The visible hand versus the regulating hand

Argentina proclaimed itself a pioneer of tokenization. But the regime that wrote the CNV (National Securities Commission) screwed blockchain onto the very same intermediary architecture it claimed to overcome. Starting with traceability as the historical basis of value, another economy is possible—and another battle is underway

By Pablo Rutigliano

Founder of Atómico 3. President of the Latin American Lithium Chamber. Creator of the Metals and Futures Market.

"He who accumulates energy controls the present. He who shapes value controls the future. And he who regulates the truth of others, sooner or later, ends up copying it."

There is a moment in every country's history when its definition of the future is decided in writing. It's not decided in public squares or through speeches: it's decided in the Official Gazette, in the cold, hard text of a resolution that almost no one reads in its entirety. Argentina experienced that moment in 2025, and it unfolded in three acts.

On June 13, the National Securities Commission published General Resolution 1069, launching the first real-world asset tokenization regime based on distributed ledger technologies. On August 20, Resolution 1081 was issued, incorporating stocks, corporate bonds, and CEDEARs (Argentine Depositary Receipts). On October 22, Resolution 1087 further expanded the universe of tokenizable instruments. Its president described the entire process as "a pioneering and innovative regulation" and celebrated the country's position as "at the forefront regionally and globally."

I agree with the music. I disagree with the lyrics. I agree that tokenization is the way forward, that blockchain is the civilizing tool of this era, that traceability will be the universal language of value. But I disagree—and I do so from the trenches, not from behind a desk—with what was tokenized and, above all, with how. Because beneath the modern vocabulary of the regulations lies an ancient structure. And because when you read the fine print, you discover that the State didn't open a door: it erected a tollbooth.

What the rule says, without the press release

The Argentine system does not tokenize value. It tokenizes representations of value that already existed. That distinction, which seems minor, changes everything.

For a token to be legal under Law 1069 and its amendments, the negotiable security must first exist in its traditional form—paper or physical—, be deposited with a Central Securities Depository through an authorized depository, and only then be “digitally represented.” The text itself makes this clear: the token is not a new security, but an additional form of representation of a pre-existing one.

Let's translate that into everyday language. Blockchain comes at the end of the chain, like a coat of varnish on a piece of furniture already made in the same workshop, with the same carpenters, the same wood, and the same secrets. Traceability—if it even exists—arrives too late, after the decisive moment has already passed. The destination of value is traced, never its origin. And the origin is precisely where lies reside.

Added to this is the central figure in the scheme: the Virtual Asset Service Provider, or PSAV. Resolution 1081 was surgical: only PSAVs registered in all categories of the CNV registry can hold tokenized assets. Without this registration—which is processed through the CNV itself, under Law 27,739, Resolution 1058, and the anti-money laundering requirements of UIF Resolution 49/2024—no legal token is possible. Those not registered do not exist. Those registered hold, trade, and collect payment.

I'm not against preventing money laundering. I'm not against protecting investors. I'm against something more subtle and more serious: a technology whose raison d'être is to eliminate the need to trust a custodian was taken and rewritten to make it impossible to operate without a custodian sanctioned by the regulator. The digitization of intermediation was given the hallowed name of "tokenization." The preservation of privilege was dressed up as a revolution.

The uncomfortable thesis: traceability is not an accessory, it is the foundation

In The Visible Hand of Blockchain Traceability I argue an idea that the Argentine standard completely ignores, because ignoring it is convenient for them.

Tokenization is not a technical act of issuance. It is a model of economic digitization linked to a predetermined structure of processes, and these processes—their planning, their evidence, their history—are what determine whether tokenization is effective or merely a label. A serious token is not born when someone presses the "issue" button. It is born much earlier, and it arises from a value chain conceived from its historical foundation.

This chain has three stages. The embryonic stage: the idea, the design, the purpose, the essence of the value. The certifying stage: the oracles, the validations, every technical detail recorded in an incorruptible manner. And the stage of raw materials or actual production: the physical asset integrating with its digital equivalent, ton by ton, watt by watt. The final value of the token is not an arbitrary figure; it is the living sum of all these stages. The traceability of a real-world asset doesn't begin when the asset is produced: it begins when it is conceived.

This reveals what Argentine regulations chose to ignore. Tokenization only truly shines when it meets the conditions for its impact to be measured, and for its sustainability and development to permeate the entire lifecycle of the value chain it represents—a chain that is required, audited, and even updated over time. This is precisely what so-called “developed” economies desperately need in these times of instability: no more opaque instruments disguised as digital, but processes that are transparent from their very foundation.

And that's why I'm saying it bluntly: when regulation is misused—when a regulator with its sights set on seizing control of the business places its stamp between the origin of value and its digital representation—it can hardly give rise to a truly tokenized historical process. Planning traceability from the ground up is what liberates tokenization. Screwing a token onto the end of an instrument that was born in obscurity doesn't liberate it; it chains it to new chains.

Adam Smith's invisible hand operated on faith. The visible hand operates on programmed transparency. The CNV regime does something stranger than both: it invokes the light of blockchain to reinforce the very vertical chain of trust that blockchain was meant to render unnecessary. It uses the new fire to guard the old temple.

Lithium, or why this is not a technical discussion

Anyone who thinks this boils down to a debate among capital markets lawyers hasn't grasped what this is about. It's about lithium. It's about copper, energy, and water. It's about who sets the price of what a country has underground.

For decades, the people watched as their wealth was decided in distant offices, under opaque contracts and empty patriotic rhetoric. Argentine lithium was—and is—sold at prices that don't always reflect its true value. When one denounces this under-invoicing, when one exposes the gap between the real value of a ton and the figure on paper, one discovers that the lie isn't in the numbers: it's in the structures. And one also discovers that these structures have their defenders.

Tokenizing lithium from its origin—from the concession, extraction, energy invested, environmental footprint, and the community that makes it possible—is not a technological whim. It is an act of sovereignty. It is restoring the resource's complete history and making it public. It is preventing value from being created in the shadows. That is why true tokenization is unsettling: not because it is risky, but because it is transparent. Opacity never fears fraud as much as it fears the light.

“First they suspended us, now they’re copying us.”

I'm not writing this from the sidelines. I'm writing it from the mud, and it's important to say that plainly.

On July 14, 2025, the CNV (National Securities Commission) sanctioned Atómico 3 for tokenizing real-world assets with blockchain traceability, in the context of complaints related to lithium tokenization. Two months and eight days later, the same agency published Resolution 1087, which incorporated into its regulations precisely the concepts we had been applying from day one: tokenization, real-world assets, and 100% digital issuances.

First they suspended us. Then they copied us. And what they copied, they distorted: they took the words and discarded the method. The CNV adopted the vocabulary of the traceable economy and emptied it of its most inconvenient content for the status quo—the idea that value can be created, certified, and circulated without asking permission from the intermediary in question.

Let's be rigorous, because rigor is also a form of courage. The fact is that there was a sanction and that there is an open conflict between a vision and an organization. My opinion—and I stand by it completely—is that this sanction didn't protect anyone: it stopped those who dared to reveal the origin of value in a market accustomed to concealing it. I'm not driven by revenge or ego. I'm driven by a conviction: that transparency is the only path to economic justice, and that technology must be at the service of truth, not power.

In defense of the adversary

A report that only agrees with itself isn't journalism: it's propaganda. So let's say what the CNV would say, and let's say it honestly.

The organization maintains that its system provides legal certainty, protects investors with segregated custody and audited procedures, combats money laundering, promotes financial inclusion, and positions Argentina as a regional hub. All of this is true in its own terms. The scheme is undoubtedly an improvement over the previous void and is more robust than those of many neighboring countries. And there are those who argue, with legitimate reasons, that without a responsible custodian and a state registry, small investors are left vulnerable to fraud—and the history of crypto is replete with evidence of this.

The question, then, isn't whether we should protect investors. The question is whether the only way to protect them is to rebuild, in digital terms, the same structure of informational privilege that produced the crises we claim to want to overcome. I don't think so. I believe it's possible to protect investors without centralizing, to audit without monopolizing, and to prevent money laundering with oracles and traceability of origin instead of gatekeepers. But I recognize that this is a gamble, not a theorem. And time—that regulatory sandbox that the CNV extended until August 21, 2026—will tell who best understood the times.

What is really at stake

Behind these three technical resolutions lies something that transcends Argentina. It's about who will control traceability.

If traceability is designed by the regulator as a condition of access, blockchain becomes a more refined control instrument: surveillance perfected with the aesthetics of freedom. If it is designed by the value chain from its historical foundation—the producer, the community, the node that generates the resource—then we are indeed witnessing a shift in the economic order. One where the price of lithium ceases to be decided at a distant desk and begins to be formed in full view of everyone, with each stage recorded, verifiable, and impossible to manipulate.

That's the real divide. It's not between tokenizing and not tokenizing—that's already settled, and I'm glad it is. It's between tokenization that illuminates the origin of value and tokenization that merely digitizes its distribution, leaving the secret of where and how it was created untouched. The first is a moral revolution. The second is just window dressing.

The CNV wrote the second one. I come to defend the first one—with a book, with a metals and futures market, with a Latin American lithium chamber, and with the conviction, proven through censorship, suspension, and copying, that the truth of value is not decreed: it is drawn.

The future of the economy will not be invisible or secret. It will be visible, distributed, and traceable. The only remaining question is who will control that light. And that, unlike the price of lithium, is still a decision we can all make together.

The revolution of values ​​will be moral, or it will not be at all. I choose the visible side: that of truth, traceability, and justice. And I choose it even if the cost of choosing it is, once again, that I am first suspended and then copied.

Author: Pablo Rutigliano — founder of Atómico 3, president of the Latin American Lithium Chamber, creator of the Metals and Futures Market. Author of the book “The Visible Hand of Blockchain Traceability” (ISBN 978-631-01-1771-3).