Argentinian President Promotes Memecoin. It Then Crashed 95% as Insiders Cashed Out

gwolf (Slashdot reader #26,339) writes: On Friday, February 14, Libertarian Argentinian president, Javier Milei, promoted the just-created $LIBRA cryptocoin, created by the Viva la libertad project, strongly aligned with his political party, La Libertad Avanza. Milei tweeted, 'This private project will be devoted to promote growth of the Argentinian economy, funding small startups and enterprises. The world wants to invest in Argentina!'

It is worth noting that the project's website was registered a mere three minutes before Milei tweeted his endorsement. The cryptocoin quickly reached a $4.6 billion market cap... Only to instantaneously lose 89% of its value, with nine core investers pulling the rug from under the enthusiast investors.

More details from the blog Web3 Is Going Just Great:

[W]ithin hours of the launch, insiders began selling off their holdings of the token. The token had been highly concentrated among insiders, with around 82% of the token held in a small cluster of apparently insider addresses. Those insiders cashed out around $107 million, crashing the token price by around 95%. After the crash, Milei deleted his tweet promoting the project. He later claimed he was 'not aware of the details of the project.'


UPDATE: CNN reports that Argentine President Milei is now facing calls for impeachment.

The presidency on Saturday announced an investigation into the matter, saying: 'President Javier Milei has decided to immediately involve the Anti-Corruption Office to determine whether there was improper conduct on the part of any member of the national government, including the president himself.'

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