- Milei deleted his promotional post after the $LIBRA memecoin crashed by 90%.
- Insiders cashed out $87M from $LIBRA just a few hours post-launch.
Argentinian President Javier Milei distanced himself from the catastrophic launch on Friday of the Solana-based memecoin $LIBRA, which saw its market cap collapse from $4.5 billion to just $200 million within hours.
The token was initially promoted on Milei’s official X account and by Saturday investors were raising concerns about insider manipulation and the legitimacy of the token’s economic claims.
Milei’s account announced $LIBRA stating it was a “private project” aimed at boosting Argentina’s economy by funding small businesses.
The project’s website, hastily registered just hours before launch, provided little transparency beyond a Google Form for funding applications.
Within three hours, on-chain analytics firm Bubblemaps identified that less than ten insiders had cashed out $87.4 million, with 82% of the token’s supply concentrated in a single cluster.
Large holders reportedly manipulated liquidity pools on Meteora to extract profits while retail investors were left holding the losses.
Kip Protocol, which according to its website operates in the decentralised AI space, has been the only project to explicitly say it is involved in the $LIBRA incident.
Its founder, Julian Peh, has pushed back against claims of insider trading, and claimed no funds have been sold.
“The funds are still on chain and not a single SOL will be moved,” Peh said.
According to Peh, his firm still plans on seeing Project Libertad (the project behind the $LIBRA memecoin) out, although he did not share any details.
Data from DexScreener shows a trading volume of over $1.1 billion since launch.
Milei later claimed he was “not aware of the details” and deleted his post.
This backpedaling has intensified scrutiny, especially given his past involvement in the Coinx World crypto scandal in 2022.
Before becoming president, Milei had endorsed Coinx, a firm later investigated for fraud and misleading investment promises.
Kyle Baird is DL News’ Weekend Editor. Got a tip? Email at kbaird@dlnews.com.
