Argentina’s President Javier Milei is dealing with impeachment threats after endorsing a cryptocurrency known as LIBRA, purportedly supposed to assist small companies, which as an alternative crashed and misplaced billions of {dollars} in worth inside hours, in response to Reuters.
In a now-deleted late Friday put up on X, Milei promoted LIBRA as a privately run challenge designed to lift cash for small and medium-sized Argentinian firms, including that he does not stand to reap private acquire from the challenge.
The token quickly surged to a market capitalization of about $4.5 billion amid confusion over the legitimacy of Milei’s tweet, with hypothesis that his account could have been compromised or that scammers had deceived him.
Milei deleted the put up 5 hours later, saying that he was “not aware of the details of the project” and, now informed, has chosen not to continue promoting it.
The market then panicked, with insiders cashing out $87.4 million worth of tokens, according to data sources Kobeissi Letter and Bubblemaps. The token’s market cap crashed 90%, erasing over $4 billion in market cap.
The country’s fintech chamber said the LIBRA case could potentially be a “rug pull,” in which developers abandon a project after taking in cash from the initial sale.
“This scandal, which embarrasses us on an international scale, requires us to launch an impeachment request against the president,” lawmaker Leandro Santoro, a member of the Argentine opposition coalition, stated Saturday, in response to Reuters.
