On February 14, Argentine President Javier Milei shared a link on X promoting a cryptocurrency called $LIBRA. The project, he claimed, will help "foster the growth of the Argentine economy by funding small companies and ventures." Almost immediately, his followers raised the alarm: 84 percent of the crypto's stock was owned by just three wallets, leading many to suspect a "rug pull" scheme—a scam in which a token's value is inflated through celebrity endorsement, only for the original developers to then withdraw all liquidity, leaving the investors with a worthless asset.
Just two hours after Milei's post, $LIBRA acquired around 40,000 investors and its price rose by 1,300 percent. Then, as many predicted, the developers sold all the tokens they retained, crushing its value, and walking away with roughly $113 million. Three out of four investors lost money, with some losing up to $5 million.
Not long after, Milei deleted his original posts, claiming he "wasn't acquainted with the details of the project" and "obviously has no connection" to it. He clarified that his accounts hadn't been hacked, as some had speculated. Milei was left with two options: admit he had been deceived or acknowledge that he had willfully participated in a scam. He chose the former, framing the endorsement as an honest mistake.
