Javier Milei Backtracks on $4.4B Memecoin After ‘Insiders’ Pocket $87M

Argentina’s president Javier Milei has backtracked on a tweet selling a memecoin referred to 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: “This is a private project dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy,” 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 displaying 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 aware of the details of the project.”

“A few hours ago I posted a tweet, as I have so many other times, supporting a supposed private enterprise with which I obviously have no connection whatsoever,” Milei wrote. “I was not aware of the details of the project and after having become aware of it I decided not to continue spreading the word (that is why I deleted the tweet).”

The sell-off in Libra rippled throughout the broader memecoin market, with TRUMP dropping $500 million from its market cap, in response to market knowledge, in a 30-minute interval after Libra started to tumble.