Argentina’s Crypto Scandal Swindled Thousands. What Did Javier Milei Know?
The scandal began with a tweet.
“The world wants to invest in Argentina,” Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, posted at 7:01 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, offering a code to buy a new cryptocurrency.
The digital coin was called $Libra, and it had been created 23 minutes earlier.
Over the next few hours, thousands of people invested. $Libra’s value skyrocketed.
Then it swiftly collapsed. The largest stakeholders had sold their coins, leaving almost everyone else with a collective $250 million in losses.
To cryptocurrency veterans, it was a classic “rug-pull.” A celebrity touts a new digital coin, prices soar and then insiders who own most of the coins pull the rug: They sell their stakes for a big profit at the expense of amateur…
