The rightwing president of Argentina, Javier Milei, is currently enduring the worst crisis of his presidency. It’s not over his economic policies, which—despite a very minor turnaround in recent weeks—have largely expanded poverty, homelessness, and unemployment in the country. Instead, it’s over a memecoin scandal that has pissed off prominent American HODL-ers who had staked money in the project and are now badmouthing the foreign leader online.
A couple of days ago, Milei dumbly promoted a memecoin project online that, in short order, was accused of being a pump-and-dump scheme. The project in question, a cryptocurrency token called $LIBRA, rose in value by exponential degrees after Milei posted about it on Elon Musk’s platform X. Milei claimed that investing in the coin might be a novel way to “fund” small businesses. The asset climbed to a market capitalization of some $4 billion before ultimately crashing to Earth, thus evaporating tens of millions of dollars in value.
Now, a new report from CoinDesk claims that the creator behind the $LIBRA project, a crypto entrepreneur named Hayden Davis, has bragged about being able to “control” Milei. “I control that n—-,” Davis allegedly claimed in text messages with an unnamed person from mid-December that were viewed by CoinDesk. He apparently added: “I send $$ to his sister and he signs whatever I say and does what I want.” Davis, who runs a firm called Kelsier Ventures, has further claimed that he is Milei’s adviser and that he has been “working with him and his team on much bigger tokenization and really cool stuff in Argentina.” Milei’s government has previously disavowed Davis’ claims that he is connected to the administration in any official capacity.
CoinDesk breaks down the claims like this:
In text messages reviewed by CoinDesk, Hayden Davis, CEO of Kelsier Ventures, claimed he could “control” Milei because of payments he had been making to Karina Milei, a powerful figure in Milei’s government, not to mention the president’s sister…
Karina Milei’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Davis did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
It was unclear if any money was exchanged between Davis and Milei’s inner circle in advance of Libra’s launch.
Gizmodo reached out to Milei’s government, as well as to Kelsier Ventures, for comment.
If true, it’s unclear what kind of “payments” Davis might have been making to Milei’s sister or what they were for. However, the CoinDesk story notes that Davis and Kelsier Ventures were the “big winners” of Milei’s recent announcement, as crypto wallets “controlled by the entities netted over $100 million in Libra’s early hours, when it soared to $5 and then crashed over 95%, wiping out millions of dollars of speculative investments.” As a result of the incident, Milei is now being investigated by the government’s Anti-Corruption Office for allegations of fraud. Milei’s government has also announced an investigation into $LIBRA itself, and “all companies or persons involved in” its “operation,” according to a recent statement.
Milei is a favorite in rightwing circles (Elon Musk is notably a huge fan) due to his libertarian economic policies (he has referred to himself as an “anarcho-capitalist”), which have allowed wealthy foreign investors to swoop in and exploit the country. Among other things, Milei deregulated the housing market in Argentina, allowing landlords to jack up housing prices. Western outlets cheered this move, but poverty and homelessness have only skyrocketed since Milei began enacting his “shock treatment” policies—a strategy he has referred to as taking a “chainsaw” to the nation’s government. Many of those policies have been influenced by a libertarian network based in the U.S., called Atlas.
It should be comforting then (*extreme sarcasm*) that our own president is currently being advised by the very same kind of people—namely, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, who has promised the very same kind of destruction of the federal government that Milei promised in Argentina. Trump is also filling America’s financial institutions with pro-crypto zealots, who promise to pave the way for more DeFi in the economy which, as this incident would appear to demonstrate, doesn’t bode well for our economic future.