Argentina's populist president promoted a meme coin — and now faces impeachment calls
Javier Milei is facing impeachment calls after he promoted a meme coin on social media.
The Argentine president endorsed the $libra coin, which surged in value before crashing hours later.
Opposition politicians have called the incident an "unprecedented scandal."
Argentine President Javier Milei is facing a legal investigation and impeachment calls after he promoted a cryptocurrency that quickly collapsed.
Milei endorsed the $libra meme coin Friday in social media posts. He said it would boost the country's economy by funding small businesses and entrepreneurs.
His endorsement sent the token soaring from almost nothing to above $4 — before it fell to less than $0.50 just hours later after the posts were deleted, Reuters reported.
Observatorio del Derecho a la Ciudad, a nongovernmental organization in Argentina, said some 40,000 people had been affected, with losses above $4 billion.
Argentina's main stock index closed more than 5% lower on Monday.
Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that are sometimes based on internet jokes, such as doge. Before his inauguration, President Donald Trump and Melania Trump, the first lady, launched their own coins — $Trump coin and $Melania coin. The coins sparked anger in the crypto world, with experts saying the Trumps were making a mockery of the industry.
Lawyers in Argentina filed fraud complaints in criminal court over the weekend. Some have speculated that the case against Milei could be classified as a "rug pull," when promoters of a coin attract buyers but then stop trading before it crashes, which allows them to pocket some of the proceeds.
Jonatan Baldiviezo, one of the plaintiffs, told The Associated Press that the president's actions meant a "crime of fraud was committed."
A judge was assigned on Monday to investigate the case.
Argentina's main opposition coalition said it would move forward with its push to impeach Milei, writing in an X post that his involvement in the coin was an "unprecedented scandal."
Milei's office said Sunday in a statement on X that the president "shared a post on his personal accounts announcing the launch of the KIP Protocol project, just as he does daily with many entrepreneurs who want to launch a project in Argentina to create jobs and get investments."
It added: "Not having been part of any stage of the development of the cryptocurrency, after the repercussions that the launch of the project had and to avoid any speculation and not give it further dissemination, he decided to delete the post."
KIP Protocol said on X it was involved with distributing project funds to businesses in Argentina and did not have any role with the coin itself.
Ben Chow, a cofounder of Meteora, the platform behind $libra, has stepped down following the controversy, a statement on X from Meow said Tuesday.
Meow cofounded Meteora and is behind Jupiter, which calls itself "one of the largest decentralized trading platforms and one of the most active governance communities in crypto."
The statement said Chow had "shown a lack of judgment and care about some of the core aspects of the project (given its current size and reputation) over the past couple of months" and had "chosen to resign."
Meow also said in the statement: "No one at Jupiter or Meteora committed any insider trading or financial wrongdoing, or received any tokens inappropriately."
The law firm Fenwick & West has been hired to investigate and would independently publish a report, Meow added.
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