Historic: The CNV now allows investment in million-dollar real estate projects without having the full capital

The tokenization of assets has ceased to be a niche crypto concept and has begun to emerge as an investment alternative that is already established in Argentina. It now has its own regulatory framework and local players who have already launched their products.

The financial deregulation agenda of the national Government led by Javier Milei has opened the door to instruments that, until recently, were the privilege of a few. In the past, the lack of clear rules under Kirchnerist governments kept these instruments in a regulatory limbo, which could have served as a potential protection against inflation. That scenario changed with the new framework from the CNV, which in just over a year went from having no specific regulation to leading the region in this area.

What are tokens and how do they work

Tokens are digital assets created on a blockchain that can represent anything from financial assets to participation in a physical real-world asset. Unlike a conventional payment wallet like Mercado Pago or MODO, tokens cannot be operated in just any digital wallet, as they require a different functionality, usually associated with cryptocurrency operations.

In finance, tokenization allows for the digital representation of rights over a stock, a bond, or a CEDEAR (like those replicating shares of Apple, Google, or Nvidia) through a token registered on a blockchain.

In the case of a physical asset, the mechanism is the same but applied to a tangible good. For example, if a building is valued at USD 1 million, it can be divided into a million tokens, and an investor can acquire just 100 or 1000 without needing the full capital, thus becoming the owner of a small fraction of the asset.

Changes in asset tokenization

The arrival of these tools occurs amid the advancement of asset tokenization and the new rules for the blockchain industry driven by the Government. While the Executive is discussing in Congress a reform of the General Companies Law, pushed by Minister Federico Sturzenegger, which enables "non-human companies" and creates the figure of the DAO as its own corporate type, the National Securities Commission (CNV) has been scaling its own tokenization regime in parallel.

This regime started at the end of 2024 with General Resolution No. 1069, the first specific framework for the tokenization of real-world assets in all of Latin America, and this year the CNV advanced with General Resolution 1150/2026, which expanded the possibility of tokenizing negotiable securities issued under any automatic authorization regime. The president of the agency, Roberto Silva, defined the package of measures as part of what the CNV called its "Big Bang" regulatory.

This framework does not yet specifically include real estate tokenization. The real estate schemes that are already operating in the country mostly do so outside the CNV's orbit, supported by a traditional legal structure (a real estate trust that is the actual owner of the asset) and not in a public offering of negotiable securities.

The push from local ventures

Part of the growth of this market in the country is linked to projects like Blockenfy, an Argentine startup that tokenizes assets. Corporate clients seek to attract investment from their own users in assets ranging from real estate to renewable energies, credit portfolios, and agricultural assets.

Joaquín Linares, co-founder of the company, describes a young market but one with exponential growth. "Argentina has enormous technical talent and a very sophisticated financial culture, paradoxically due to its economic history. This makes us very good at solving problems of this kind", he explains.

In the same vein, Juan Ignacio Lazarte, also co-founder of Blockenfy, points out that the success of the trend depends on building trust: "For tokenization to be truly massive, our vision is not just about dividing an asset into digital parts. What we seek is to create a system so secure and clear that traditional finance will dare to take the leap without fear, connecting the real economy with the digital world transparently".

One of the biggest initial challenges, Linares recounts, was educating the market: "It wasn't easy to convince a company to tokenize its assets when neither its clients nor its accountants knew what we were talking about". Nevertheless, the outlook moving forward is optimistic: "Today that is changing radically, especially among new generations. Additionally, the regulatory context and the growth of the global market are doing the work that we previously had to do alone".

A concrete case to understand the model is car rental: a vehicle valued at around USD 25,000 is divided into digital parts that different investors can acquire. That car is put to work — for example, on platforms like Uber — and the income it generates is distributed proportionally among those who participated in the investment.

Argentines have already mobilized over USD 91 billion in on-chain transactions in recent years. The country also leads the Latin American ranking of crypto adoption, with 19.8%, ahead of Brazil (18.6%) and El Salvador (14.6%), according to Chainalysis.

What changes compared to traditional real estate investment

The central difference is not that a new asset appears, but rather the way to access it. In a cost trust or a traditional real estate investment fund, the organizer is the one who fractions the asset, and the investor receives a share that exists in a centralized registry.

With tokenization, the fraction is the token itself, registered on a blockchain, which in theory facilitates traceability and the eventual resale in a secondary market without depending on the organizer to find a buyer.

The other change is the entry ticket, with platforms that already operate in the country advertising initial amounts between 50 and 500 dollars, well below the usual tickets of a classic real estate trust, which often require several thousand dollars to participate.

What does not change is the risk of the underlying asset, as if the building has low occupancy, the work is delayed, or the project is poorly managed, the profitability of the token falls just as it would for any traditional real estate investment.

Additionally, there is an extra risk specific to the technology, which is that the legal solidity of the token now depends on the legal structure behind it (the trust, the company, the vehicle that is effectively the owner of the property), and that layer is still under regulatory construction in Argentina.

What to consider before investing

For those evaluating this type of instrument, it is advisable to distinguish two layers before deciding. One is the financial layer, where the CNV has already built a specific regime to tokenize stocks, bonds, CEDEARs, and certain trusts with public offerings, with clear rules about who can issue and which agent must intervene.

The other is the direct real estate layer, where the token still lacks a unified regulatory framework and protection depends almost entirely on the fine print of the trust that structures each project.