Hayden Davis, linked to market manipulation of LIBRA and other celebrity meme tokens, is still selling MELANIA. On-chain data shows the early investor is still shedding tokens, using both centralized exchanges and DEX liquidity pools.
Hayden Davis keeps selling Melania (MELANIA) tokens, as revealed by Bubblemaps data. Davis, who previously was linked to meme token manipulation, has not faced any sanctions, and continues to use the meme token market to shed his positions.
As of March 28, MELANIA was pressured by overwhelming sell orders, with strategic orders bringing the price down every few hours.
MELANIA saw overwhelming selling pressure in its most active DEX pair, as whales continued to cash out and crash the price. | Source: DEXScreener
In the past few days, MELANIA fell from its levels of around $0.70 down to $0.63. The token still has over $83M in liquidity on DEX, which may hold off the selling pressure for a while. The selling pressure on DEX pairs led to an even bigger decline for MELANIA. The token traded at around $0.66 in centralized markets.
MELANIA is already far from its trading peak at $13.73, erasing billions in notional value. Yet even at the lower range, value extraction continues. MELANIA is held by 246,375 holders, far surpassing other meme tokens. The price crash and low available liquidity mean the holders may not be able to cash out, seeing the token go even lower.
Davis used a quiet market period to shed holdings
Wallets linked to Davis kept shedding tokens, using both centralized markets and DEX liquidity pairs.
1/ Hayden Davis is STILL selling MELANIA
He recently sent $1M to exchanges and extracted over $2M from the liquidity pools 🧵 pic.twitter.com/1sWIkGmtxj
— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) March 28, 2025
Davis, who was linked to shilling and market-making for the LIBRA token, was investigated by Coffeezilla for his aggressive approach to pumping meme tokens. Davis reportedly still controls a large part of the LIBRA supply, with some selling or liquidity swaps noticed in March.
Until recently, the known MELANIA addresses belonging to Davis remained inactive. MELANIA saw limited price action, mostly due to Hyperliquid derivative positions. After the inactive period, Davis started selling MELANIA through one-sided liquidity, a technique used with the LIBRA token.
Davis also used Kraken and MEXC to place over $1M in holdings. He realized over $2M in profits from DEX liquidity pairs over the course of two weeks. This weakened the liquidity conditions for MELANIA, and the trend may continue as Davis has other wallets that have not sold yet.
In the past two weeks, Davis has also continued to sell LIBRA, even after the scandal that lost $100M for early investors and essentially derailed the project. However, LIBRA retains some liquidity, allowing early whales to still trade and cash out.
Davis also uses Solana’s crypto lending app, Kamino, to unlock the liquidity of MELANIA and LIBRA. The selling originated both from wallets belonging to Davis and from those controlled by his company, Kelsier Finance.
The Kelsier Ventures known wallets currently hold over $9.41M in crypto tokens. The main token movements are to Solana-based DEX through Jupiter aggregator, and to Kamino Finance for using meme tokens as collateral. Other wallets belonging to Davis moved the SOL used for sniping LIBRA and sent it to Coinbase for cashing out. Davis, however, has not been sanctioned by centralized exchanges, or blacklisted by Circle, despite storing some of his proceeds in USDC.
MELANIA sales came from the community wallet
More detailed on-chain investigation shows the MELANIA project actually sold funds from what was supposed to be the community reserve. The 20% set aside for community outreach was used for profit on liquidity pools, securing $2.5M in SOL. The DEX allows the LP to add more MELANIA and remove SOL, thus draining the pool and crashing the price.
The community wallet did not directly sell, but swapped the tokens through four new liquidity pools.
The tokens from the community vault were placed into four pools, with significant one-sided liquidity. This allowed the one-sided liquidity providers to extract $2.5M from the pools. Three of the pools were drained and swapping stalled, while one of the pools remains active.
There have been no consequences for the sellers for draining the pools, as DEX activity is completely unregulated. At one point, on-chain data showed the one-sided liquidity provider from Kelsier’s wallet extracted $500K within minutes.
