Source: Rhythm BlockBeats
Author: shushu
On January 31, Argentine President Milei posted a tweet on his X account stating, “He is providing me with advice on the impact and application of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence in the country,” accompanied by a photo of himself with a young man dressed in a suit and wearing 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?
Revealing Kelsier Ventures
Shipping
Pricing Standards
Hayden Mark Davis’s LinkedIn profile indicates that he has been the CEO of Kelsier since October 2020; since May of the same year, he has been the founder of Luxury Drip, a company in an unspecified industry (despite the existence of an Italian brand by the same name in the urban fashion sector); according to Davis, he began his entrepreneurial journey in August 2017, managing a company named Leaders Elevate. A Google search for this latter company indicates that it is focused on coaching and was 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 palace, while another dates back to February 2022, featuring the young man alongside several others named Davis, with their names tagged. Thomas Davis and Gideon Davis appear as CEO and co-founder, respectively, of Kelsier. This account is now locked as a private account.
Deleted team members of Kelsier Ventures found in a web snapshot
The following content is from an investigative video by Nick O’Neil, CEO of BoDoggos Entertainment:
In this video, I want to delve into Kelsier Ventures, which continues to actively offer token issuance services, despite one of their founders, Hayden, currently facing risks and embroiled in an international scandal. What I have learned today is the entire process of how Kelsier conducts token issuance, including fees, how the company is involved in money laundering, token washing, and internal manipulation for friends and family. I will now switch to my computer screen to present my understanding of Kelsier Ventures and their current operations, gradually analyzing the four key components of Kelsier Ventures.
I interacted with team members to understand their actual pricing and operational processes. Firstly, Kelsier Ventures remains operational, with Hayden currently in an undisclosed location; while I have a general idea of where he is, I prefer not to disclose this information.
Today, I received a quote from the team, and their core business model is clearly still to operate discreetly. You will soon see the “launch and extract” process I mentioned, designed to extract as much money as possible from their tokens. When you pay for their services, they will discuss how to shuffle deployments and target “sniping.” I will elaborate on the fee structure later, but essentially, they want this entire process to be untraceable and will conduct “money laundering” operations during the in-and-out transactions.
Some may call it wire fraud; I don’t know how they define it themselves; that is for the judicial system to determine. But from my understanding, it can essentially be categorized as such.
They will also conduct market-making after the token issuance and provide various options. This includes 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 aforementioned “shuffling” process is completed within these operations, extracting funds from it.
Next, let’s look at pricing. The prices are actually quite standard. If you have interacted with market makers in this field, you would know this is straightforward. They will 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 might distribute this 2% share among different individuals, but regardless, they are charging this 2% token share and plan to liquidate a maximum of 1.1% daily. That is to say, if you provide 2% of the tokens, and the service period is 20 days.
Calculating based on a daily service fee of $3,000, or charging 20% based on the amount you withdraw. If you ask them to sell $1 million today, they will charge a service fee of 20%, which amounts to $200,000. Therefore, the fee structure is based on a higher amount.
However, there is also a cost to initiate these operations, which is a chart provided for internal use and to customers, reflecting the latest pricing today.
I do not intend to delve deeper into this here as it is not important, but I will give an example. Suppose you want to set the market value of the tokens at $1 million and plan to conduct 94% “shuffling” of the tokens. They typically execute this “shuffling” operation at each issuance, with a ratio generally between 85% and 97%. If you look at the issuance situation of the Melania token, you will find it falls within this range. In this way, they are essentially entering the market before it officially opens, effectively “sprinting” ahead of all other buyers.
Taking the example of a million-dollar market value, suppose you spend 333.33 Sol today to initiate this process, that is 333.33 multiplied by $180, totaling $60,000, plus 20 Sol as the initial cost, and additional fees, resulting in a final cost of $63,500.
Why choose a higher market pricing? That could be due to high demand, wanting to start from a high price. Of course, for some smaller projects, the market pricing is lower, but larger projects such as Trump tokens and Melania tokens will have higher prices, and their shuffling percentage will also be larger.
From my perspective, this practice can be considered almost illegal, but this is their structure. I suggest 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 the tokens to friends or set up operations for their own bots. While I cannot confirm this, it seems to be how they operate, which is absurd.
As I said, they are still continuing to do these things. The foundational operation of the entire system is money laundering, pre-sale, and market making; the short-term aspect is typically “pump and dump” (like the Melania token), followed by long-term market making, which has also been mentioned in conversations between Hayden and Dave Portnoy, where they eventually use the money they earn to repurchase tokens, ultimately “dumping” them on the market.
Source: This article is reprinted with permission from Rhythm BlockBeats
Related reports: “Argentine President Defends Against Claims of Promoting Meme Coins: Those Losing Money Are Foreigners, They Know the Risks” “Insider Hayden Davis Acknowledges: Sniping Tokens at Launch, Previously Involved in MELANIA Issuance”