Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, has denied endorsing a recently formed cryptocurrency that crashed just after he made reference to it on social media on Friday. The value of the cryptocurrency $Libra skyrocketed before plummeting, resulting in significant losses for most investors. A judge will now decide whether to prosecute the president with fraud in connection with the incident. Milei dismissed investor complaints on Monday, claiming to have behaved “in good faith” and comparing them to gamblers: “If you go to a casino and lose money, what’s there to complain about when you knew the risks?”
Following an unusually calm weekend on social media, President Milei discussed the $Libra issue in an interview with Argentine TV channel Todo Noticias on Monday. Despite posting a link to a website that sold $Libra on X, he maintained that this did not amount to an endorsement. “I just shared it, I didn’t promote it,” he told Jonny Viale of Todo Noticias. Milei received harsh criticism for his post, which he removed a few hours later, from both his Argentine political enemies and bitcoin investors. According to some, the $Libra debut was similar to a “rug pull,” in which promoters entice customers only to halt trade and embezzle the proceeds from sales.
The presidential office declared that the Anti-Corruption Office would decide if the president had acted unlawfully and maintained that Milei had no involvement in the creation of $Libra. In support of his decision to remove his post, Milei claimed that he was unaware of “the details of the project and after learning about it, I decided not to continue promoting it” at the time.
However, the remarks have not appeased opposition legislators, who have threatened to begin Milei’s impeachment process. The controversy threatens to take Milei’s focus away from his radical reform plan, even if political commentators note that the opposition is unlikely to secure the votes required for an impeachment trial to proceed.
The responsibility of determining whether the fraud claims made by many litigants against the president should proceed has been assigned to a federal judge. In his TV appearance, Milei emphasised that he had “nothing to hide” and came out as confrontational. Those who had invested in $Libra, he added, had done so “voluntarily” and were aware of the risks. “It’s like playing Russian roulette and getting the bullet.”