Every reckless post on social media can cost politicians their careers (unless they are Elon Musk). Argentina’s president supported the cryptocurrency LIBRA, which collapsed.
Late on Friday night, February 14, Miley made a post on X in support of the LIBRA cryptocurrency. He touted the token to his 4.5 million audience as a private project aimed at the country’s economic growth. The post was later deleted, but was saved in Internet archive.
«Liberal Argentina is growing!!! This private project will be dedicated to contributing to the growth of the Argentine economy by financing small Argentine companies and businesses. The world wants to invest in Argentina».
In less than an hour after Milei’s announcement, LIBRA soared by 2000% according to CoinDesk and reached a market capitalization of almost $4.5 billion. And then, as the website notes Gizmodo, «the bottom fell off». When the token reached its peak, insiders began to «drain» coins, which of course led to a rapid loss of value. Analysis BubbleMaps says that 82% of the token’s volume was stored in one cluster, which suggests that the creators and other insiders were just waiting for this moment to sell off everything quickly and «jump off the».
The cryptocurrency holders withdrew from it immediately after the influx of Javier Milei’s followers. in about five hours, «lost almost $4.5 billion to». Financial analysis website The Kobeissi Letter described it as «one of the fastest and largest destruction of wealth in the history of retail». Around the same time, according to New York TimesMiley deleted his post and tried to distance himself from the project.
«A few hours ago, I posted a tweet, as many others have done countless times, supporting a supposedly private enterprise that I obviously have no connection to. I wasn’t familiar with the details of the project and decided not to continue to spread it (which is why I deleted the tweet)».
It is impossible to say for sure whether Milei was involved in the project or was used as a «useful idiot». However, the website for the project was created literally on the day of launch, which should have alerted even an inexperienced person in cryptocurrency. The political opposition in Argentina believes that the country’s president bears more responsibility for the situation than he is willing to take. According to the report ReutersShe will demand impeachment.
«This scandal, which embarrasses us internationally, requires us to request the impeachment of the president,» said opposition lawmaker Leandro Santoro.
As is typical of politicians, Javier Milei immediately blamed the opposition for everything. Under any circumstances, the nervous and frankly rude tone of his response does not flatter the head of state:
«To the dirty rats of the political caste who want to take advantage of this situation to do harm, I want to say that every day they confirm how worthless politicians are and strengthen our conviction to throw their asses out».
Once upon a time, it was considered good form for politicians who, through their own intentions, or inexperience, or «reason» caused harm, to turn to the mechanisms of democracy to reaffirm people’s trust. But those days seem to be over.
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