Argentina's president “shill” the memento coin, which is valued at $5 billion

Argentine President's X Account posts Libra memento

On February 15, 2025, the official X account of Argentine President Javier Milei unexpectedly posted an announcement about LIBRA, a new memento coin that is supposed to support the Argentine economy. Milei described it as a private project to boost investment in Argentina, while providing capital to small businesses and startups in the country.

He urged the community to get involved through the website vivalalibertadproject.com, and even posted token contract addresses on the blockchain.

The announcement from Milei immediately created a wave of strong investment. Within hours of the post, the LIBRA token skyrocketed, reaching $5 billion in market capitalization, making it one of the fastest growing memoins in 2025.

Investors, especially the crypto community in Latin America, flocked to buy the token in the expectation that it would be an official Argentine blockchain project.

Questionable rug pull

However, as soon as FOMO peaks, suspicious signs begin to appear. BubbleMaps, a platform specializing in on-chain analytics, found that 82% of LIBRA supply is controlled by a single wallet cluster. This means that the majority of tokens are held centrally, without any transparent distribution.

Soon after, on-chain data showed that the team behind LIBRA had executed a series of transactions that provided one-sided liquidity on Meteora for the token, in order to sell LIBRA but not overly affect the market price. Successfully withdrew more than $87 million in SOL and USDC from the above pools

Following the information from BubbleMaps, LIBRA plummeted 85 percent in value, from a $5 billion capitalization to $636 million. On-chain analysts also point out that the funding source for LIBRA is related to an exchange that does not require KYC, and there is no official information on tokenomics or fund control mechanisms.

According to Conor Grogan, an on-chain analyst, LIBRA's initial source of funds was issued from an exchange that did not require KYC.

In addition, a nation-level blockchain project often has strict security measures such as multisig wallets to ensure transparent control, but LIBRA shows absolutely no sign of official oversight from the Argentine government.

However, many in the community argue that no fraudulent project would directly inject up to $150 million of liquidity into a memento coin.

This raises the question that there must be a large financial institution or even a government behind LIBRA, as only entities with strong resources are capable of creating a token of such scale.