LIBRA farce aftermath: How do Solana founder Toly and influencer Cobie evaluate it?

Author: 1912212.eth, Foresight News

A LIBRA meme coin takeover game has caused a stir in the crypto community. On February 15, the Argentine president announced the launch of the meme coin LIBRA and published its contract address, which then skyrocketed, reaching a market cap of over $4 billion at one point. However, within hours, the coin's price quickly plummeted, currently priced at $0.36, with a market cap of less than $400 million. Just hours after posting a tweet promoting the meme coin, the Argentine president deleted the previous post and stated, "I originally thought it was just like before, casually supporting a private entrepreneurial project unrelated to me. I am not familiar with the details of the project, and after learning more, I will definitely no longer promote it (this is also the reason for deleting the tweet)."

Investors who jumped into the dog coin frenzy suffered heavy losses. Solayer developers Chaofan Shou and Tonykebot lost over $2 million in this venture and revealed the core team behind LIBRA to be members of KIP Protocol, vowing to hold them accountable. The losses extend far beyond these two; according to monitoring by lmk.fun, based on trading records, a total of 24 traders lost over $1 million on LIBRA, and 61 traders lost over $500,000. The largest loser incurred a loss of $5.17 million, having spent $5.6 million to purchase 2.1 million tokens, ultimately selling them for only $430,000. Correspondingly, as of February 15, eight wallets associated with the LIBRA team had obtained 57.6 million USDC and 249,671 SOL (approximately $49.7 million) through adding liquidity, removing liquidity, and claiming fees, totaling about $107 million in cash out.

The insider trading of meme coins, the influence of celebrity promotions, and the game of passing the baton have once again become the focus of market attention.

Today, Paridigm researcher Samczsun, Solana co-founder Toly, and crypto KOL Coobie discussed their views on Twitter.

Conspiracy Groups and KOLs

Samczsun initiated the question: Will this event lead to some responsible parties being held accountable on a societal level?

In response, Toly's answer was pessimistic, stating that "the social layer's group judgment is itself a problem because it is a passive reaction to results, rather than based on a set of pre-established and recognized rules." Attackers can infinitely generate failed tokens, becoming the sole bidders, acquiring most of the supply, and then transferring the contract address to KOLs. In Toly's view, the only solution is to force users to have social credit scores and refuse tokens with lower scores.

Samczsun continued to ask, if meme coins controlled by insiders are bad, then why not formally start by excluding all participants? This way, in the short term, the benefits of one-time profits would not outweigh the costs of being excluded, and in the long term, such behavior would fundamentally be unprofitable.

Toly's answer was simple and direct: after KOLs promote the contract address, they are rejected by their fan base, and then the conspiracy group will turn to the next KOL.

Cobie stated that many KOLs do not even know who they are dealing with or what they are promoting. There is just a broker telling these KOLs that if they tweet about it, they will receive X coins.

If KOLs and their brokers are informed about obviously bad things, will KOLs take responsibility for their actions? Perhaps we often see certain tokens proven to have multiple insider trades and frauds, yet no one faces any form of punishment.

Some KOLs' reputations have indeed been affected, partly because of the question: "How do we define good and bad in meme coins? Even with completely unintentional free market token distribution, the top 20% of holders will end up owning over 80% of the tokens." Toly provided his answer.

At this point, Cobie bluntly explained that there is currently no effective way to shame those shameless individuals. He then posted a long tweet to elaborate on his views.

"This situation has existed long before meme coins appeared; it has basically been this way since I first touched the crypto industry. (These recent operations are just more efficient and obvious.) Every time someone is shamed, they use it as populist rhetoric, and some even become more popular because of it. The accused will just turn around and accuse others, creating opposition. For example, some YouTubers have promoted scams for three consecutive cycles, and despite constant exposure, they remain popular. The cyclical nature of the crypto industry means there will always be new entrants to fill the void left by old users, so these people can always find new audiences.

The Market Lacks Truth and Regulation, Often Resulting in No Conclusion

In Cobie's view, the only people who have truly been shamed into leaving this circle are either those who were relatively reputable but made mistakes or those who do not need to rely on this industry to make money. Those who truly should be expelled are already well aware of what they are doing and have made their choices. Exposing them will not make them feel ashamed; it only threatens their income, so they will fight back. And in the absence of "truth arbiters," debates often have no final conclusion.

Additionally, Cobie stated that it may take over five years for the public to truly recognize human nature, and this is contingent upon them making obvious mistakes in the process.

"If deceivers do not face the threat of losing their freedom, it is almost impossible to prevent them from continuing to commit fraud."

The Takeover Game Falls into an Unsolvable Dilemma

Currently, the controversial overvalued VC coins and the fast-paced issues within meme coins have also drawn sharp comments from Cobie. He stated that the current development trajectory of the market is that market participants are like moths actively rushing into these scams, most of whom are aware that these are scams, but their goal is to sell to the next buyer at three times the price. They just want to get rich in two weeks, not in 2-4 years. Players hope to win big in the next round.

If there is no way to stop them, then avoiding participation may be a solution.

Cobie stated that the behavior of investors/players is easily changeable. If you lose 10 times, you will stop playing that game. No one is buying VC coins anymore; in fact, some (very few) coins have been mispriced. They no longer buy these coins because they are tired of being drained.

Previously, Cobie wrote an article about high FDV and low circulation VC coins, but he expressed disappointment that it did not achieve the desired goal and did not stop the public from buying these tokens. The only way to change investor behavior is for participants to lose enough. Only after experiencing pain can this group truly realize that they should avoid participation.

Cobie wrote, "This, in turn, changes the behavior of token issuers; the public will no longer buy such products, so you can no longer easily issue this type of token."

Conclusion

If you were to launch a token echo now and had to choose between two paths:

(1) Sell 25% to venture capital firms and insiders, retain 35% for the team, and launch a token that receives revenue distribution from Echo's business to holders, issued with low circulation;

(2) Sell 0% to anyone, keep 50% for yourself, and launch a meme coin called Echo the Racist Dolphin, which has no connection to Echo other than the name, deployed by my public wallet and tweeted through a CA account;

Which market cap do you think would be higher? Cobie provided his answer: the value of the meme coin (at least for now) would be higher than that of the VC coin. However, if the same experiment were conducted five years later, the results would be exactly the opposite.

Interestingly, in Cobie's comment section, a well-meaning person posted a picture asking which token he mentioned.

Cobie stated he would release the contract address in 25 minutes, to which Toly commented: "Do you have any shame?"

Cobie responded that it was just a joke and teased Toly using Buterin's name (the name of V God).