The left-dominated news media have been abuzz with the idea that Argentinian president Javier Milei just scammed the Argentinian people to the tune of hundreds of millions, or possibly billions, of dollars. Here are how some news agencies frame the story:
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Argentine lawyers filed fraud charges against President Javier Milei in criminal court on Sunday for promoting a cryptocurrency on his social media, one of the lawyers told The Associated Press.
On Friday, Milei posted on X about $LIBRA, a coin that he said was aimed at “encouraging economic growth by funding small businesses and startups.”
He deleted the post a few hours later and the value of the currency collapsed, causing millions of dollars in losses to its brief investors, according to financial site Dexscreener.
The coin, developed by KIP Protocol and Hayden Davis, could be obtained by accessing a link that directed users to a website called vivalalibertadproject.com, referring to the well-known phrase with which Milei closes speeches and messages on his social media.
The President’s Office said in a Saturday statement that Milei was not involved in any stage of the cryptocurrency’s development and decided to remove the post to avoid speculation and limit further exposure, following the public reaction to the project’s launch.
Jonatan Baldiviezo, a lawyer and one of the plaintiffs, told the AP that they saw an illicit association to commit “an indeterminate number of frauds” in the episode. “Within this illicit association, the crime of fraud was committed, in which the president’s actions were essential,” he said.
[ ... ]
The plaintiffs saw in Milei’s action an operation known in the crypto world as “rug pull.” This occurs when a developer launches an attractive token to lure investors but later abandons it after funds become overpriced, making the tokens worthless. Baldiviezo also added that Milei violated the Public Ethics Law.
The term I've been hearing is "pump-and-dump," a scam used in crypto and other contexts.
Argentine President Javier Milei is facing calls for impeachment after endorsing a cryptocurrency project that collapsed in what analysts are calling a massive insider scam.
The Solana-native Libra (LIBRA) token started its rally on Feb. 14, shortly after Milei posted about the project on X, formerly Twitter. His now-deleted post included a website and contract address for the token, which was a “private project” dedicated to “encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy.”
The Libra token briefly rose to a peak market capitalization of $4.56 billion at 10:30 pm UTC on Feb. 14 before falling over 94% to a $257 million market cap in just 11 hours since the token debuted for trading on decentralized exchanges, Dexscreener data shows.
Milei may now face the risk of impeachment after Argentina’s fintech chamber acknowledged that the case may be a rug pull.
“This scandal, which embarrasses us on an international scale, requires us to launch an impeachment request against the president,” opposition lawmaker Leandro Santoro told Reuters, according to a Feb. 16 report.
After the token’s collapse on Feb. 15, Milei issued a statement on X, noting that he was not aware of the details of the project when he endorsed it and that he has “no connection whatsoever” with the “private enterprise” that launched the token.
Milei has requested the Anti-Corruption Office to investigate all government members, including the president himself, for potential misconduct, according to a Feb. 16 X statement issued by Argentina’s presidential office, Oficina del Presidente.
Argentina's President Javier Milei admitted making a mistake on Saturday after promoting a cryptocurrency whose value soared and then crashed, with his office announcing an "urgent investigation."
According to news outlets, Milei posted a message on social media platform X Friday evening, praising a "private project" aimed at "stimulating the growth of the Argentine economy, by financing small businesses and Argentine entrepreneurs."
"The world wants to invest in Argentina. $LIBRA," the post reportedly said, naming the cryptocurrency along with a website for the project.
Hours later, Milei deleted the message, saying: "I did not know the details of the project and after learning about it, I decided not to continue promoting it."
He added he had "obviously no connection" with the "alleged private company."
Argentine economists and crypto specialists, in addition to opposition political figures, criticized Milei and said that the digital asset could be a fraud or Ponzi scheme.
Industry observers called the operation a "rug pull" -- a scam where developers unveil a crypto token, attract investors, then quickly cash out.
"Within minutes of the launch, multiple large holders began liquidating MILLIONS of USD worth of $LIBRA," the Kobeissi Letter, which provides analysis on global capital markets, said in a thread on X.
"This included gains of +$4 million or more as $LIBRA rose to $4.6 billion in market (capitalization). After the top was set at 5:40 PM ET, the coin fell in a literal straight-line."
(Bloomberg) -- Late Friday night, prolific social media user Javier Milei directed followers to a site that purported to raise money for small businesses in Argentina using crypto.
Half a world away, digital currency entrepreneur Hayden Davis saw the value of the Libra token, a so-called memecoin he helped launch, begin to surge. Its market value flew past $1 billion, $2 billion, all the way over $4 billion.
When it collapsed, as such tokens often do, Milei’s presidency in Argentina was in crisis mode. Investors like Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy suffered steep losses and dubbed the token “the biggest rug pull of all time” — a reference to the crypto lexicon for a scam. Davis himself, in a later post on social media, acknowledged holding some profits despite the declines.
The events are now the subject of an internal government probe. Prominent members of the crypto world are pointing fingers at each other as Milei tries to recover from a political black eye.
“The Libra saga is a travesty,” said Henry Elder at UTXO Management. “It’s a stark illustration that the current crop of crypto leaders lack any moral compass whatsoever.”
Milei, meanwhile, is heading to Washington this week in hopes of meeting Donald Trump. The Argentine leader wants to secure the US president’s support for his country to receive more money from the International Monetary Fund in a new program that’s still under negotiation, as well as possible exemptions from Trump’s tariffs.
Milei won Argentina’s election in late 2023 by a landslide with supporters desperate for a swift economic overhaul after several years of crisis. He’s increasingly aligned himself with right-leaning leaders worldwide, and his crypto hype was reminiscent of the token Trump himself launched just days before his inauguration.
The Libra token launched on Solana, a blockchain with fast transaction speeds and low fees that’s made it popular with memecoin traders.
Compounding the confusion over the weekend were the contradicting tales. After Libra crashed, Davis — the chief executive officer of Kelsier Ventures — said Saturday in a video posted to X that he was Milei’s adviser, “working with him and his team on much bigger tokenization and really cool stuff in Argentina.” Milei’s office then issued a statement saying Davis “didn’t have nor has any connection to the Argentine government.”
It seems the media are all using the term "rug pull," so okay.
Upshot: is Javier Milei in trouble? I'm sure his enemies are slavering at the chance to impeach him, but what will the people of Argentina say? And do? I think Milei is innocent until proven guilty (an ethos not seen in American media); he deserves a chance to explain himself fully to the public; I hope he's doing that. And I hope the public will forgive him. Personally, I know little to nothing about crypto, but even I can see how it's both taking over the global economy and attracting plenty of bad actors who are poisoning the tree before it has a chance to grow. As with the old-school reliability of paper ballots, it might be best to stick with paper money. Of course I realize that, as I say that, I use my Shinhan debit card for everything, so nothing I do is private, and everything is open to hacking and other mischief despite the flimsy protections I've put up (including 24/7 VPN on both my phone and my desktop). The old wisdom that you should never talk to strangers seems applicable here, and crypto strikes me as an especially strange and mysterious thing. Milei and Trump (who, along with his wife, apparently has his own plummeting cryptocurrency) should have stayed far, far away. Trump the businessman ought to recognize a money-loser when he sees one. Alas, Trump the egomaniac might have trouble admitting he was wrong to throw his and his wife's names behind any crypto effort, leaving them both open to the sunk-cost fallacy.
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