Leonardo Rubinstein, an industrial engineer with experience in strategic consulting and financial markets, heads Zonda Bitcoin Capital, the first Argentine company aiming to list on the national stock market based on the model of accumulating Bitcoin (BTC) in the national treasury.
This initiative is A regulated investment vehicle that facilitates access to digital currencies for institutional capitalintegrating it into the capital structure of the domestic stock market.
Rubinstein’s career is essential to understanding the credibility of his proposals. He built his career in a highly demanding environment before fully immersing himself in the digital asset ecosystem. He is a strategic consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). private equity I traded as a futures trader in Chicago for 3 years. After seven years at the helm of OLX and founding the Itau Bank-backed fintech company ank, his time in the technology sector has established him as a benchmark.
But his “fall down the Bitcoin rabbit hole” began in 2015 after a chance encounter at the OLX office. Rubinstein said in an interview with CriptoNoticias:
We used to do these talks every month with famous and influential entrepreneurs, and Wenceslao Casares (founder of XAPO) came to give a talk. I heard that and became interested in the subject. At first it was a very speculative and exploratory method, but little by little I became interested in it. rabbit hole And I studied even more.
Leonard Rubinstein, CEO of Zonda Bitcoin Capital
This learning process led him to question the very foundations of the traditional economic system. As he explains, what affected him the most were questions about the source of the funds. “Seeing how broken the fiduciary system is has made me even more convinced that I want to invest the rest of my professional career in it.”
Bitcoin and “cryptocurrency” are not the same
For Rubinstein, clarity of terminology is a declaration of principles. Their approach is exclusive, unlike other market participants who group all digital assets under one umbrella. That experience helped refine his current vision even as he tried to integrate the purchase of various digital assets during his time at fintech Ank. “My interest is Bitcoin,” he emphasizes.
The difference lies in the technical and philosophical nature of Satoshi Nakamoto’s creations. To Zonda’s CEO, Bitcoin is a technological solution to a decades-old global problem: Accelerated devaluation of fiat money. It stands out for its decentralized nature, absolute scarcity and independence from intermediaries, corporations and governments.
«Reading the white paper, its design was primarily transactional; peer to peer“We also inherently had the idea of having a protection or avoidance valve against the issuance of unbacked fiduciary money,” he noted, reaffirming that Bitcoin is an outstanding asset for the financial model he is building.
An untapped niche market in Argentina
Zonda Bitcoin Capital’s mission is clear. It will become Argentina’s first public company listed on the stock market with a strategy of accumulating Bitcoin in its treasury.
The company’s goals are two-fold. On the one hand, it provides access to capital that is currently “locked up” and unable to access assets directly due to technical or regulatory barriers. On the one hand, it provides what Rubinstein defines as amplified performance.
of Metrics important to shareholders Zonda’s stock price is not just the stock price. BTC per share.
If I am a Zonda Bitcoin Capital shareholder and own shares, my team is committed to working to deliver more Bitcoins per share over time. If you have 1 BTC, you will have 1 BTC after 1 year, regardless of the price. On the other hand, if I own one share of Zonda stock, our expectations would be: management That means you’ll have more Bitcoins per share in a year’s time.
Leonard Rubinstein, CEO of Zonda Bitcoin Capital.
This approach aims to mimic the success of the strategy. (The company founded by Michael Saylor, a pioneer in making Bitcoin treasury a business model) has outperformed BTC since launching its accumulation strategy in August 2020.
Furthermore, Rubinstein emphasizes that: Tax efficiency of this vehicle in local conditions. Investing in publicly traded stocks exempts individuals from income and personal wealth taxes, giving them a competitive advantage over directly holding BTC.
For companies, this represents a way to diversify their portfolios through regulated means with assets that are uncorrelated with a country’s macro or micro conditions.
Why should Zonda Bitcoin Capital choose ETFs for your business?
Despite being an Argentinian initiative, Zonda Bitcoin Capital has designed the following operating structure: We pursue institutional safety and fiscal efficiency.
The company chose to use U.S. ETFs to avoid being subject to taxes on unrealized gains, a potential risk if the assets are held directly in its own wallet or local custodial service.
“We chose to invest through the US BlackRock ETF, iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). This solves these two issues and gives investors the peace of mind that their custodian will be held by Coinbase or Fidelity. Tier 1 It’s audited,” Rubinstein explains.
Transparency will be a key pillar, with Market Net Asset Value (MNAV) published on the website to allow investors to assess the relationship between the company’s market capitalization and reserves.
It is worth clarifying that the company is now listed thanks to the acquisition of Hulytego (and the original owner of the Telgopor brand), one of the oldest companies on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange with a history of more than 80 years.
Currently, it is operated under the following system. ticker HULI is awaiting regulatory approval from the National Securities Commission (CNV) to carry out a capital increase (allowing the entry of new investors), official name change to Zonda Bitcoin Capital, and ticker.
A company specializing in Bitcoin
The documents filed with CNV may raise questions about the assets that Zonda Bitcoin Capital accumulates. As reported by CriptoNoticias yesterday:
(…) The purpose of the Company is to carry out investment activities through the purchase and sale of financial instruments and/or securities and/or virtual assets of any nature, either on its own account or in conjunction with domestic or foreign third parties. This includes, but is not limited to, participation in exchange-traded funds (ETFS) or other investment vehicles that are listed and/or listed on Argentine and/or foreign stock exchanges and markets and whose underlying assets consist, in whole or in part, of Bitcoin. (BTC) or other crypto assets. and/or virtual assets of a similar nature.
Zonda Bitcoin Capital presentation in front of CNV in Argentina.
What does it actually mean when they say they buy and sell “virtual assets of any nature”? Could they also incorporate altcoins? Rubinstein clarified that while reports to CNV commonly refer to “virtual assets” for procedural reasons, the actual operation is different.
The goal is to invest only in Bitcoin. It’s a Bitcoin company, not a cryptocurrency company. The Treasury will be Bitcoin only.
Leonard Rubinstein, CEO of Zonda Bitcoin Capital.
Original goal is 1,810 BTC, vision is $1 million
Rubinstein’s ambitious plans go beyond simply creating a financial instrument. He is aiming for the top of Argentina’s corporate market.. “We want to build a company with the highest market capitalization in Argentina. If Bitcoin eventually exceeds $1 million, I believe that over time we will accumulate a lot of Bitcoin and become a very large company,” he states with confidence.
To put Rubinstein’s ambitions into perspective, Argentina’s most valuable company today is Mercado Libre, with a market capitalization of about $105 billion. This is followed by oil company YPF with about $16 billion.
As a first symbolic and quantitative milestone, Zonda Bitcoin Capital set out to reach a treasury of 1,810 BTC, a number Rubinstein calls a “patriotic figure” after the year of the May Revolution.
“We not only want to revolutionize capital markets with this number, but we also want to continue. The aim is to accumulate and accumulate,” he says.
Purchases are made in a “disciplined” manner without resorting to speculative trading.: “We do not trade, we do not enter or exit. We believe that everything is good at this price level, so we are not waiting for the exact moment to speculate.”
This vision is based on Rubinstein’s personal, but price predictions based on market data. Compare the market capitalization of digital currencies (approximately $2 trillion) to gold ($15 trillion) and the global real estate sector ($400 trillion).
Bitcoin will be worth $1 million and even more. I don’t know when it will happen, but all conditions are in place. Capital currently in gold and real estate will move to Bitcoin as the world’s capital finds it to be a much more efficient way to preserve value.
Leonard Rubinstein, CEO of Zonda Bitcoin Capital.
Bitcoin Education: The Antidote to Fiat Collapse
A core element of Zonda Bitcoin Capital is investor education. Rubinstein argues that Argentines have a relative advantage in understanding the bitcoin shortage because of their history with the peso, but warns that the problem is spreading to the world’s reserve currencies.
“We want investors to understand that the same thing is happening to the dollar at an accelerating rate, and that digital solutions like Bitcoin are the way out,” he explains.
The CEO emphasizes that the creation of this digital asset in 2008 was a citizen response that combined “the genius of cryptography, distributed computing, thermodynamics, and economics to protect us.”
In this sense, Zonda has already established collaborations with other regional pioneers, such as Mexico’s Arcadia, to strengthen the Spanish-speaking ecosystem.
A compact team of 5 professionals seniorRubinstein believes this model is highly scalable without requiring significant increases in operating costs as finance grows.
His final message is an appeal to the statistical realities of the past decade. While global monetary emissions are around 8% or 10% per year, BTC returned an average of 77% per year between 2014 and 2024.
“You don’t have to go back to when it was born in 2009 to see that it was one of the best assets to have, if not the best. We estimate that the future growth rate will broadly overcome the fiat devaluation,” the manager concluded, revealing that Zonda’s path is just beginning.
(Tag translation) Argentina
