LIBRA Memecoin, Initially Backed by Argentina President, Lost $4.4B in Market Cap in Hours

Key Points

• On-chain data shows that the LIBRA team cashed out $107 million.
• Following the crash, Milei explained that he was not aware of the project’s details.

Argentina President, Javier Milei, has been accused of just “destroying the memecoin market”, following an earlier memecoin launch that lost over $4.4 billion in market cap hours after it went live. The Kobeissi Letter called the event potentially “the biggest rug pull in history.”

The Kobeissi Letter via X

Here’s what happened.

Javier Milei Showed Support for LIBRA Project

The Kobeissi Letter began its thread by noting that it all started with a post at 5:01 PM ET from Javier Milei who showed support for a crypto project called Viva la Libertad Project – LIBRA.

In his post, Milei wrote that this private project will be dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentinian economy by funding small businesses and startups in the country, saying that the world wants to invest in Liberal Argentine.

The Kobeissi Letter noted that just like in the case of US President Trump’s memecoin launch, the first hour was filled with speculation regarding the post with people wondering whether Milei’s account was hacked or the post was real.

The team at The Kobeissi Letter noted that the post was real, considering that multiple Argentinian politicians posted the news as well.

The Kobeissi Letter via X

Issues With the Project’s Website

The Kobeissi Letter noted that from the beginning, something seemed off with the project .

While it said that the purpose of the launch was to boost the Argentine economy by funding small projects, the site literally linked to a Google Form to apply for funding.

They also highlighted that the project was created hours before the coin launch, and the domain was registered for a 1-year registration period. Also, there was no public data and there were multiple restricted domain statuses.

The Kobeissi Letter said that the project could have been literally created overnight.

The Controversial LIBRA Launch – Insider Cashout

It seems that three hours after the LIBRA launch, insiders began cashing out. Bobblemaps showed that over $87 million was chased out, and 82% of LIBRA was held in one cluster and no tokenomics were shared with the public.

Bubblemaps data

Bubblemaps also revealed that insiders were adding one-sided liquidity pools on Meteora memecoin platform with only LIBRA.

Insiders were reportedly removing USD and SOL and using the liquidity pools instead of selling on the market. LIBRA’s price dropped by 90% and the $87.4 million in sales absorbed all the buy pressure at the top.

The Kobeissi Letter via X

Minutes after LIBRA’s launch, multiple large holders began liquidating millions of dollars worth of LIBRA, and this included gains of over $4 million as LIBRA neared $4.6 billion in market cap.

The top was set at around 5:40 PM ET, as noted by The Kobeissi Letter, and after that, the coin began dropping.

The team also highlighted that the insiders controlled so much of the market that only around 27% of the transactions were sales. This means that large sale transactions were filled by smaller buys, likely to retail traders.

For every seller, there were reportedly two buyers, and over $1.1 billion of volume was traded.

The Kobeissi Letter via X

About half an hour following The Kobeissi Letter analysis , Lookonchain also addressed the matter, highlighting that the LIBRA team had continued cashing out.

LIBRA Team Cashed Out $107 Million

According to Lookonchain, the LIBRA team had cashed out a total of $107 million this morning.

They noted that 8 wallets related to the project’s team have obtained 57.6 million USDC and 249,671 SOL worth $49.7 million at the time of their post, by adding liquidity, removing liquidity, and claiming fees.

Lookonchain via X

Milei Addressed The Controversial Project

After everything that’s happened, the Argentian President, shared a post on X, addressing the issue.

He said that a few hours ago, he posted a tweet, supporting a supposed private enterprise with which he obviously had no connection.

He explained that he was not aware of the project’s details and after having become aware, he decided not to continue spreading the word, and this is the reason for which he deleted his previous tweet.

He also had a message for all politicians who want to take advantage of the situation to do harm, saying that they only confirm how vile they are and increase his conviction to “kick them in the ass.”

Javier Milei via X

LIBRA Destroyed a Lot of Memecoin Market Liquidity

At the moment of writing this article, LIBRA has a market cap above $245 million after peaking above $4 billion earlier.

LIBRA 1-hour price in USD

The Kobeissi Letter noted that the launch of this coin took so much liquidity off the market that even the TRUMP memecoin dropped sharply.

Indeed, around $400 million was erased from TRUMP’s market cap following the launch of LIBRA. Now, the coin has a market cap of around $4.19 billion. Previously, its market cap dropped from over $4.5 billion to around $4.1 billion.

TRUMP 1-hour price in USD

DEXScreener shows that top traders had made millions on LIBRA after its launch. A trader made over $7 million selling the coin.

The Kobeissi Letter concluded that this event had completely destroyed the majority of the memecoin market liquidity, noting that over $6 billion of market cap was erased in a few hours.

However, the memecoin sector is still trading in the green today, being up by almost 5%, at over $81 billion, according to data from CoinGecko .

The memecoin market was recently in the spotlight after CZ unleashed the creation of a new wave of memecoins inspired by his dog, Broccoli.