Pablo Rutigliano, the Visionary Who Spearheaded the Tokenization Revolution and is Now Confronting the Mining Elite to the Bitter End

Pablo Rutigliano defends his position on the tokenization of minerals in Latin America against the so-called "Mining Caste"

In 2019, when no one in Argentina or the region was talking about tokenization, when the word blockchain sounded like distant jargon used by technologists and cryptographers, Pablo Rutigliano was already quietly working on a model that would forever transform the real economy. While others repeated old formulas from the traditional financial market, he was thinking about how to bring digital traceability to the heart of productive projects, to provide them with transparency, genuine financing, and democratization of capital.

In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and with the world in crisis, that vision became an institutional reality with the creation of Atómico 3, Latin America's first mining asset tokenization platform. There, together with the Latin American Lithium Chamber, which he founded and presides over, he began to deploy a system that is now being discussed around the world: blockchain as 21st-century accounting, tokens as non-negotiable assets, and traceability as a guarantee of transparency. What seemed like a utopia has become a model that many are now copying.

However, there is another side to the story. For being a pioneer, Rutigliano is now being viciously attacked. Journalists in the pay of vested interests, interest groups entrenched in the mining industry, business chambers, and even state agencies have joined forces to defame him, lie about his work, and discredit Atómico 3. Why? Because they want to take over the business.

Criminal case 3309/23 has already proven Rutigliano right. In it, he denounced the under-invoicing of lithium carbonate and smuggling, which resulted in a loss of $4.3 billion for Argentina. Criminal Court No. 4 stated in black and white that what he had been warning about was not just talk, but a fact proven in court.

From that moment on, the reaction of the mining caste was fierce. They mounted media campaigns with false accusations about non-existent holders, financed paid journalists, and set up a smear campaign with the support of business chambers and state agencies. The Argentine Chamber of Mining Entrepreneurs (CAEM), the National Mining Secretariat, the National Securities Commission, and even private firms such as Marvel Farwell aligned themselves in defense of the interests of a cartelized and monopolized sector, which just three years ago claimed that "lithium was not a commodity" and that "tokenization was unfeasible." Today, the same people who denied and discredited it are repeating in conferences and interviews that "tokenization is viable." It is a blatant mockery.

Look at the newspaper clippings from those years and you will see the contradictions. There they are, in print, their words denying lithium as a commodity and dismissing the transparency of blockchain. Today, those same actors talk about tokenization as if it were their own invention, hiding the fact that their only goal is to take over the business they once despised and now see as the key to the future.

The response to this double standard is already underway. Pablo Rutigliano and Atómico 3 filed criminal case 36601/25 against those who defamed, attacked, and used the state as a tool of persecution. The Argentine courts will once again see what has already been proven in case 3309/23: that there was smuggling, that there was under-invoicing, and that Argentina lost billions of dollars.

Oh, Caem, Caem! How much will you have to answer for before the courts? The same goes for the National Securities Commission, the National Mining Secretariat, and those from private firms such as Marvel Farwell who lent their signatures to cover up for the mining caste. The story is clear: first they fought Rutigliano, then they imitated him, and finally they will have to face him on the only terrain where envelopes and media operations are worthless: the courts.

Today, Pablo Rutigliano is going all the way. He won't negotiate, he won't shut up, he won't hide. The fight he started in 2019, when no one was talking about tokenization, is now public and visible, and he will take it where it belongs: to court. "If I have to die here, I'll die here," he says. And it's not just a figure of speech: it's the statement of someone who knows he has opened a path that no one can close, because transparency and traceability are no longer ideas; they are realities that the whole world will adopt.

The paradox is clear. The man who first spoke of tokenization, who imagined blockchain as the great transparent record of the economy, is now under attack by the very people who copied his discourse and are trying to take over the lithium business. But history repeats itself: first they fought him, then they imitated him, and finally they will have to recognize him. The mining caste's narrative will have to face a terrain where deals and favors are worthless: the Argentine courts. There, as already happened in case 3309/23, truth will prevail over lies.