Argentine President Javier Mairi has faced with withering criticism, including several calls for the bluff each, after promoting new cryptocurrency on his social media accounts.
In a deleted post from a personal account on X on February 14th, Milei shared a link to a site where users can purchase cryptocurrency called $Libra. The launch of the coin is designed to support Argentinean businesses.
In his post, Mairay showed coins and showed that the project would help the country’s economy and small businesses.
Shortly after its release, the coin price rose from around $0.22 to over $5. However, within an hour of the launch, buyers began to notice sales from early buyers, taking away about 70% of the price.
Eight digital wallets linked to early coin trading totaled $107 million, but data reported by Crypto News site Icobench lost more than $500,000 each, according to Crypto Analytics company LookonChain. At least 24 traders were shown to have been lost, in contrast. $1 million.
According to Coinmarketcap.com, Libra coins today are worth around $0.30.
Event timelines are known to have been on social media that coin developers, or developers who are aware of the project early, could “rag pull” to later buyers and sell at a higher price. It led to accusations.
Project representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
This situation elicited some similarities with President Donald Trump’s promotion of cryptocurrency just before he took office. That coin, Trump, has risen by about 80% from its post-release high of nearly $78 to about $16.
But while early Trump Coin supporters also saw a major windfall, the project was more transparent about its ownership structure.
In an X post, American Hayden Davis denied the allegations of fraud in launching Libra, accusing Mairay himself of re-releasing on the project.
“It is important to recognize that Memocoin’s investment is driven by trust and support,” Davis writes. “When Milei and his team deleted the post, investors who purchased the token based on their trust in his support felt betrayed. This created a wave of panic sales and furthermore circumstances. It got worse. The sudden loss of confidence had a devastating effect on the stability of the token market.”
Davis did not respond to requests for additional comment.
On Saturday, Mailei’s official account posted a lengthy explanation of what happened, saying that Mailei himself had called out an Argentine anti-corruption investigator to investigate issues that included the president’s own involvement.
In a TV interview Monday, Mairay admitted that there is a high possibility that the coin’s promotion is likely to be erroneous.
“I’m a techno optimist. And this was proposed to me as a way to fund an Argentine project,” he said according to the Financial Times. “It’s true that I slapped them in the face when I tried to help these Argentina.”
His office said he met with representatives of the project twice, but he was never involved in the development.
“The most interesting lesson is that. . You need to put in more filters. It’s not that easy for people to contact me,” Mairay said in an interview.
Some analysts say it’s unlikely that they’ll get enough votes to pass the bullet each article, but Mairay’s opposition has already been hit by the incident. York Times.
Mylay was the first foreign leader to meet Trump after the November election, and developed what he called “bromance” with Elon Musk. Mairi pioneered the Ministry of Deduction and National Change last year, similar to the Bureau of Government Efficiency, which is led by Musks.
Milei took office in December 2023 and has pledged to tackle the long-standing struggles of inflation in his country. While some progress has been made, the country’s poverty rate is also increasing.
