Hayden Davis, the CEO of Kelsier Ventures, told an associate in December 2023 that he had total control over Argentina’s President Javier Milei because he was making direct payments to Karina Milei, the president’s sister and top government advisor.
The leaked text messages, which were allegedly seen by CoinDesk today, show Hayden boasting that:
“I control that n*gga. I send $$ to his sister and he signs whatever I say and does what I want.”
Hayden made $100 million as $LIBRA collapsed
Hayden’s claims surfaced just as Argentina launched an anti-corruption probe into the $4.6 billion $LIBRA scandal. On February 15, Javier promoted the Solana-based memecoin as a tool for small businesses in Argentina.
The endorsement triggered a massive price surge, with $LIBRA hitting $5 before plummeting by over 95% to $0.38 in just nine hours. The crash erased hundreds of millions of dollars in retail investments.
But of course, Hayden and Kelsier Ventures didn’t lose anything. On-chain data shows wallets controlled by Hayden’s entities cashed out over $100 million in $LIBRA’s first trading hours—before the collapse. While retail investors were left in ruins, Hayden’s firms made a massive payday.
The scandal shook Argentina’s financial markets, fueling calls for Javier’s impeachment. The country’s opposition parties want an official investigation into whether Javier was involved in insider trading. The local press has already dubbed the disaster “Criptogate.”
In the December text messages, Hayden bragged about his ability to get Javier to promote projects on social media. Two months later, Javier tweeted about $LIBRA.
Javier says he acted in good faith
Javier finally spoke out, addressing the scandal in an interview with Todo Noticias this morning. He denied any wrongdoing, saying he only shared $LIBRA because he thought it could help struggling entrepreneurs.
“Hayden Davis proposed a structure to finance entrepreneurs who can’t access funding. When $LIBRA became public, I spread the word,” Javier said. He claimed he never endorsed the coin for financial gain.
“I didn’t promote it, I shared it. I’m a die-hard technoptimist. I saw a tool to help tech entrepreneurs and shared it. I acted in good faith and took a hit,” Javier said.
He downplayed the number of investors affected, rejecting reports that 44,000 people lost money. According to him, the real number was 5,000 at most. “The vast majority of investors were Chinese and American, not Argentinians,” said Javier.
The Argentinian president also insisted that $LIBRA’s investors knew the risks, saying most of them were volatility traders or degens as they like to be called, not ordinary citizens.
Javier’s deleted tweet was, according to him, just bad timing. He said he was excited about the project and posted three minutes after launch—not realizing what would happen after. Javier added that:
“I need to understand that after becoming president, I continued acting like the same Javier Milei as before. Unfortunately, this situation shows me that I need to raise my filters and not make myself so accessible.”
Hayden blames Javier’s team for delaying reinjection of funds
Just hours after getting grilled by Coffeezilla this morning, Hayden sat down for another interview—this time with Dave Portnoy. The main question: why didn’t he put the money back in when $LIBRA started tanking?
“Who told you not to?” Dave asked.
Hayden said it was Javier’s team. He claimed they told him to wait for a second video endorsement from Javier that never came.
“I was told not to inject it until the next push,” Hayden said. “Then the tweet got deleted, and I’m just sitting there with this money that’s not even mine.”
The $100 million remains in limbo. Hayden refuses to return it, saying that it’s his only leverage in negotiations with Javier’s administration. The options on the table are donating it to an Argentinian nonprofit, refunding investors, though tracking losses is difficult, reinjecting it into the market, or artificially pumping $LIBRA’s price and distributing it while preventing insider trading
Hayden said he’s afraid of insider trading if he reinjects the funds, claiming that traders manipulated $LIBRA’s launch, and the same thing could happen again.
Karina Javier: The president’s power broker
Karina Javier was the first to take a private meeting at Argentina’s presidential palace with local crypto consultant Mauricio Novelli, who later introduced her brother, PresideJavier to key players behind the controversial $LIBRA memecoin, according to La Nacion.
Hayden insisted he doesn’t believe Javier is corrupt. He claimed that the $100 million still unaccounted for actually belonged to people in Javier’s inner circle—or at least people he thought were part of it.
Javier, meanwhile, has aggressively denied any wrongdoing. He insisted he never intended to cause investors to lose money by simply endorsing the token.
Beyond that, they don’t agree on much. Both sides confirmed that Javier and Hayden met multiple times in Buenos Aires. But the Argentine government has tried to distance itself, claiming Hayden has zero connection to Javier’s administration.
Hayden, on the other hand, described himself as an adviser to the president. He claimed he was working with Javier on a major “tokenization” initiative.
Javier’s efforts to kill the scandal unraveled Monday night when Argentina’s Todo Noticias accidentally aired a hot mic moment.
During Javier’s interview, journalist Jonatan Viale was caught letting Javier’s top adviser, Santiago Caputo, intervene and remove a key question about $LIBRA. The rigged interview backfired, triggering even more negative attention.
Karina Javier, officially the general secretary, has quickly become the most powerful figure in Javier’s government. She has accompanied the president on international trips, including meetings with Donald Trump and other world leaders, while pushing his agenda in Congress.
Unlike her brother’s nonstop social media presence, Karina never speaks to the press and rarely talks in public outside of campaign rallies.
She and Javier are set to arrive in Washington on Thursday, where they could meet Trump on the sidelines of a conservative event.
In political circles, Karina is Javier’s gatekeeper. Access to the president often comes down to one phrase: “Talk to Kari.”
When reflecting on what went wrong with $LIBRA, Javier didn’t talk about the scandal itself. Instead, he pointed to how easily people got access to him—and to Karina.
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