Milei Dances in Tel Aviv, but Faces Trouble at Home
Milei Dances in Tel Aviv, but Faces Trouble at Home
Argentina’s president is facing headwinds from an ongoing crypto scandal and economic stagnation.
President Javier Milei is navigating troubled waters this year. The eccentric Argentine’s presidency got off to a strong start after pulling the country out of an inflationary spiral in 2024; since then, he has seen his approval ratings drop significantly, as a series of corruption scandals involving him and his closest associates in government have eroded his image as a populist reformer and crusader against the corrupt political class.
The biggest scandal reverberating in Argentine politics currently is an older one: Cryptogate is back, and this time Milei is directly implicated. Early last year, Milei made headlines by promoting a new cryptocurrency, $LIBRA, on his official X account, promising that the project would be “dedicated to the growth of the Argentine economy, funding small businesses and Argentine entrepreneurship.” It was, of course, a scam—in less than an hour, the founders pulled the rug, and thousands of investors who had put money into the cryptocurrency on the strength of Milei’s endorsement, lost everything. Several hours later, Milei deleted the tweet, but the damage was done. It seemed obvious that Milei had used his post and prominence to at the very least defraud the public for the benefit of his friends, and rumors circulated that the president was in on the take. Hayden Davis, the founder of Kelsier Ventures, the company that created $LIBRA, boasted that “I send $$ to [Milei’s] sister and he signs whatever I say and does whatever I want.”
Milei denied allegations that he was meaningfully involved with Davis or the crypto project as a whole, asserting that he had been misinformed and thought that he was just promoting a private initiative that would be useful to Argentines. That defense was already undermined by a social media post Milei had made in January, in which he posed with Davis and wrote that Davis had “advised me about the impact and applications of blockchain technology in the country.” It was shortly thereafter discovered that Davis had paid Milei to record a video for his online cryptocurrency academy, leaving no doubt that the two had established business relations.
But the biggest fish of the $LIBRA scandal so far was caught last month, after prosecutors subpoenaed the smartphone of Mauricio Novelli, the CEO of Tech Forum (a cryptocurrency conference) and the middleman between Milei and Davis. Novelli apparently had ambitions to set himself up in the lucrative business of selling access to the president, primarily to companies involved in the cryptocurrency sector. Novelli drew up a set of contracts for Davis and Kelsier Ventures; the services outlined ranged from a private meeting with Milei to a promise that the president would appoint Davis his advisor for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and allow him to policy in the sector. In return, Davis and his associates agreed to send Milei $5 million.
Milei’s signature is not on the contracts Novelli drew up for Davis, and his precise level of involvement in Novelli’s scheme in this particular case remains unknown. But it is on at least one other document Novelli probably drew up for the president.
In addition to employing Milei as an instructor at Novelli’s own cryptocurrency academy, N&W Professional Traders, Novelli appears to have been the instrument in negotiating the details for a letter of intent establishing a relationship between Milei and Cube Exchange, a cryptocurrency company. Multiple drafts of the preliminary agreement were found on Novelli’s phone, laying out that the company would establish a credit union in Argentina to facilitate the purchase and use of cryptocurrency in the country, as well as found a “Milei Institute.” In return, the president promised that Cube Exchange would receive tax benefits, regulatory carveouts, and direct access to Argentina’s central bank and financial regulatory agencies. Cube Exchange confirmed that Milei signed this preliminary agreement in August of 2024, and it appears that Novelli and his associates netted $150,000 in fees from the exchange.
These revelations have rendered Milei’s response to the $LIBRA scandal entirely incredible. Milei has obviously been extensively involved in an essentially predatory network of cryptocurrency influencers and speculators, and probably made a neat profit from such arrangements. This is at the very least an abuse of his trust as a public figure and potentially of his office as president of Argentina. Combined with ongoing investigations into a corruption scandal at Argentina’s pension benefits agency, and the chainsaw-waving populist’s accusations against la casta take on the odor of hypocrisy.
The polling confirms that the public has taken a dim view of such affairs as well. Milei’s approval ratings have fallen significantly. For most of his presidency, his net approval ratings hovered in the mid to high 40s; in March, they fell to 37 percent. His net approval rating has cratered in the past year, going from -2 percent to -24 percent.
Not all of this has to do with political scandals, of course. While Milei managed to prevent Argentina from falling into hyperinflation, he has struggled—as every Argentine president this century has—to wrangle the country’s economy, which has been disastrously mismanaged for decades. Growth during his presidency has been largely mediocre: The economy contracted 1.3 percent in 2024, grew 4.4 percent in 2025, and is expected to reach 3 percent in 2026, disappointing rates for a developing economy on the mend. Milei and his allies have made a number of important structural reforms—slashing regulations, lifting the country’s suffocating capital controls, simplifying taxation, and balancing the national budget—but voters have grown impatient and are beginning to demand better results.
Worse still, Milei has struggled to bring the country’s consistently high monthly inflation rate down to something comparable to the inflation rate of developed economies. Argentine monthly inflation bottomed out at 1.5 percent in May of 2025—the best in many years—but it has slowly been creeping up in the months since. Last month, it reached its highest rate in a year, 3.4 percent, in no small part due to the fuel shock caused by the United States’ and Israel’s decision to go to war in Iran.
The shock may not be Milei’s fault, and every country is struggling with elevated prices from inflation, but he has not been engaged in mitigating the effects either. As one of the staunchest pro-Israel politicians on the planet (he previously considered converting to orthodox Judaism), Milei has been an active supporter of the war, regardless of its impacts on the domestic economy. Indeed, Milei made a trip to Israel last week, where he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor and even did a song-and-dance number during the country’s Independence Day festivities.
“I support totally and completely the actions of the United States and Israel,” he told the Spanish periodical El Debate. “If you stand with Israel, you stand with Judeo-Christian values and with that you stand with capitalism.”
That message may resonate within Tel Aviv and the Oval Office in Washington, but it does not appear to be particularly endearing to Argentines, who are being stuck with the bill.
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