The collapse of Argentina’s LIBRA memecoin not solely worn out $4 billion in market capitalization however triggered a political disaster and impeachment proceedings in Argentina.
Second solely to Donald Trump’s TRUMP memecoin, LIBRA might be probably the most consequential crypto scandal of 2025. The truth is, a few of the LIBRA crew labored immediately on Trump’s spouse’s memecoin, MELANIA.
Beneath are a few of the people who helped promote LIBRA, the crypto mission that has spilled over into conventional finance and impacted a G20 economic system.
Javier Milei
Argentine President Javier Milei’s endorsement of LIBRA on February 14, 2025, propelled its market cap to over $4 billion in simply minutes. He shared his publish with 3.8 million followers and implied authorities backing for the token.
Inside hours, nevertheless, he deleted that tweet, claiming he was by some means “not aware of the details.” Later, he repeated his endorsement-turned-withdrawal of endorsement.
Milei now faces legal fraud expenses and impeachment threats from lawmakers of his opposition celebration.
Extremely, the president tried to shift blame onto his personal constituency. Reasonably than settle for full accountability for his actions, he likened the conduct of LIBRA buyers to “playing Russian roulette and getting the bullet.”
Hayden Mark Davis
This Kelsier Ventures govt is extensively thought of the chief architect of the LIBRA rug-pull.
Davis orchestrated LIBRA’s liquidity deployment and coordinated trades for early insiders. Extremely, he has admitted to “sniping” (a euphemism for getting tokens rapidly) throughout LIBRA’s preliminary launch and profiting hundreds of thousands of {dollars} by promoting close to its peak valuation.
At one level, Davis mentioned he held $100 million in “unreturned” investor funds. Throughout quite a lot of video interviews, together with on X and YouTube, he claimed to require “leverage” to assist resolve the LIBRA fall-out.
Davis was additionally an early insider in earlier memecoin failures like MELANIA which fell over 90% inside hours of its launch.
Previous to crypto, Davis was selling numerous novelties on social media, together with Supreme Oreos.
Dave Portnoy
Davis claims to have gifted LIBRA tokens and related USDC stablecoins that backed LIBRA’s worth to sports activities gambler-turned-crypto dealer Dave Portnoy.
For his half, Portnoy claims to have given again any earnings that will have resulted from these presents and didn’t extract even a “penny” from the mission.
The truth is, he claims to have subsequently bought a associated memecoin that misplaced him substantial quantities of cash.
Anyone wanna purchase some pretend Libra? Warning. This can be a meme coin. I purchased it accidentally. Will probably be unstable. It can ultimately go to zero. It could rip. It could tank. Don’t placed on greater than you’ll be able to lose!!! It’s a collectible
7Zt2KUh5mkpEpPGcNcFy51aGkh9Ycb5ELcqRH1n2GmAe pic.twitter.com/DGugLNBz74
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) February 17, 2025
Julian Peh of KIP Protocol
Julian Peh’s KIP Protocol helped to launch the LIBRA token. Initially, Peh denied lively involvement, claiming as a substitute that KIP Protocol was solely invited to handle tech tasks and AI initiatives that LIBRA was speculated to fund. That tweet rapidly attracted a fact-check through X Neighborhood Notes.
Peh mentioned that KIP Protocol would transfer forward with plans for Challenge Libertad anyway. He added that the solana concerned with LIBRA hadn’t moved and could be allotted to help Argentinian companies as deliberate.
LIBRA post-collapse investigators
Because the memecoin plummeted in worth, many researchers started throwing out particulars and allegations in regards to the monumental failure. Investigative journalist CoffeeZilla printed an hour-long interview with Davis and pointed a finger of blame at crypto dealer Naseem.
Developer Chaofan Shou claimed to have misplaced $2 million in LIBRA and alleged the nefarious involvement of one other developer, Arunkumar Sugadevan. He then retracted that declare and re-pointed a finger at another person.
Others blamed Ben Chow, co-founder of Meteora which hosted LIBRA’s main liquidity swimming pools the place early insiders drained tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in the course of the token’s launch. Though Chow has resigned from Meteora, he’s not admitted any guilt.