Will a memecoin take down “Chainsaw Milei”?

Fuelled by the hopium of fast gains that we saw with the $CAR token, Libra’s price skyrocketed, pushing its marketcap to a staggering $4.5 billion. And I thought the $890 million from $CAR was wild!

Author

Adam Atlantic
February 17, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Remember that time about a week ago when I said I’ve never seen anything as wild as the Central African Republic memecoin?

Yeah, so, that was last week.

Over the weekend Argentina’s President Javier “Chainsaw” Milei decided it was his turn for memecoin glory. He posted and pumped the Libra memecoin, designed to boost the nation’s economy by funding small businesses.

At approximately 5:01 PM ET, Milei posted a now-deleted tweet promoting Libra, describing it as a “private project” that would catalyse Argentina’s economic growth.

Source: Javier Milei via X.com (post now deleted)

Almost instantly, the memecoin market reacted. Fuelled by the hopium of fast gains that we saw with the $CAR token, Libra’s price skyrocketed, pushing its marketcap to a staggering $4.5 billion.

And I thought the $890 million from $CAR was wild!

As you’d expect the most volume was traded as the token peaked. But on-chain analytics later revealed within the first few hours, approximately $87 million was cashed out from “suspect” wallets.

Nearly 82% of Libra’s total supply was held by just a handful of addresses. That kind of concentration immediately raises red flags.

Was this a hack of Milei’s X.com account? Or was he actually involved here? Surely not.

With the pump comes the dump

As you’d expect, within a matter of hours, Libra’s pump turned into a dump.

Milei deleted the tweet and then tried to backpedal his way out of it all.

Source: Javier Milei via X.com[1] 

Allegations of insider trading and liquidity manipulation began to surface. Investors scrambled to exit and Libra’s value plummeted by over 95% from a peak of around $4.56 to $0.13 just seven hours later.

Source: DEXTools

His backpedalling only deepened the controversy, prompting political opponents to call for impeachment proceedings, accusing him of endorsing a scheme that by all accounts looks like a pump-and-dump.

But in perhaps the most fascinating turn of events, the President himself has initiated an investigation.

According to CNN:[2]

“The presidency on Saturday announced an investigation into the matter, saying: ‘President Javier Milei has decided to immediately involve the Anti-Corruption Office to determine whether there was improper conduct on the part of any member of the national government, including the president himself.’”

Is this the end of Milei?

Milei is certainly the biggest and most credible world leader to get sucked into the memecoin world. From here I would be astonished if we saw any other national memecoins launch to market. That said, if we do see them it’s likely they’ll just be pump and dump scams.

What I would expect next however is that serious world leaders make more strategic moves into bitcoin. Sovereign Wealth Funds, wealthy family offices, and as we still expect, even government treasuries could be adding bitcoin to their stockpiles.

And as for Milei’s future, well, I doubt this is going to take him down completely. He has after all made significant inroads to turning Argentina’s economy around for good.

But this is a massive hit to his credibility. Even a best case scenario it shows how gullible and easily influenced he can be and that maybe he’s nowhere near as smart as his advocates suggest he might be.

Trust in crypto

Adam Atlantic