Argentine President Javier Milei is embroiled in a cryptocurrency scandal after his brief promotion of a memecoin that collapsed in value triggered allegations of fraud.
The allegations have launched a judicial investigation, lawsuits, and even calls for his impeachment.
Milei on Friday took to social media platform X to promote $LIBRA, a coin that he said was aimed at "encouraging economic growth by funding small businesses and startups."
The coin soared to $4 billion in market cap before collapsing, causing millions of dollars in losses to its investors.
But coin insiders, some believed close to Milei's circle, took profits of nearly $100 million despite the losses.
Milei subsequently deleted the post, saying on X he was unaware of the details of the cryptocurrency.
He accused his political opponents of trying to exploit the episode.
"I have nothing to hide, and I have no problem coming forward and showing my face," Milei said Monday in an interview with the Todo Noticias channel. "Those who entered there voluntarily knew what they were getting into," he added. "As volatility traders, they understood the risks involved."
Buyers, however, accused the coin's creators of a "rug pull" scheme, where initial investors lure in others to inflate the price before withdrawing their funds.
At the center of the storm is coin creator Hayden Davis, the 28-year-old crypto entrepreneur and CEO of investment firm Kelsier Ventures.
Davis denied that it was a rug-pull scheme while telling Barstool Sports on Monday that he's sitting on $100 million of digital assets that most likely belong "to Argentina," Decrypt reported.
"It's not a rug," Davis told YouTuber Coffeezilla in a separate interview. "It's a plan gone miserably wrong with $100 million sitting in the account that I'm a custodian of."
Davis told Barstool that "extracting value from LIBRA's launch was a behind-the-scenes, necessary evil in order to ensure the token's longevity" and that the value was supposed to be injected back into LIBRA, according to Decrypt.
"I was instructed, 'Hey, don't inject anything back in until Milei's second video,'" Davis told Barstool. That second video never came.
Davis alleged that LIBRA was "sniped" by developers, according to the report.
Regardless, lawyers in Argentina filed fraud complaints against President Milei on Sunday.
The case was assigned Monday to Judge María Servini, head of Federal Court No. 1 in Buenos Aires.
The conservative-leaning La Nacion reported Monday that the concept and launch of LIBRA was hatched over at least a dozen meetings in 2024 with Davis and crypto expert and trader Mauricio Novelli.
Milei's sister and general secretary of the presidency, Karina Milei, functioned as a gateway for Davis and other businessmen linked to LIBRA via Novelli, La Nacion reported.
While the president's office noted two meetings in 2024 that included Novelli and Davis, La Nacion reported at least nine meetings were held at Casa Rosada, the federal government offices in Buenos Aires, and another three at Quinta de Olivos, the official residence of the Argentine president.
The final meeting that set the wheels in motion came on Jan. 30, according to La Nacion.
Until the crypto scandal, Milei had been riding on relatively high approval ratings as his economic policies had dramatically reduced inflation.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.