Not long after sunrise on a warm February morning, Argentina’s President, Javier Milei, took to social media to endorse a new cryptocurrency — LIBRA. Hailed as a potential lifeline for Argentina’s ailing economy, the coin quickly surged to a reported $4.5 billion market capitalization. But just hours later, the euphoria turned to dismay as the LIBRA price crashed dramatically.
Within hours, the meme coin, called $LIBRA, went from near-obscurity to a reported market capitalization of $4.5 billion, riding a wave of hopes, hype, and Milei’s millions-strong social following. By afternoon, however, euphoric investors were confronting the sobering reality of a market crash so swift and so severe that it wiped out most of the coin’s value in mere minutes.
“This private project will be dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy,” Mr. Milei had written in his since-deleted post.
Now, that moment of presidential enthusiasm has become the subject of fierce political and legal scrutiny. Opposition lawmakers accuse Mr. Milei of endorsing a “pump-and-dump” scheme — one that allegedly allowed insiders to pocket around $87–$107 million while regular Argentines were left holding digital assets worth a fraction of their purchase price.
The spectacle turned into a national scandal. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the country’s former president, joined a chorus of voices calling for accountability, saying that thousands of people who trusted President Milei’s endorsement saw their investments evaporate. Leandro Santoro, an opposition lawmaker, deemed it a “national embarrassment” and demanded impeachment proceedings.
Argentina’s Anti-Corruption Office has launched an investigation, as has the presidency itself. In a pointed statement, the office said it would look into “whether there was improper conduct on the part of any member of the national government, including the president himself.”
Aside from that, lawyer Jonatan Baldiviezo, fueled by a sense of betrayal, accuses him of potentially orchestrating a crypto “rug pull” with the KIP Protocol. Baldiviezo paints a picture of an illicit conspiracy, a web of deceit where Milei’s promotion of the now-deleted token served as the bait, luring unsuspecting investors into a digital trap.
The accusation stings: a violation of public trust, a crypto con unfolding in the halls of power, leaving investors holding nothing but digital dust.
Milei’s camp claims ignorance, casting blame on political rivals eager to pounce. The President’s office insists he was simply promoting entrepreneurial spirit, unaware of the token’s murky details. Yet, the admission of a meeting between Milei and KIP Protocol representatives hangs heavy in the air.
President Milei, who has portrayed himself as a libertarian outsider determined to root out government corruption, dismissed the uproar as a politically motivated attack. Shortly after deleting his post, he insisted that he had “no ties” to $LIBRA and had merely shared it as an example of private-sector innovation. In a social media rebuttal, he accused the “political caste” of seizing on the chaos to discredit him.
Even before the crash, Bubblemaps, a blockchain analytics firm, noticed red flags. They traced 82 percent of $LIBRA’s supply to a single cluster of digital wallets — a hallmark, analysts say, of projects prone to insider manipulation.
Further muddying the waters was Bubblemaps’ disclosure that the same team behind $LIBRA also appears to have launched an earlier meme coin dubbed Melania. On-chain addresses linked to the Melania token overlapped significantly with $LIBRA’s. For critics, the findings lent weight to suspicions that $LIBRA might have been a pre-planned scheme rather than a spontaneous, well-intentioned effort.
The coin’s backstory reads like a cautionary tale on the collision of politics and emerging technologies. According to claims, Julian Peh, an entrepreneur who first ventured into crypto in 2016, pitched Mr. Milei on the concept of a “national token” to spur Argentina’s economic revival. By the time $LIBRA launched, many Argentines believed they were buying into a government-sanctioned initiative.
On an X Space broadcast, Julian Peh, the CEO of KIP Protocol, denied orchestrating a rug pull.
“If it was a rug to start with,” he argued, “we wouldn’t have gotten the support we did.” Peh claimed KIP had not profited from insider selling and insisted there was no pre-sale.
Meanwhile, former President Fernández de Kirchner blasted Mr. Milei for leaving Argentines to “lose millions,” while anonymous whales — early holders of the token — exited their positions at massive profit.
Among those thrust into the spotlight is Jupiter Exchange, a well-known platform where many retail investors track and trade new meme coins. In a statement posted to social media, Jupiter insisted it had “nothing to hide.”
“A few members of the Jupiter team knew that there would be, at some point, a token project associated with Argentinian President Javier Milei,” the statement reads, describing early chatter in meme coin circles. However, the company claimed it was not privy to the specific launch date, contract address, or timing — information often crucial for so-called “snipers” looking to capitalize on brand-new tokens.
Jupiter’s statement also addressed allegations of insider trading, denying that any team member had received or traded $LIBRA tokens before the broader public. It emphasized that it did not “pre-verify” $LIBRA on its platform. The token only gained a “Verified” label once Mr. Milei’s public posts had drawn sufficient trading volume.
“We absolutely in no way condone these extreme PVP launches,” Jupiter wrote, adding that the meme coin ecosystem has become overrun with risky “pump-and-dump” dynamics.
Amid the political upheaval, a pivotal piece of the $LIBRA puzzle emerged in a wide-ranging YouTube interview conducted by crypto sleuth CoffeeZilla. The interviewee, Hayden Davis, described himself as a facilitator and advisor for meme-coin launches, including $LIBRA.
As the conversation unfolded, it offered rare insight into the mechanics behind these high-stakes, high-speed token offerings — and painted a picture of how a would-be “national token” could devolve into chaos and allegations of insider profiteering.
According to him, the original vision was to have Argentine President Milei’s endorsement ignite a new wave of crypto-driven monetary policy. Instead, the coin’s price soared and then plummeted, with enormous sums allegedly flowing into private wallets.
“This is not a rug pull. It’s a plan gone miserably wrong,” Davis said, defending his role against accusations of orchestrating an insider scheme. Central to his explanation is the concept of “sniping,” in which automated bots or privileged insiders acquire newly launched tokens before regular buyers can react, often dumping them soon after.
While Davis contends his team employed such tactics only to “protect” the project, he admits to removing liquidity for strategic reasons, ultimately leaving him as custodian of around $100 million in extracted funds.
“My reputation is crushed, and I’m sitting with money that I don’t even want,” he lamented, emphasizing the personal risk he now faces from disgruntled investors and political forces seeking accountability.
Davis’s checkered history with a prior meme coin called Melania — also linked to overlapping digital wallets — further clouded his claims of benign intent, fueling suspicions that both tokens followed a premeditated playbook. Critics point to Davis’ selective reimbursement of a single high-profile investor named “Dave,” who lost $5 million on $LIBRA yet was personally refunded, while everyday traders were left holding the bag.
With regulatory and legal pressures mounting, Davis floated several possible solutions for the stranded $100 million: re-injecting it into $LIBRA’s liquidity pool, issuing direct refunds to verified victims, or transferring it to a neutral third party. Each option carries the risk of fresh accusations, be it renewed insider trading or drawn-out legal wrangling.
International news outlets took note of the ensuing turmoil. CNN reported that the country’s National Securities Commission might weigh in, although crypto regulations in Argentina remain far from clear-cut. CNN spoke with Pablo Sabbatella, a crypto-security expert, who called the sequence of events a textbook “pump and dump.” He highlighted how newly minted tokens, owned by a few large holders, can skyrocket once a high-profile endorsement spurs demand — only to crash when those insiders sell in unison.
Mr. Sabbatella claimed he saw wallets turning an initial stake of almost zero into a haul of more than $4 million in just two hours. Another wallet, he said, “earned up to $87 million.”
Opposition lawmakers rapidly advanced the idea of impeachment, while Mr. Milei’s allies dismissed it as an attempt to “overthrow” the president. Security Minister Patricia Bullrich likened Mr. Milei’s post to a routine factory visit, arguing that endorsing a project does not amount to lobbying on its behalf.
Facing a mounting barrage of questions, Mr. Milei announced the formation of a special task force to investigate every entity and individual linked to $LIBRA. While critics are skeptical — some calling the move “too little, too late” — the task force signals the administration’s attempt at crisis management.
Argentina is no stranger to financial upheaval, but it now faces a new kind of uncertainty. Many of its citizens have turned to cryptocurrencies in hopes of shielding themselves from soaring inflation and distrust in the traditional banking system. Yet the $LIBRA fiasco has soured public sentiment, underscoring the risks of conflating libertarian economics with unregulated crypto mania.
In Congress, lawmakers from multiple parties are talking about proposals for stricter oversight or at least better disclosure rules around digital asset endorsements. Analysts caution that any heavy-handed approach might drive crypto activities further underground in a nation already grappling with financial strain.
The downfall of $LIBRA — a token once brimming with grandiose promises for Argentina’s economy — now stands as a cautionary tale about how quickly a meme coin endorsed at the highest levels of government can collapse into scandal.
President Milei finds himself at the center of impeachment whispers, while political rivals and allies alike grapple with the fallout. In parallel, Hayden Davis’s account of the coin’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering offers a stark look at the unregulated world of meme-coin launches, where “sniping” and secret liquidity extractions can sink a project in days, or even hours.
Whether the $100 million in question ends up back in retail traders’ hands, re-injected into a battered market, or frozen in legal limbo, the primary lesson may already be clear: hitching a nation’s economic future to a volatile meme coin can cause upheavals more profound than any quick profit might justify. And for those who pinned their hopes on the president’s tweets, it is a lesson that came at a painfully high cost.
