Today in crypto, Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies voted to launch an investigation into President Javier Milei over allegations he promoted the Libra memecoin scam, US President Donald Trump’s tariffs could hike crypto mining rigs prices in the US, giving non-US operations a boost, and Binance said it is delisting 14 tokens after a community vote.
Argentine lawmakers back Milei probe in Libra crypto scandal
Lawmakers in Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies backed an investigation into President Javier Milei’s alleged involvement in the Libra (LIBRA) cryptocurrency scandal.
According to an April 8 report by local news outlet Buenos Aires Times, deputies in the lower house voted 128 to 93 in favor, with seven abstentions. The same proposal previously failed to move forward in the Senate.
The news follows Milei promoting the LIBRA memecoin on social media. With the Argentine president leveraging his credibility as a government official and his 3.8 million followers, the token quickly reached $5, briefly touching a market cap of $4 billion.
Milei has since faced accusations of wrongdoing, with critics claiming that LIBRA was a rug-pull scam and that he lured investors in. Lawyer Jonatan Baldiviezo, alongside Marcos Zelaya, engineer María Eva Koutsovitis and economist Claudio Lozano, a former head of Argentina’s central bank, filed a lawsuit against Milei, accusing him of fraud.
According to Baldiviezo, Milei’s promotion was instrumental in an “illicit association” with the promoters of the cryptocurrency. The non-governmental organization Observatorio del Derecho a la Ciudad shared the concerns and filed a case that accused the president of promoting a scheme that reportedly resulted in over 40,000 investors losing more than $4 billion.
Trump tariffs could lower crypto miner prices outside US: Hashlabs CEO
US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs could collapse US demand for Bitcoin mining rigs to the benefit of non-US miners as manufacturers will look outside the US to sell surplus stock for cheaper, says Hashlabs Mining CEO Jaran Mellerud.
Mellerud said mining machine prices would likely rise in the US and fall in the rest of the world as rig makers will “need to lower prices to attract buyers in other regions.” That, he said, may allow non-US mining operations to scale up and take a larger slice of Bitcoin’s total hashrate.
Trump unveiled “reciprocal tariffs” on nearly every country on April 2 and some of the largest crypto mining machine makers are based in countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia that will be hardest hit by the tariffs.
Source: Jaran Mellerud
Crypto mining rig makers Bitmain, MicroBT and Canaan originally moved to some of these countries to circumvent a 25% tariff that Trump imposed on China in 2018 during his last administration.
Mellerud added even if Trump later drops the tariffs, “the damage is done — confidence in long-term planning has been shaken,” Mellerud said.
Binance to purge 14 tokens following “vote to delist” process
Binance is planning to delist 14 tokens from its platform on April 16 in a move designed to purge low-quality projects that do not adhere to the crypto exchange’s tighter listing requirements.
The tokens are being delisted following a “comprehensive evaluation of multiple factors,” including the exchange’s first “vote to delist” results, where community members nominated projects with less than stellar metrics, Binance announced on April 8.
Other factors included the team’s commitment to the project, development activity, trading volume and liquidity, network stability, responsiveness to Binance’s due diligence requests and new regulatory requirements.
The tokens selected for delisting are Badger (BADGER), Balancer (BAL), Beta Finance (BETA), Cream Finance (CREAM), Cortex (CTXF), Aaelf (ELF), Firo (FIRO), Kava Lend (HARD), NULS (NULS), Prosper (PROS), Status (SNT), TROY (TROY), UniLend (UFT) and VIDT DAO (VIDT).
Source: Binance
