This Isn't Milei's First Run-In With an Alleged Crypto Scam

Bitcoin believers may love him, but Argentina's eccentric president is anything but a maxi. 

In fact, libertarian leader Javier Milei seems to have a penchant for fast-money crypto tokens—the sort that hardline Bitcoiners typically denounce as "shitcoins."

The digital asset world has been shaken since President Milei got hit with criminal charges after advertising a meme coin called LIBRA. After telling his millions of followers on Friday to buy the Solana-based token, the cryptocurrency shot up in value to over $4 billion. 

It then came crashing hard, and the president quickly tried to distance himself from it. 

People in—and out—of the crypto space are now angry and calling for the leader’s head, alleging fraud. 

Though it's worth noting this isn't the first time the economist has promoted a so-called shitcoin. 

Back in 2022, before he was president, investors sued Milei for posting about CoinX, a crypto investment platform that promised huge returns to users. 

The lawsuit was related to the then-congressman—who frequently uses social media—in 2021 promoting CoinX to his millions of followers. 

"They are revolutionizing the way to invest to help Argentinians with inflation," he wrote in the Instagram post at the time after visiting the CoinX HQ, which promised to make investors money using AI, bots, and experts to automate trades.

But CoinX lost investors lots of money, according to local media, and had to close down after Argentina's financial watchdog warned that the platform had no legal right to operate in the country. 

Milei later distanced himself and said that he had merely given an opinion about the project. 

Those in the Bitcoin world like Milei because of his libertarian ideals. But Milei himself hasn't dived much into the orange coin other than saying the biggest cryptocurrency is a "natural reaction" to "scam" central banks. 

The LIBRA scandal, meanwhile, has turned serious: Milei is now the leader of Argentina; he won on a ticket to end corruption in the country; and now a lawsuit has been filed and impeachment called for. 

But even if it does all seem grave, Milei is defending himself: After the Argentinian stock market nosedived Monday, the president retweeted a post by a supporter who attempted to explain just how difficult it would have been for a normal person without prior crypto-trading experience to have bought LIBRA just after Milei initially promoted it.

The post from Dario Epstein was widely misinterpreted as a "tutorial" for how to buy into LIBRA now, which traders apparently took as a signal to ape in harder. The price of LIBRA jumped by more than 60%—before crashing right back down again.