If Milei is willing to rob not only his own citizens but his own fanbase in the broadest of possible daylight, what else is he capable of?
It takes just a minute to launch a meme coin. The tricky thing is getting a prominent influencer to endorse and promote it. When that influencer is the president of a mid-sized nation, riding high on a wave of public support and with a global fanbase on social media, success is all but guaranteed — for the coin’s inside investors. Everyone else pays the sucker’s fee.
At 7pm Friday night local time, Argentina’s President Javier Milei posted a tweet promoting a new meme coin called $LIBRA, painting it as an entrepreneurial project that might benefit Argentina’s economy. His tweet directed X users to a website at which they could buy the coin, developed by KIP Protocol and Hayden Davis. The website was called vivalalibertadproject.com, referring to the well-known phrase “Viva la libertad!” that Milei uses to close speeches and messages on his social media.
Perfect Timing
Milei’s tweet went live just three minutes after $LIBRA was launched. The timing was perfect — arguably too perfect — and the price of the new crypto coin shot up from three dollar cents at the start of trading to almost $5 in just a couple of hours. It enjoyed a brief spike in value above $4 billion in market capitalization before its value began to decline amid comments of critics that it could be a scam. Within three hours, $LIBRA had plunged by more than 80% as insiders cashed out.
Milei himself deleted his tweet after just three hours, but by then the damage had been done. And that damage was not limited to Argentine shores: investors around the world had lost tens of millions of dollars.
Here is a retweeted copy of Milei’s original tweet:
Translation:
“Liberal Argentina is growing. This private project will be dedicated to boosting Argentina’s economic growth, setting up small Argentine businesses and entrepreneurial initiatives. The world wants to invest in Argentina.”
Below the text was a link to the Viva Libertad Project’s website. In a later tweet, Milei claimed to have taken down his original post after realising he was not aware of all the details, insisting that he had no connection to the cryptocurrency.
“A few hours ago I published a tweet, like so many other infinite times, supporting a supposed private venture of which I obviously have no connection whatsoever. I wasn’t aware of all the details of the project, and once I was I decided to stop disseminating it (that’s why I have deleted the tweet)”.
He signed off with the following warning/threat to his political opponents:
“To the filthy rats of the political cast who want to take advantage of this situation to do harm, I would like to say that everyday they confirm how contemptible politicians are, and they increase our conviction to haul them out on their asses”.
So, no regrets, no responsibility, no apologies, not even to the more than 44,000 investors worldwide, presumably consisting mainly of members of Milei’s own fanbase, who had poured significant funds into $LIBRA coin, which is now essentially worthless.
“I have nothing to hide and I have no problem coming forward and showing my face,” Milei said on Monday in an interview with the Todo Noticias channel. “Those who entered there voluntarily knew what they were getting into. As volatility traders, they understood the risks involved.”
Milei insists he acted in “good faith”:
I didn’t promote it, I spread it. I am a fanatical techno optimist, I have a passion for technology and I want Argentina to become a tech hub.
A Classic “Rug Pull”?
After this scandal, there is little chance of that happening. Argentina’s fintech chamber has acknowledged that the case bears all the hallmarks of a “rug pull,” in which the developers of a crypto token draw legitimate investments, pumping up the value, only to later dump their stake. In other words, a classic pump and dump with a worthless meme coin.
“This scandal, which embarrasses us on an international scale, requires us to launch an impeachment request against the president,” said lawmaker Leandro Santoro, a member of the opposition coalition.
Milei already faces more than 100 complaints about his involvement in the crypto scam as well as a criminal investigation. Several Argentine politicians and lawyers filed the first criminal suit against Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday for “illicit association”, “fraud” and “violations of the public ethics law.
On Monday, the case was assigned to Judge María Servini, head of Federal Court No. 1 in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, the Peronist-Kirchernist coalition announced that it will move forward with a request for impeachment in Congress. To succeed, the measure, which must first be analysed in committee, will require the approval of two-thirds of the votes of the Chamber of Deputies. Another sector of the opposition reported that it will request the creation of a special investigative commission, for which a simple majority is required.
For its part, the government has launched two internal investigations to investigate its own role in the scandal, one of which will be carried out under the supervision of Milei’s sister, Karina, the general secretary of the presidency, who also allegedly participated in the scam.
International lawsuits could also soon follow…
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Nick Corbishley 