Well, here we go again. It seems Hayden Davis is back in the crypto news, and not for reasons that inspire a lot of confidence. According to the on-chain analytics group Bubblemaps, wallets linked to Davis managed to snipe the new YZY token from Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West. And the timing of it all is, frankly, a little hard to ignore.
The trade happened just a day after a Manhattan federal judge unfroze a massive chunk of Davis’s money—$57.6 million in USDC, to be exact. Those funds had been tied up following the whole Libra meme coin mess, the one that Argentine President Javier Milei briefly promoted before it completely imploded.
How the YZY Sniping Unfolded
Bubblemaps identified a cluster of wallets that bought into YZY extremely early—like, one minute after its official announcement. They put in $2.8 million and walked away with a profit around $12 million. That’s a pretty sharp return. What’s interesting is that several of these wallets were funded from centralized exchanges the day *before* anyone even knew Ye had a token. It looks like someone was getting ready.
Now, to be fair, sniping a token doesn’t automatically mean you had a tip-off. Sometimes people just get lucky. But Davis doesn’t exactly have a clean record here.
A Pattern of Behavior
He’s admitted to sniping tokens he was involved with before, including Libra—which he helped create—and Melania Trump’s token, which he also confessed to launching. His defense usually is that he’s doing it to “stabilize” the price. But Libra fell 99% on its first day, so that argument feels pretty thin.
In this case, the YZY token had actually been live for two whole days before Ye’s team announced which one was official. They deployed 25 tokens and picked one at random, supposedly as an “anti-sniping” measure. Didn’t work.
Bubblemaps traced 44 wallets they believe Davis controls, following a path from the Melania token team wallet, to the Libra sniper wallet, and then to 14 wallets that sniped YZY. That’s quite a trail.
Unfrozen Funds and Unanswered Questions
Perhaps the biggest eyebrow-raiser is the timing. The judge unfroze the Libra-related funds on a Tuesday. YZY was sniped on a Wednesday. Coincidence? Maybe. But it certainly made Bubblemaps look twice.
It’s worth noting, though, that the unfrozen money hasn’t moved. Those wallets are still sitting on $13.06 million and $44.59 million, respectively. So the YZY buy came from somewhere else.
Davis’s firm, Kelsier Ventures, didn’t respond to a request for comment. And the pseudonymous detective at Bubblemaps working the case, Deebs, was careful not to accuse him directly. “It’s hard to say what Hayden Davis’ intentions were,” they said. “We don’t know if he had insider info, was involved with the team, or simply sniped the launch for profit.”
Davis and his associate, Ben Chow, are still facing a lawsuit seeking $100 million in damages over the Libra launch. Though last week, the judge did say she was “skeptical” the plaintiffs would win.
For now, it’s another strange chapter in the weird world of meme coins—where the lines between promoter, insider, and sniper often seem to
