foundation of the entire system’s operation is money laundering, pre-sale, and market making, with short-term operations typical of “pump and dump” (such as Melania tokens), followed by long-term market making, as mentioned in conversations between Hayden and Dave Portnoy, where they ultimately repurchase tokens with the money they earn and eventually “dump” them in the market.
Source: This article is reproduced with permission from Lydong BlockBeats
Related reports: “Argentine President claims in an interview that he does not promote meme coins: Those losing money are foreigners; they know the risks,” “Libra insider Hayden Davis admits: Sniping tokens at opening, involved in issuing MELANIA.”
