The aftermath of the LIBRA meme coin scandal also affected whales. A wallet was singled out for potential insider connections, after receiving a $5M compensation.

An early LIBRA whale, later identified as David Portnoy, acquired a large position in the first 10 minutes of trading. Later, the wallet posted one of the biggest losses after LIBRA lost more than 90% of its value. LIBRA, a Solana meme token supported by the President of Argentina Javier Milei, drew in early buyers and was possibly sniped by insiders. Portnoy’s wallet was one of the few that posted deep losses during the first LIBRA crash.

On-chain analysis showed one of the early buyers was just late enough to incur over $5M in losses. The wallet received $5M in USDC, becoming one of the few LIBRA holders to gain some form of compensation.

David Portnoy confirms whale-sized involvement with LIBRA

David Portnoy’s wallet logged losses between $5.17M and $5.34M, depending on the timing of the portfolio’s value, as LIBRA crashed.

For the record I could care less that people know Hayden paid me back. I was fully planning on saying it on the live stream but he caught me off guard by texting me in the middle of it and asking me not to mention it. You can actually see my eyes read the text in real time… pic.twitter.com/DR4pqpDKhS

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) February 17, 2025

Portnoy has revealed his relationship as a KOL for the LIBRA project, before the token erased most of its value. However, Portnoy seems to have switched to a personal investment strategy, reportedly gave back the supply allocation for shilling the token.

Initially, Portnoy spoke favorably of the project. The loss arrived just days after Portnoy’s own token Jailstool crashed in the span of a few hours. According to on-chain analysis, Portnoy was relatively early in buying LIBRA, but failed to lock in the gains. Portnoy claimed he bought the tokens himself, and did not receive an allocation. The known wallet of Portnoy reveals a series of swaps of SOL for LIBRA, which do not show signs of an airdrop.

After sending out compensation to Portnoy, the originating wallet retained only 255K USDC. The wallet has been mostly used to trade SOL and USDC, with no direct interactions to the LIBRA token.

Hayden Mark Davis to attempt compensation for LIBRA traders

Portnoy’s 5M USDC compensation reportedly originated from Hayden Mark Davis.

Davis was identified as the manager of the LIBRA token rollout through his investment firm, Kelsier Ventures. The compensation was the only major transaction originating from the known wallet of Davis. It was meant as a personal transfer to Portnoy, with no further plans to compensate early traders.

Despite the attempted secrecy, the transfer became widely known, inviting more scrutiny on Davis’ approach to organizing the LIBRA launch through influencers.

The compensation, an attempt at damage control, led to even more questions about Davis’ involvement with the project.

LIBRA continues to trade actively, staging a recovery to over $0.41 before sinking back to $0.37. The token’s liquidity even started rising on Monday, adding $3M in liquidity within hours, expanding the pool to over $85M. Later, the pool started getting drained again, sinking to $81M for the token’s most active pair. The liquidity of LIBRA is still unlocked, and lately the token has been flagged for suspicious activity. Despite the ongoing trading, LIBRA raised the possibility of being removed from trading, as its CA was flagged and its identity was removed from Solana’s ecosystem.

Meme tokens remain resilient and LIBRA may see another wave of speculative investment, expecting a bounce from the recent lows. LIBRA remains highly risky, and early buyers are still left holding the bag, hoping for a recovery. The token remains a team-controlled asset, with 50% of the supply still held in one of the originating wallets.

LIBRA whales managed to lock in gains of up to $6.1M in most cases, if they sold on time during the first minutes after the launch. Currently, whales are sitting on unrealized gains and losses.

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