After ‘Civil War’ and Anti-Immigrant Tweets, Ryan Selkis Told to Cool It by His Crypto Startup’s Leadership

Ryan Selkis, founder and CEO of crypto data platform Messari, rarely takes a backseat to social media, regularly hurling insults at Gary Gensler’s Securities and Exchange Commission and others on X (formerly Twitter).

Still, his tirades after an assassin’s bullet grazed Donald Trump this week stood out even to Selkis. And his colleagues at Messari, which received financial backing from big-name firms like Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital and hedge fund giant Brevan Howard and was once worth a reported $300 million, apparently asked him to calm down.

“I had a wonderful ‘tough love’ session with Messari leadership and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the people who came to me with good intentions and helped me rein them in because they knew my vision and where my heart was,” she wrote on Thursday. “I ran really fast this week and will talk more about that soon.”

So what’s this about? It could be about how angry Trump was with X after the attempt on his life. (As of Thursday, made his tweets private(These are visible to her approximately 354,000 followers.)

“Anyone voting against Trump at this point could die in the gunfire,” he wrote on X the afternoon of the shooting. “Real war.” (The post has since been deleted.) He added in another tweet: “The Civil War for our country began today and if you’re anti-Trump, you’re against men who are willing to fight. Good luck.”

The next day, violence, at least in self-defense, was on his mind. “Bolshevism cannot be cured by votes. We must eradicate, by force if necessary, the metastatic cancer and evil of the left. That is why the Second Amendment is and has been so important. Do not begin violence, but if it is brought to your door, finish it by violence.”

So was war. “Unfortunately, sometimes unity can only be achieved after a decisive victory. This is one of those times. The previous three were in 1776, 1860, and 1942. Praying for peace. Preparing for war.”

Selkis echoed the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the MAGA movement. An X user was asked, “Are you a citizen or just a green card holder?” The person responded that he was a green card holder who was about to apply for citizenship. Selkis replied, “I hope we send you back. … You don’t qualify for citizenship. I hope it stays that way.”

Selkis shared photos of Trump covered in blood immediately after his injury, along with the famous photo of then-President Barack Obama and incumbent President Joe Biden in a conference room where Osama bin Laden was killed by Seal Team 6. “So true,” Selkis wrote.

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In another post addressed to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a prominent Washington crypto critic, he shared side-by-side photos of her and Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks. “Are you happy Trump is still alive? Or are you disappointed that you missed the opportunity to overthrow a ‘dictator who would destroy democracy’? Physiognomy doesn’t lie…”

The use of the long-discredited term physiognomy, an attempt to judge someone’s character from their appearance, was an attempt to imply a physical similarity between the pair wearing glasses.

The SEC Chairman responded to Gensler’s tweet by saying, “We are so close to your inevitable prison sentence I can almost taste it.”

Selkis declined to provide details about his posts from last week when contacted by a CoinDesk journalist.

This isn’t the kind of online behavior you’d normally associate with a CEO, especially one with serious venture capital backing, but bravado is not uncommon among crypto users of social media (and X’s owner Elon Musk has been known to push the envelope).

Messari investors (Messari)

Messari, a platform that lets users track and review data on digital assets, plays a major role in crypto. Selkis has emerged as a key part of the industry’s bid to regain influence in Washington after the massive influence of Sam Bankman-Fried there was eroded.

Selkis stood next to Trump and addressed the crowd at the former president’s NFT gala at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year.

Read more: Ryan Selkis Heads to Washington

After her initial “tough love” tweet on Thursday, Selkis tweeted more. It wasn’t much quieter.

“I sent out tweets aggressively shouting from the rooftops about defending myself and taking the current political situation more seriously than the media. You have been warned. I wish the haters would put the same effort into protecting children, preventing war, and defending American values,” she said.

Also: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. I got knocked out by a punch I didn’t see. Good. Less tweets. More long form. More channeled anger, but same mindset: SLAUGHTER.”

Michelle Bloom contributed to this report.