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Argentina Opposition Threatens Milei With Impeachment Over LIBRA Token Tweet: Reuters
An opposition lawmaker said the president should be impeached after promoting and then withdrawing his support for the token.
Updated Feb 20, 2025, 8:55 a.m. Published Feb 16, 2025, 2:31 p.m.
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What to know:
- Argentina's President Javier Milei faces impeachment threats after touting a crypto token that supposedly helped small businesses, but instead crashed in value.
- The scandal "embarrasses us on an international scale," one opposition lawmaker said, according to Reuters.
Argentina's President Javier Milei is facing impeachment threats after endorsing a cryptocurrency called LIBRA, purportedly intended to support small businesses, which instead crashed and lost billions of dollars in value within hours, according to Reuters.
In a now-deleted late Friday post on X, Milei promoted LIBRA as a privately run project designed to raise money for small and medium-sized Argentinian companies, adding that he doesn't stand to reap personal gain from the project.
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The token rapidly surged to a market capitalization of about $4.5 billion amid confusion over the legitimacy of Milei's tweet, with speculation that his account may have been compromised or that scammers had deceived him.
Milei deleted the post five hours later, saying that he was “not aware of the details of the project" and, now informed, has chosen not to continue promoting it.
The market then panicked, with insiders cashing out $87.4 million worth of tokens, according to data sources Kobeissi Letter and Bubblemaps. The token's market cap crashed 90%, erasing over $4 billion in market cap.
The country's fintech chamber said the LIBRA case could potentially be a “rug pull," in which developers abandon a project after taking in cash from the initial sale.
"This scandal, which embarrasses us on an international scale, requires us to launch an impeachment request against the president,” lawmaker Leandro Santoro, a member of the Argentine opposition coalition, said Saturday, according to Reuters.
Higit pang Para sa Iyo
KuCoin captured a record share of centralised exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the wider crypto market.
Ano ang dapat malaman:
- KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
- This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
- Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
- Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
- Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.
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Senate Agriculture's crypto market structure draft peppered with Democrat pitches
The latest draft of the major crypto legislation has begun to be targeted with amendments as the Senate Agriculture Committee approaches its hearing next week.
What to know:
- Proposed amendments to the Senate Agriculture Committee's crypto market structure bill have been posted, and the Democrats filing the pitches are seeking to push a number of the points they've sought over months of negotiation.
- Democrat amendments include proposals for banning senior government officials from profiting off of crypto interests and a demand for filling the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before new rules can be put in place.
- The committee's markup hearing for the bill is currently scheduled for next week, though a winter storm threatens the U.S. capital.
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