By Pablo Rutigliano – October 7, 2025
Argentina is cartelized. Not only in its economy, but in its thinking, in its bureaucracy, in its way of covering up the privileges of a few under the guise of institutional legitimacy. For decades, a model of power has been perfected that reproduces itself in offices, in business chambers, in government secretariats and in the very oversight authorities. They call it a “regulatory body,” but in reality they are the guardians of a system that serves only to perpetuate corruption.
That structure, which dominates the country from the shadows, has found in mining its greatest source of impunity. They hand out concessions, manipulate figures, underinvoice exports, smuggle lithium and then sit at international conferences talking about “transparency and development.” It is an obsolete model, serving the monopolies and multinationals that buy for pennies the assets of mining SMEs, the true generators of national value.
For years we have been warning the same thing: the only way to break this network of interests is through real tokenization, blockchain traceability and verifiable transparency. And that is what Atómico 3 proposed. An economic model born not of rhetoric, but of technical, accounting and legal knowledge. Because in mining, every peso invested in exploration, drilling, laboratory studies or geological certification is a capitalized economic asset, not a lost expense. It is the first stone of a reserve that can become real wealth, genuine foreign currency, sustainable development.
That is why tokenization is not a whim: it is the bridge between investment and truth. It is the tool that allows every cent allocated to a mining SME to be visible, traceable and auditable, under international standards and within the framework of the regulations that the National Securities Commission itself should have strengthened, not destroyed. Because Resolution 1060, beyond its apparent regulatory intent, regulates absolutely nothing: it is a true institutional travesty. A maneuver that, far from bringing order to the market, seeks to dismantle innovative models, crush transparency and maintain control of a system dominated by financial monopolies. Anyone who has tried to tokenize assets without submitting to the interests of that caste —like Atómico 3— ends up persecuted, defamed or suspended.
It was no coincidence that the company’s suspension came right after the Latin American Lithium Chamber, which I chair, formally expanded in May the criminal complaint in case 3309/2023, initiated in 2023. That case, filed in federal court, not only investigates but has already judicially established the existence of lithium smuggling and underinvoicing. The federal courts indicted and confirmed the liability of companies operating in complicity with that very crime, exposing the scheme of systematic evasion we have been pointing out for a long time. This is not a hypothesis or a pending complaint: it is a proven fact, a verified crime, and a system that, despite the evidence, remains protected by the same institutional actors who should have dismantled it.
Nor was it a coincidence that Federal Court No. 4 confirmed the indictment of Livent, validating with a ruling what the Latin American Lithium Chamber has maintained for years. We said it with documentation, with audits, with technical reports, and we reiterated it in every judicial and administrative filing. The reaction was immediate: instead of investigating those responsible for the smuggling, the CNV decided to go after the company that proposed the most advanced transparency in the region.
This is clearly demonstrated by the complaint filed, case 36.601/25, in which the technical reports submitted by the CNV as alleged evidence are entirely unfounded. They are based on erroneous, inconsistent and arbitrary interpretations that disregard the Capital Markets Law itself, which unequivocally establishes that Atómico 3 is not a security. That condition alone invalidates any attempt to impose sanctions under a regime that does not apply to it, and reveals a deliberate manipulation of legal criteria to justify a baseless suspension.
Added to this are countless technical flaws, in which they attempt to validate criteria that do not even exist in current regulations. There is no regulation on how a token is defined, how a tokenization process is carried out, or its accounting or legal treatment within the Argentine capital market. In other words, the CNV acted without a legal framework, without a regulatory procedure and without the technical competence to do so. What is clearly observed is an abuse of power and manifest arbitrariness in the decision to suspend Atómico 3, violating not only the constitutional principles of legality and due process, but also the right to innovation, free competition and economic freedom.
The president of the CNV and his circle are the most precise representation of that decadence. They talk about regulating, but what they do is destroy. They talk about protecting investors, but what they do is protect monopolies. They talk about transparency, but the only thing they display is a legal, technical and moral travesty. They are the most evident expression of what Argentina needs to overcome: the culture of fear of change.
That is why it is no surprise that paid media repeat official statements without reading them, that CAEM defends the very companies that have been indicted, and that officials look the other way. They are cogs in the same machine, a machinery that works only if no one challenges it. But Atómico 3 challenged it, exposed it and broke it. And that, in a country where the truth is uncomfortable, has consequences.
Nevertheless, cases 36.601/25, for defamation and damages, and 3309/2023, for underinvoicing and smuggling, are moving forward with the force of truth. Because this country needs to recover its institutional dignity; it needs to trust again in those who build, those who innovate, those who take risks. Atómico 3 was not born to obey the system, it was born to change it. To prove that transparency is not proclaimed, it is implemented. That traceability is not promised, it is executed. And that technology is not feared, it is understood.
What is at stake today is not a company, it is a model of country. One that can keep selling its lithium at the price of silence or can tokenize it with transparency and put it at the service of real development. They will not silence us. They will not destroy an idea that was born to free SMEs, democratize mining and show that the future has already arrived. They can suspend a company, but they cannot suspend a truth. And that truth, sooner or later, will leave them exposed before history.
