Argentina’s president Javier Milei has backtracked on a tweet selling a memecoin known as Libra, which rose to a $4.4 billion market cap earlier than plunging by greater than 95%.
In a now-deleted tweet, Milei initially wrote: “It is a non-public challenge devoted to encouraging the expansion of the Argentine financial system,” together with a Solana contract handle linked to the Libra token.
Libra rose by greater than 2,000% in a 40-minute span following the tweet, solely to tumble quickly as a gaggle of early holders started to money out.
X account KobeissiLetter shared a sequence of BubbleMaps screenshots exhibiting that alleged “insiders” liquidate tokens by including one-sided liquidity swimming pools on Metora with solely Libra, permitting them to take away SOL and stablecoins.
Buying and selling quantity for Libra hit $1.1 billion after launch, though it appeared that purchases and gross sales had been skewed; there have been 74,500 particular person purchase orders and 28,900 gross sales – indicating that bigger promote orders flattened the flurry of retail exercise.
Milei later addressed the botched memecoin on X, stating that he “was not conscious of the main points of the challenge.”
Hace unas horas publiqué un tweet, como tantas otras infinitas veces, apoyando un supuesto emprendimiento privado del que obviamente no tengo vinculación alguna.
No estaba interiorizado de los pormenores del proyecto y luego de haberme interiorizado decidí no seguir dándole…
— Javier Milei (@JMilei) February 15, 2025
“Just a few hours in the past I posted a tweet, as I’ve so many different occasions, supporting a supposed non-public enterprise with which I clearly haven’t any connection in any way,” Milei wrote. “I used to be not conscious of the main points of the challenge and after having grow to be conscious of it I made a decision to not proceed spreading the phrase (that’s the reason I deleted the tweet).”
The sell-off in Libra rippled throughout the broader memecoin market, with TRUMP dropping $500 million from its market cap, based on market information, in a 30-minute interval after Libra started to tumble.