Messari CEO Ryan Selkis says he ran “too hot” with X posts this week calling for war and sending immigrants back, after Messari leadership told him to cool it
Messari had built a crypto data-and-research business that attracted a $35 million Series B, making its chief executive’s public conduct consequential beyond a personal social-media account. The company’s leadership intervention came just before coverage of Selkis stepping down and Eric Turner taking interim charge.
This episode is part of a recurring executive-accountability problem on X: public apologies can acknowledge harm, but internal governance determines whether a company can contain the business fallout. Messari’s response made the issue a leadership matter rather than merely a post-by-post dispute.
First-order effects
Messari leadership has directly constrained Ryan Selkis’s public conduct, signaling that his posts had become an organizational risk rather than solely a personal expression.
The immediate test for Messari is whether management can preserve confidence in its research and data business while its CEO’s political posts dominate attention; the subsequent interim-CEO transition shows that concern escalated quickly.
Second-order effects
Employees, customers, and commercial partners gain a clearer reason to separate Messari’s institutional product from its founder’s online presence, while competitors can emphasize executive discipline and brand neutrality.
The episode raises the value of explicit social-media and escalation policies for founder-led crypto-information firms, particularly where a leader’s audience is closely tied to the company brand.
Third-order effects
If similar incidents repeatedly lead to leadership changes, founder-led firms will face stronger pressure to formalize board oversight, communications controls, and succession plans earlier in their growth.
The broader effect may be a sharper divide between businesses that can institutionalize trust around a product and those whose reputation remains inseparable from a prominent executive’s personal platform.
The trend: Founder-led companies are treating executive social-media behavior as a governance and continuity risk, not just a public-relations issue.
Vitalik: “Immigration law is crypto law” Ryan Selkis: “I hope you never become a citizen and we send you back where you came from”. The difference is stark. If your “pro-crypto” politics don't align with global freedom goals, then we are very different “crypto people”. [image]
@molly0xFFF @twobitidiot Not everyone in the crypto currency space is as ideological. It's like finding one banker with bad politics and vilifying all bankers. Wait, maybe I'm starting to see your point.
glad to see that selkis has learned from this and will apparently be [checks notes] tweeting at greater length about how leftists can die in a fire https://x.com/...
I believe in peace and nonviolence, except in the case of self defense. I also believe in borders and American civil liberties. There will be no mercy in my comeback tour next month.
@molly0xFFF @twobitidiot Please for the love of god, don't take this two bit idiot as a representative of the industry. Crypto is political, but it is not left/right political. It is anti-authoritarian political, which is not an option voters are ever given in modern democracies.
@molly0xFFF @twobitidiot That first one “literal war” was deleted. Originally was: https://x.com/... Referenced in: https://x.com/... Also worth noting the denial about deleting tweets: https://x.com/... Guess there are exceptions...? 🤷♂️
Oddly, despite Ryan Selkis' rhetoric about “hat[ing] leftists with the fire of 1000 suns”, his most recent political contribution was to... Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I've confirmed with him that this isn't an error. https://www.followthecrypto.org/ ... [image]
ryan selkis, one of crypto's more vocal influencers, lives a charmed life. he owns a house near Baltimore. he's well-educated. he has a large family. why, then, does @twobitidiot seem so pissed off? i dug into the source of his rage for @dlnewsinfo: https://www.dlnews.com/...
It has been quite beautiful watching Ryan Selkis aka TwoBitIdiot meltdown over twitter. Ryan Selkis is probably one of the dumbest people on the planet and his downfall honestly was quite predictable. You have to be a whole new level of stupid to think this way. This is no [image…
Ryan Selkis isn't just a prominent crypto CEO. He started the most well-funded crypto lobbying org, which has support across the industry. He and every company that doesn't cut ties with him should be swiftly driven out of the industry.
Selkis going private when he gets called out for his sludge. I'm going to guess he's spewing about how deep state cancel culture is trying to get him! 🤣 It's disgusting to see our industry associated with behavior like his, and so telling the people who remain silent on the [imag…
I'm sorry I was angry last weekend. I've seen enough of President Trump to love the man and his sacrifice. I took things too far after I saw the result of 10 years of hate nearly take his life. We will win through character, strength and non-violence. No hard feelings, Molly.
The Selkis arc is quite a perfect example of how anyone can get the brain worms I just hope he doesn't hurt anyone else, or himself, when things don't go as he believes they will
This is the insanity (and honestly stupidity) of people like Selkis. He wants to kick legal residents out of the country because they...wait for it...disagree with him. How “American”... [image]
Ryan Selkis hoping that ‘we’ send a legal immigrant and greencard holder home is absolutely despicable behavior. The industry needs to call him out. Period. His behavior is erratic and no matter what your opinion is on Trump, Ryan Selkis has proven himself to be little more than
If my worst tweets ever were in the 24 hour aftermath of the attempted assassination of the next President of the U.S., I can live with that. I apologize for nothing. We narrowly avoided Civil War, and I hope to keep it that way and fight cultural information wars instead.
In August 2021 he called me a failed whistleblower, despite my allegations being confirmed at the time by the NYAG, the CFTC since then, and now even the civil class action lawsuit in where Tether executives have admitted to deleting evidence and having zero proof and being [imag…