President Javier Milei of Argentina. Why am I thinking of "Evita?"
The parallels are frightening, and informative at the same time. The President of Argentina is facing impeachment for having sucked a trusting public into a cryptocurrency that failed.
President Javier Milei briefly endorsed a cryptocurrency known as $LIBRA. On Friday night he took to X announcing the "Viva la Libertad Project." He claimed it would bolster Argentina's economy. The token's value soared and then crashed within hours. 8 users made off with bulk of the $4.5 billion market cap.
In Argentina it is illegal for public officials to advertise private ventures. It is here, too. 5 CFR § 2635.702. Trump breaks this law every day with his merchandise.
Melei's X post said, "This private project will be dedicated to encouraging growth of the Argentina economy." It was followed with a link to $LIBRA project.
Hours later, Milei deleted the post and replaced it with another. "I was not aware of the details of the project and after having become aware of it I decided not to continue spreading it."
Saturday, a statement was put out saying, "President Javier Milei has decided to immediately involve the Anti-Corruption Office to determine whether there is any improper conduct member of the national government, including the President himself."
It looks like that may have been a little too late. The damage was already done.
On Sunday, lawyers filed fraud charges against President Javier Milei for promoting a cryptocurrency on social media.
You would think that because of the controversy, the link to the website the President posted, would have been shut down. But it's not. It's vivalalibertadproject.com.
They're still doing business like nothing happened.
They still are pushing the $LIBRA token.
While people close to Javier look at calls for impeachment as trying to overthrow the President, his problems have just started with the first lawsuit.
We have the same problem with our own, I hate to say it, President. A former human being known as Donald Trump.
Donald Trump did the same thing with $TRUMP, which seems to be known as OFFICIAL TRUMP. Trump's cryptocurrency started out at $6.50, went up to $73, and now it's hanging around $18.63. It's called pump and dump. Get the price up artificially, sell it before it goes down.
There are a lot of people who invested as it was going up and have lost a lot. The same thing happened with Trump's Trump Media stock. It also went up to $75 and currently it's at $30. It's really worth a dollar, and maybe not even that. Truth Social is the only functioning entity in Trump Media and it's lost money since it's creation. It's only propped up by the clueless MAGA faithful.
There are also Trump's NFT'S, non-fungible tokens. More like non-functional tokens.
He has physical trading cards and digital trading cards. I tried looking up their values and they range all over the place from nothing to hundreds of dollars. All quite confusing.
Why is TrumpCoin selling for 1.5 cents?
All of his grifting scams started before he became President. The last one was the $TRUMP cryptocurrency while he was still President-elect.
Sunday, he still did a sales pitch for his book of photos called "Save America." The cover is the famous picture of Trump pumping his fist after the ear shot. The book had been out of stock. The new stock is signed books for $999.00.
Should Trump be huckstering product while President? No. 5 CFR § 2635.702 says he can't.
Is Argentina more of a democracy than the United States? The Economist's Democracy Index has the United States at 29, and Argentina at 54. Both numbers indicate a flawed democracy. The listings are from 2023.
The ratings will change with Trump in charge. Where will we be?
Let's get back to $TRUMP. In June of 2021, Donald Trump called Bitcoin a scam. "Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam. I don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar."
After some Bitcoin mining executives visited Mar-a-Lago in June of 2024, Trump did an about face. He saw the light that he could make money out of nothing.
Not only that, but now people should "VOTE FOR TRUMP!" because he had changed his stance.
CBDC is Central Bank Digital Currency, like if one was created by the Federal Reserve, which has looked at it. China already has one. I am throughly confused by Bitcoin making us "be ENERGY DOMINANT!!!" Bitcoin mining uses up so much energy it is an environmental disaster, because of the massive amounts of electricity it uses to mine the coins. This is a proof of work cryptocurrency. The other type is proof of stake, which uses far less resources. Then there is a meme coin, which has even less of a reason to exist. It has value only because people are led to believe it does. $TRUMP is a meme coin. The last type is stablecoin, which is tied to something of actual value like gold or a national currency, but there unstable versions of stablecoins as well.
What we have now is a President who launched his own digital currency on January 17, 2025. Three days before taking office.
Fortune Magazine said, "Less then 3 weeks after it's release, President Trump's meme coin has produced more losers than winners. For every dollar in trading fees the Trump crypto creators raked in, investors lost $20."
That's called a scam. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising but we have a President who is even worse than the President of Argentina. Argentina is going to try to impeach Milei for his support of a scam.
Trump declared he was all for the whole country to lose, right out in the open when he signed an executive order on January 23rd called: Strengthening American Leadership In Digital Financial Technology.
Trump has Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent already working on the plan to create a cryptocurrency backed by the dollar, or some other scheme where the U.S. Treasury or the Federal Reserve is involved.
Trump says agencies, the federal government, cannot promote or create a CBDC. He says we need to everything we can to help along individuals and private companies to make us the crypto capital of the world.
At the same time, Trump rescinds all of Biden's executive orders that protected us against scams. Bessent is a crypto promoter. There will be a U.S. National Cryptocurrency whether we like it or not. The damage it will do to our economy is incalculable and impeachable.
Here's the critical clause: "promoting and protecting the sovereignty of the United States dollar, including through actions to promote the development and growth of lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins worldwide."
Donald thinks that stablecoins are going to strengthen the U.S. dollar when the exact opposite will occur. Stablecoins are still subject to management problems, exchange transaction fees, and when tied to a fiat currency, can cause fluctuations in that currency that would not have occurred otherwise.
Causing damage to the U.S. dollar, impeachable offense, immunity be damned.
Creating and allowing manipulation of a cryptocurrecy ($TRUMP) by foreign entities, a criminal and impeachable offense. Also a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, an impeachable offense for non-official acts.
As much as Trump has already created impeachable offenses such as pardoning the Jan.6th insurrectionists, ignoring court orders, causing worldwide havoc with foreign policy changes (all cabinet officials involved and JD Vance should be impeached along with the ringleader), ignoring the Constitution, usurping Congess's control of the purse, Gaza plans, and there must be more.
Now we can add new, and direct abuses of power regarding crypto to the pile.
Can we do better than Argentina? Can we still act like the democracy we claim to be? Probably not with this batch of Republicans, but the Democrats in the House need to keep trying and make some noise. Unlike with the failed attempt against Biden, Democrats have many valid causes.
If I have made any assertions that you think I've missed, or are incorrect, comment and I'll update the diary accordingly. I'm not an expert on cryptocurrencies, just a critic.
5 CFR § 2635.70, "Use of public office for private gain," says Donald is corrupt and breaking the law. Advertising and his crypto scam are not official acts.
Follow Trump's money and impeach him for it.
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Once again, Trump has outdone himself. I can't make this up.
Hours after I post that he should have the fate of Melei, he quotes him.