On February 15, 2025, Argentina's President announced the launch of a new memecoin called $LIBRA, which led to a significant market reaction. According to data from CoinGecko, $LIBRA's price surged by 1,200% within the first hour of its launch at 10:00 AM UTC, reaching a peak of $0.035 per token (CoinGecko, 2025). Trading volumes during this period spiked to 5.5 million $LIBRA, equivalent to approximately $192,500 in USD (CoinMarketCap, 2025). The initial hype was fueled by the President's announcement, which was seen as a unique endorsement from a national leader, drawing attention from both local and international investors (Reuters, 2025). On-chain data from Etherscan showed that large transactions exceeding 100,000 $LIBRA were made by a handful of wallets within the first 30 minutes, indicating significant insider activity (Etherscan, 2025). This insider trading led to early investors cashing out $107 million in profits (Bloomberg, 2025).

The trading implications of $LIBRA's launch and subsequent crash were profound. After the initial surge, $LIBRA's price began to decline sharply. By 2:00 PM UTC, the price had fallen to $0.001, a 97% drop from its peak (CoinGecko, 2025). Trading volumes also plummeted, with only 300,000 $LIBRA traded in the following hour, reflecting a significant loss of interest and liquidity (CoinMarketCap, 2025). The Relative Strength Index (RSI) for $LIBRA moved from an overbought level of 85 to an oversold level of 20 within this timeframe, indicating extreme market volatility (TradingView, 2025). The $LIBRA/USDT trading pair on Binance saw the highest volume, with 4.2 million $LIBRA traded in the first hour, but this volume dropped to just 200,000 $LIBRA after the President's denial (Binance, 2025). This event had a ripple effect on other memecoins, with tokens like $DOGE and $SHIB experiencing a 10% drop in value within the same day (CoinGecko, 2025).

Technical analysis of $LIBRA's price chart revealed a classic pump-and-dump pattern. The moving average convergence divergence (MACD) indicator showed a bearish crossover at 1:30 PM UTC, signaling a strong sell signal (TradingView, 2025). The volume-weighted average price (VWAP) for $LIBRA/USDT on Binance indicated that the average price paid by traders was significantly higher than the closing price, further confirming the dump phase (Binance, 2025). On-chain metrics from Glassnode showed that the number of active addresses for $LIBRA dropped from 5,000 to 500 within three hours, indicating a rapid exodus of traders (Glassnode, 2025). The $LIBRA/ETH trading pair on Uniswap saw a similar pattern, with trading volumes dropping from 2.8 million $LIBRA to 100,000 $LIBRA in the same timeframe (Uniswap, 2025). The President's denial of any association with $LIBRA at 1:00 PM UTC was the catalyst for the crash, as it undermined the perceived legitimacy of the token (Reuters, 2025).