Argentine federal investigators, working with DATIP, Argentina's digital forensics unit, say forensic analysis of a crypto lobbyist's phone places President Javier Milei in direct contact with organizers of the $LIBRA memecoin in the minutes before its February 2025 launch, a token that wiped out between $251 million and $286 million in retail investor wealth within hours.

The New York Times reported on April 6, 2026 that Milei held at least seven phone calls with Mauricio Novelli, a crypto lobbyist and key organizer of the $LIBRA project, on the same night Milei promoted the token to his millions of followers on X. Forensic analysts working for DATIP found that at least five of those calls occurred in the minutes directly before the token went live on the Meteora decentralized exchange on the Solana blockchain.

What the Evidence Shows

Digital forensics on Novelli's device also surfaced a document that reportedly outlines a $5 million payment agreement tied to Milei's promotion of $LIBRA. The document has not been independently authenticated in court.

A congressional commission that had concluded in November 2025 that Milei provided "essential collaboration" to the project and recommended Congress evaluate his conduct revived its inquiry on March 16, 2026, after the phone records emerged.

Investigators also found a network of messages allegedly connecting Karina Milei, the president's sister and chief of staff, to the same group of crypto promoters. Separately, leaked messages purportedly show Hayden Davis claiming he "controls" Milei through Karina Milei, a claim his spokesperson denied.

Milei has consistently denied wrongdoing. He deleted his original promotional post within hours of the collapse and initially stated: "I wasn't aware of the project's details, and after I was made aware, I decided to stop sharing it." He later told a broadcaster: "I didn't promote it, just shared it." Argentina's official anti-corruption body has concluded his promotion was a personal act rather than a breach of public office ethics, though that finding does not shield him from criminal liability. Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi continues to oversee the investigation, with Milei named as a person of interest.

The $LIBRA token was publicly framed as a project to fund Argentine small businesses and stimulate the national economy. That framing helps explain why retail investors, particularly in Argentina's economically pressured environment, treated it differently from a generic speculative memecoin and why the collapse proved so damaging.

The Collapse by the Numbers

At approximately 7:01 PM local time on February 14, 2025, Milei posted the $LIBRA contract address to his X account. More than 44,000 wallet addresses purchased the token within the first hour, pushing its market capitalization to roughly $4.5 billion. By 10:45 PM, the price had fallen more than 97%. On-chain analysis firm Nansen found that 86% of traders who participated lost money, with total losses estimated between $251 million and $286 million across roughly 74,000 to 86,000 affected wallets.

Blockchain forensics firms Bubblemaps and TRM Labs reconstructed how the scheme operated. Rather than a straightforward exit scam, analysts classified it as a pump-and-dump executed through one-sided liquidity manipulation. Insider-controlled wallets deposited tokens into Meteora's liquidity pools, then withdrew US dollars and SOL (Solana's native currency) as publicly traded prices collapsed. TRM Labs confirmed that one address received 1 million $LIBRA tokens approximately 20 minutes before Milei posted. Bubblemaps found 82% of the token supply concentrated in a single cluster of wallets before the crash, and insiders cashed out between $87 million and $107 million in the first three hours.

Hayden Davis, CEO of Kelsier Ventures and the project's primary operational architect, acknowledged in an interview with investigative journalist Coffeezilla, conducted the Monday after the collapse, that he held roughly $100 million extracted from the liquidity pools. Davis also stated in that interview that insider trading among influencers is standard industry practice: "That's how [key opinion leaders'] main money gets made." Davis is also linked to the $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins. A lawsuit filed against him under the US RICO Act, a racketeering statute typically used against organized crime, spans both Buenos Aires and New York federal courts.

Argentine Judge Martínez de Giorgi has ordered asset freezes covering digital wallets, bank accounts, and real estate belonging to Davis, Argentine national Orlando Rodolfo Mellino, and Colombian national Favio Camilo Rodríguez Blanco. The judge also directed Argentina's National Securities Commission (CNV) to notify all domestic virtual asset service providers of the freeze. US authorities separately froze $57 million in USDC stablecoin linked to Davis in May 2025.

Regional Fallout

Argentina carries one of the highest crypto adoption rates in the world relative to its population, with an estimated 5 million daily digital asset users out of 45 million citizens. Persistent peso devaluation, capital controls, and distrust of traditional banks have made crypto a practical financial tool rather than a speculative luxury for many Argentinians.

The $LIBRA collapse landed with particular force in that environment. The scandal, dubbed "Cryptogate" by Argentine media, triggered immediate political consequences. Argentina's stock market dropped 6% on the first trading day after the collapse, and within days, 12 opposition lawmakers opened an impeachment inquiry into Milei. The Economist characterized the episode as the "first big scandal" of Milei's presidency.

Rodolfo Andragnes of Bitcoin Argentina described the damage plainly: "For us, it's back to square one." Pablo Sabbatella of Defy Education put the structural problem this way: "With meme coins you don't have that chance because everything is rigged. It's a fixed game from the very beginning."

The fallout has spread across Latin America. Brazil and Chile are each weighing proposed measures under discussion that include bans on crypto projects using national symbols, mandatory identity verification for memecoin issuers, and asset freeze powers for developers under investigation. Reports indicate the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Action Task Force have also directed heightened attention toward high-risk memecoin categories at the international level, though those claims require confirmation from primary institutional sources.

What Comes Next

The LIBRA case has become a reference point for regulators and crypto advocates across Africa and South Asia. Countries including Nigeria, Kenya, India, and Pakistan represent markets where political endorsement of crypto projects carries disproportionate weight and retail investors operate with limited financial cushions. Argentina's use of blockchain forensics tools including Bubblemaps, Nansen, TRM Labs, and Arkham as court evidence sets a meaningful precedent for cross-border crypto fraud cases. What makes this approach novel is that on-chain data, treated as admissible forensic evidence, allowed investigators to reconstruct insider wallet behavior, trace liquidity withdrawals, and quantify losses at a granularity that traditional financial forensics cannot match. That evidentiary model is now available for regulators in other jurisdictions to study and adapt. The question facing regulators and project builders in those markets is now concrete: when a political figure promotes a token to a financially vulnerable population, and insiders have already positioned themselves to profit, what legal framework can hold anyone accountable? Argentina is actively constructing one answer.