Argentina Freezes 25 LIBRA-Linked Crypto Accounts in Money-Laundering Probe

Crypto News

Argentina's federal judiciary has frozen dozens of crypto wallets tied to the collapsed LIBRA token and ordered six international exchanges to surrender complete client files. Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi directed Binance, Bybit, OKX, CoinEx, FixedFloat, and Bitfinex to hand over KYC records, IP connection logs, transaction histories, and linked bank accounts. LIBRA, a Solana-based altcoin that imploded in early 2025, sits at the center of a money-laundering case that has now reached the world's largest trading platforms. The order compels each venue to produce account-opening documents and internal memos, tightening the legal net around whoever controlled the so-called Team Libra wallets.

Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano requested the freeze on July 14, nearly a year and a half after the token's collapse wiped out retail buyers. His petition leaned on a Federal Police cybercrime report that reconstructed the flow of funds from Team Libra wallets to major centralized venues. Investigators traced an unbroken chain of on-chain transactions, mapping how proceeds moved from origin wallets toward exchange deposit addresses. The delay between the collapse and the court action reflects the painstaking work of following blockchain trails across multiple protocols. The report ultimately gave the court enough evidentiary weight to justify freezing assets before any potential dissipation.

At least 25 accounts have been frozen, though the ruling itself refers more broadly to dozens of wallets. Each exchange must now deliver a detailed dossier: account-opening files, IP connection logs, full transaction histories, linked bank accounts, and any internal compliance memos. That scope goes well beyond a routine data request, effectively forcing the platforms to expose the identities behind pseudonymous addresses. On-chain data can reveal how funds moved, but only exchange KYC records can attach real names to the wallets. The combination is what prosecutors need to convert blockchain forensics into named suspects who could ultimately face asset confiscation.

The judge held that both the plausibility of the underlying claim and the danger of delay were established — the two thresholds required to justify a freeze under Argentine procedure. As a result, the accounts will remain locked to preserve assets for potential confiscation before any proceeds can be cashed out into fiat. Argentina's Federal Police cybercrime unit will process the exchange requests, with Interpol stepping in where cross-border cooperation is needed. Because the named platforms operate globally, enforcement hinges on international coordination rather than domestic subpoenas alone. The framework signals that regulators increasingly treat offshore exchanges as reachable when laundering allegations cross national borders.

The cybercrime report describes a deliberate laundering method known as smurfing, or structuring — the daily distribution of fragmented amounts across many wallets to obscure their origin. Funds allegedly moved through the Jupiter aggregator, FixedFloat, and deBridge Finance, tools that route value across decentralized exchange infrastructure and cross-chain bridges. This layering is designed to liquidate holdings into fiat or make tracing prohibitively difficult. The findings build on evidence extracted earlier from seized phones, giving investigators both device data and on-chain records. Together they form a rare end-to-end reconstruction of how a token's proceeds were allegedly washed through DeFi rails.

The case remains politically charged. On February 14, 2025, President Javier Milei promoted the Solana-based LIBRA token on his X account, a post that was later deleted. According to the complaint, the price rocketed from roughly $0.01 to nearly $5 — an increase approaching 500 times — before collapsing within hours. A small cluster of wallets allegedly withdrew around $100 million during that window, while more than 40,000 buyers who entered after the endorsement were left holding losses. The gap between the token's brief all-time high and its near-instant collapse is central to prosecutors' theory that the launch functioned as a coordinated extraction.

Viewed together, these developments trace a single arc: the LIBRA affair is maturing from a viral scandal into a structured cross-border prosecution built on blockchain forensics. Our reading of the resolution — a primary court document, not a secondhand account — is that on-chain evidence now carries evidentiary weight comparable to seized devices, a shift with implications for every centralized exchange. The broader market backdrop remains cautious: COINOTAG's aggregate data shows a Fear & Greed Index of 27 (Fear), Bitcoin dominance at 69.8%, and total crypto market capitalization near $1.84 trillion. In a risk-averse tape, high-profile enforcement against speculative tokens reinforces the flight toward established assets, and makes AI-driven wallet tracing and compliance tooling more central than ever.