Argentine President Javier Milei Denies Promoting Memecoin $LIBRA Failure

Argentine President, Javier Milei, has rejected allegations that he promoted the controversial cryptocurrency Libra, which quickly lost value, leading the crypto-friendly politician to face multiple fraud lawsuits and impeachment calls. "I'm not promoting that. What I'm doing is spreading information," Milei said in an interview on February 17 with Todo Noticias, his first public statement since the controversy over the Libra token that local media called "Libragate". The original Solana token code of the Libertad project, Libra (LIBRA), has reached a market capitalization of $4.56 billion on February 14, immediately after Milei posted about this token on X — but then dropped by 94% after he deleted the post, sparking allegations of a pump and dump scheme. While Milei asserts that he has "nothing to hide" and acts "in good faith," he admits that he "has something to learn" from this challenge, including the need to "start setting filters" on which behaviors are appropriate and which are not. Economists following the principles of free market economy argue that issues arising from token launches should only involve relevant parties. "The state should not play any role here," Milei said. When asked about the 44,000 potential affected investors, Milei said most of them are bots. Milei said, "The best scenario is to have 5,000 people participating". "I want to tell you that the chances of having an Argentine there are very, very low." María Fernanda Juppet, CEO of the CryptoMKT cryptocurrency exchange in Argentina, believes that the Milei scandal will not change the way Argentinians use cryptocurrencies: Juppet stated in a note shared with Cointelegraph: "Most transactions in the Argentine market are done with dollarized digital currencies". Therefore, the Milei incident does not affect the application of cryptocurrencies domestically but opens up a political discussion. This is not a rejection of technology or a change in the use of money. Initially, Milei stated that he liked the idea of the LIBRA token as a way to boost the Argentine economy, which lacks a strong capital market due to the "poor management" of the state in recent decades. Milei said he did not have accurate detailed information about the Solana project when he posted about it and that he had "no relationship" with the company that launched this token.

However, Milei said he had a meeting with a representative of the KIP Protocol on October 19 in Argentina, where the company informed him about the blockchain project. In response to recent controversies, KIP, a Web3 company building an AI payment infrastructure, has recently denied creating tokens or acting as a market maker, explaining that they are a technology consulting company hired to help distribute project funding to local businesses in Argentina. KIP further stated in a post on February 17 on X that the company's CEO, Julian Peh, did not even discuss the launch of the token when he met Milei in October and the company was not even informed about the official launch time of the LIBRA token. According to Jupiter Exchange, this launch has been widely known to meme coin insiders up to two weeks before the currency surged and plunged, also stating they found no evidence of any of their members engaging in insider trading.