The LIBRA scandal was a high-profile meme coin controversy that unfolded in February 2025, when Argentine President Javier Milei posted on X (formerly Twitter) promoting the LIBRA token, a Solana-based meme coin. Within hours of the presidential endorsement, LIBRA's price peaked and then collapsed by over 90% as insider wallets sold into the wave of retail buying generated by the attention. The event became one of the most widely covered meme coin controversies in mainstream media, prompted calls for political accountability in Argentina, and intensified regulatory debate globally.
Timeline of events
LIBRA launched on Solana in early February 2025. Shortly after launch, on approximately February 14, President Milei posted to his roughly 4 million X followers that LIBRA was "an initiative to fund Argentine small businesses and entrepreneurs," including a link to the token's website. The post created an immediate surge of retail buying, pushing LIBRA's market cap to approximately $4.5 billion at its peak.
Within hours of the peak, on-chain analysts identified a pattern of insider wallet selling — wallets that had acquired LIBRA in the first moments after launch at low bonding curve prices were selling into the retail demand generated by the Milei post. Estimates of insider profit from the event ranged from $87 million to over $100 million, extracted primarily from the retail buyers who entered after the presidential endorsement.
Aftermath
Milei subsequently claimed he had posted about LIBRA in good faith without knowing it would collapse, and stated he had no financial connection to the project. The Argentine opposition filed legal complaints. International regulators cited the event in discussions about political figures and meme coin promotion. On-chain investigators continued to trace the insider wallets, publishing maps of the wallet networks that benefited from the collapse.
Significance
The LIBRA scandal is historically significant for several reasons. It demonstrated the scale of potential loss when a political figure with millions of followers promotes a token that has insider selling in place. It raised the question of whether presidential promotion of a financial instrument constitutes securities fraud. And it provided the clearest case study yet of how large-scale retail attention can be generated and immediately monetized by insiders.