The synergy of political endorsement and highly speculative assets like meme coins was always bound to be disastrous, and the recent LIBRA scandal was a clear reflection of this concern.

Crypto has come a long way over the past decade. Mainstream adoption, institutional interest, and regulatory clarity helped the industry gain increasing credibility. And meme coins also carved out an exciting niche in this sector, which reflected creativity and community engagement. Yet, political meme coins could ruin this decades-worth of progress very quickly.

A promotional post from Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, caused LIBRA investors to lose over $250 million in just hours. His endorsement sparked a buying frenzy that pushed the price from near zero to almost $5 in a matter of minutes. Insiders quickly cashed out, dumping over $107 million in tokens before the price collapsed. Argentina’s fintech chamber labeled this classic rug pull without mincing words.

The Anatomy of a Meme Coin Scam

Unfortunately, the LIBRA scandal was not an exceptional case. Bubblemap analysts traced LIBRA’s origins back to the team behind the MELANIA token and other pump-and-dump schemes. The same group launched several coins that swelled in price before crashing.

President Milei, a self-proclaimed libertarian and Bitcoin enthusiast, used his platform to share information about LIBRA. His tweet ignited a rush among investors eager to capitalize on his reputation.

It’s still staggering that influential figures have yet to understand the true impact of their statements on an industry largely driven by speculative interest. As the token’s value soared, insiders began unloading their tokens. Within hours, the coin’s market cap fell from $4.5 billion to just a fraction of that amount.

However, on-chain analysis shows that LIBRA was fundamentally designed to potentially scam investors. The founders held 70% of the token supply, which allowed them to profit massively while leaving retail investors vulnerable. When insiders cashed out, many traders lost nearly everything they had invested.

Such pump-and-dump schemes always follow the same playbook: a high-profile personality sparks investor interest, insiders pocket their profits, and the token collapses. This pattern played out with LIBRA in a textbook fashion.

Political Endorsements and Market Manipulation

Political endorsements used in these schemes add a disturbing twist to the story. Milei’s tweet did more than spread a message; it lent credibility to a high-risk asset. When a sitting president supports a project, many assume there is underlying merit. This assumption helped drive the buying frenzy around LIBRA. Similar episodes occurred in the United States with the TRUMP and MELANIA tokens. Politically-linked meme coins have morphed from mere speculative plays into tools for financial manipulation.

Galaxy Research Analyst Alex Thorn describes LIBRA as the latest example of a series of Solana-based meme coin implosions. During this crash, Solana’s transaction volumes plummeted to mid-2024 levels, and there is growing concern over a $1.5 billion FTX token unlock. These factors combine to put additional pressure on Solana’s price.

Meme coins, which dominated headlines in 2024, now face harsh market realities in 2025. Many of these tokens have already lost 30-60% of their value. Activity on platforms such as Pump.fun has cratered, and overall trading volume in the sector is in freefall.

The trend of politically-endorsed tokens creates an environment where hype easily overrides fundamentals. Political figures lend their names to projects with little oversight. This practice allows groups of insiders to generate large profits at the expense of everyday investors.

The situation exposes a troubling trend in crypto markets. When prominent figures use their influence to spark buying frenzies, they turn volatile tokens into weapons for financial manipulation. Such practices risk undermining trust in the entire crypto ecosystem.

A Much-Needed End to the Chaotic Meme Coin Cycle? 

The $LIBRA debacle should serve as a harsh lesson for retail investors. Many of those who lost money had a high level of technical knowledge, as they needed Solana wallets and SOL tokens to participate.

However, the overall appeal of politically charged tokens often attracts investors who believe that an endorsement from a political heavyweight guarantees success. Reality proved otherwise. When high-profile insiders exploit their inside knowledge to exit early, the outcome is disastrous for retail participants.

As institutional investors shift their focus to more stable markets like Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, the appetite for meme coins might be waning. Political meme coins remain the lawless frontier of crypto. Their volatile nature and inherent manipulation make them a poor choice for risk-averse investors. The recent fallout suggests that market excitement has finally run far ahead of sound fundamentals.

Political meme coins represent a clear symptom of a larger problem. They expose vulnerabilities in a market that still lacks a solid regulatory framework. When the excitement around a meme coin overshadows careful analysis, the consequences can be severe. Investors may see short-term gains, but the inevitable collapse brings long-term damage. The case of $LIBRA proves that political endorsements do not safeguard against market manipulation.

Right now, my X feed is full of people who are giving up on Web3 gaming. I get it. Over $12 billion of venture capital funding has gone into it since 2020 and they haven’t seen the sort of breakout success that many expected. Even the best games haven’t reached anything close to mainstream scale. Token prices are down. Studios are shutting down. And everyone is exhausted.

But measuring Web3 gaming by token prices alone is like calling the internet a failure because of the dot-com crash — it ignores how far the technology has come and where it’s headed. It’s missing the real story.

At its core, Web3 gaming is about giving players real ownership — not just of the in-game items that they buy and earn, but also their identities and achievements. In traditional games, players invest time, effort and money into digital assets that ultimately belong to the publisher. Web3 changes that. By putting assets on-chain, players can truly own what they earn—whether that’s tradable items like weapons or land, or non-transferable badges of reputation, guild history, or verifiable skill. It’s not just about buying and selling stuff — it’s about agency, persistence, and getting proper recognition for what you’ve built and what is really yours in the ecosystem.

The concept isn’t new. Players have wanted more control over their in-game assets for years. Look at the massive markets for CS:GO skins or World of Warcraft gold. But until now, those economies have been fragmented, restricted, or at risk of being shut down if a centralized publisher decides to shut it down or change the rules. Web3 makes these economies open, interoperable, player-owned and player-driven.

Ownership has always been the foundation of Web3 gaming, and play-to-earn was an experimental model that showed the potential for open and permissionless virtual economies on blockchain. Now, the industry is evolving with a stronger focus on sustainable economies and better tokenomics, deeper gameplay, and long-term player engagement.

But if you’re comparing Web3 gaming to Web2 gaming, you’ll be disappointed. Traditional gaming has had decades to fine-tune game design, build massive player bases, and develop business models that work, while Web3 gaming is still in its experimental phase. Sure, billions of dollars of investment can speed things up, but throwing money at a brand new category doesn’t magically buy it a track record or instantly create new games that people love.

I’ve been making games for over 20 years and I have seen every major shift get dismissed before it took over. Nobody believed mobile gaming could compete with PCs or consoles until it became bigger than both. Free-to-play was called a scam until it made more money and reached more players than ever before. Esports was a joke until stadiums sold out and prize pools hit millions. Digital skins were “worthless” before they became a multi-billion dollar market.

And now, Web3 gaming is at that same inflection point.

When I first heard about blockchain in 2018, everyone I knew in FinTech was talking about it. So of course I thought it was boring and I ignored it. It wasn’t until I learned about CryptoKitties that I actually took notice. When I saw people collecting, trading and actually owning these cute on-chain cats, that’s when I got excited because I knew they weren’t like other in-game assets. CryptoKitties were digital things that no one could take away from you. As someone who’s spent their life grinding in games, and their career convincing others to grind the same — without really getting anything for it — that idea of digital ownership gave me a whole new way to think.

So I went all-in on blockchain games. But 2018 and 2019 were really tough times. Pretty much no one else cared back then. There was no support, no real funding, no clear idea of what these games could be beyond speculation, and (outside of a handful of believers) there was very little conviction. The market was in a deep bear cycle, and many teams either gave up or ran out of money before they could launch. Still, some of us kept building. We stayed lean, experimented, and learned everything the hard way. It feels similarly bad now, but not as bad as it was then. Looking back, I’m so glad we didn’t pack it in when success was just around the corner.

When Axie Infinity broke through in 2021, everything changed. Web3 founders like Jeffrey “Jihoz” Zirlin of Sky Mavis, Yat Siu of Animoca Brands, Sebastien Borget of The Sandbox, and me, went from being called crazy to visionary overnight. Suddenly, we were speaking on the main stage at conferences where we used to watch in the audience. We made news headlines and “Most Influential” lists. Investors who ignored our emails were asking how much they could put in. My email inbox filled up with fundraising decks pitching the next YGG.

Then in 2022, the market crashed, and just as quickly, we went back to being crazy. But that never really bothered me because crazy people are the ones who make big things happen.

Now, everyone’s asking: When is the next big Web3 game? The answer is this: good games take time. And if you look past the red candles to take notice of what exists already today, you’ll see we how much progress we’ve made since our industry was seeded in 2018:

• In 2020, Axie Infinity had fewer than 500 daily players. Today, Ronin — the blockchain it built — has millions of active users, with 17 new games launched, and 134% growth in NFT trading volume in 2024 compared to 2023. It’s also gone permissionless, which means there will be more games, faster development, stronger network effects, and unpredictably big breakthroughs. Some of the biggest innovations in gaming like modding, free-to-play and esports came from unexpected places. By lowering the barrier to entry, a permissionless Ronin invites the kind of experimentation that could lead to the next Axie-scale success.

• Pixels, a farming game on Ronin, hit a peak of 1.3 million daily active users (DAUs) and is holding strong now with around 250,000 DAUs even with its token down 96%. Players are spending more than they cash out, buying land, upgrading assets, and actually putting money back into the game, fueling the economy instead of extracting from it. This is how virtual economies should work, with real demand and strong retention. Most importantly, it is an indication that the play-to-earn model can work if done right.

• Parallel, a trading card game (TCG) on Ethereum, just hosted a world championship in Las Vegas at the HyperX Arena — a venue that has hosted some of the biggest esports competitions from “League of Legends All-Stars” to “Street Fighter V’s Capcom Cup.” This was a prestigious event that saw some of the world’s best TCG players crossover from traditional titles like Hearthstone to become some of the first Web3 esports legends.

These are just a few examples, but they show the kind of traction we’re seeing: better infrastructure, growing communities, more sustainable virtual economies, digital ownership.

Those who FUD Web3 gaming today don’t understand it. They missed CryptoKitties in 2018, Axie in 2020, YGG in 2021, and they’ll miss the next wave too because they’re measuring the wrong metrics. Web3 is growing and innovating faster than any other sector in gaming. It’s not time to quit. It’s time to double down. Let them call us whatever they want: crazy, delusional. Visionary, pioneering. It doesn’t change what we do. We’ve been here before. Stay the path.

A new proposal submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) newly-established Crypto Task Force by a Maximilian Staudinger makes the case for XRP as a “strategic financial asset” for the United States (using some very questionable math and logic).

I’m here to tell you that XRP is not a strategic asset and that the logic in this proposal is dubious at best.

In the proposal, Staudinger states that $5 trillion is locked up in U.S. Nostro accounts (accounts that banks use for cross-border payments). And he claims that if certain regulatory conditions were created — including the SEC classifying XRP as a payment network, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) providing legal clearance for banks to use XRP, and the Federal Reserve mandating that banks use XRP as a liquidity solution — then 30% of this capital ($1.5 trillion) would be freed up for the U.S. government to buy 25 million bitcoin at $60,000 per bitcoin.

So, let’s break down why this makes little sense.

First, Nostro accounts are simply bank accounts that U.S. banks hold in foreign countries. I’m not sure what sort of logic includes these domestic banks turning over the U.S. dollars that XRP would theoretically replace to the Federal government so that these dollars could then be used to acquire bitcoin on behalf of the government.

Second, the proposal doesn’t offer details on how these domestic banks would obtain the XRP that would replace the dollars. It only seems logical that they’d have to purchase the XRP, leading to XRP absorbing this $1.5 trillion, not bitcoin. Even if Ripple, XRP’s issuer, wanted to simply give these banks XRP to use, this still wouldn’t work, as it only holds about $100 billion in XRP — far short of $1.5 trillion.

Third, even if bitcoin’s price were to dip to $60,000, the price would begin increasing immediately as the U.S. government began purchasing the 25 million bitcoin.

Lastly, there’s a hard cap of 21 million bitcoin (and approximately 4 million have been lost), which is a well-known fact in the Bitcoin or crypto space. Therefore, it’s quite silly to suggest that the U.S. government could buy 25 million bitcoin. If the author were even a half-serious person, he might have suggested that the government buy 15 million bitcoin at $100,000 per bitcoin (though the math still wouldn’t work out).

Given how faulty the logic behind this proposal is, it’s difficult to consider XRP a strategic asset. Plus, why would the U.S. government do so when two thirds of the supply is still in the hands of the organization that issued the asset? It doesn’t make much sense.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a globally distributed asset that many around the world use as both money and a store of value. Plus, the Bitcoin network is governed by tens of thousands of nodes and is virtually impenetrable, thanks to the approximately 0.4% of the world’s energy that protects it. (The XRP network is governed by 828 nodes and isn’t protected by any amount of energy.) Theses factors make bitcoin a logical reserve asset, which is how the U.S. government now officially classifies it.

So, hopefully, the SEC already understands what I’ve outlined in this piece and doesn’t spend much time even considering Mr. Staudinger’s proposal.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.