The feasibility of a regulatory model that eliminates the need for state protection was at the center of a legal debate broadcast by the NGO Bitcoin Argentina on March 17 of this year.
As international organizations increase their oversight of digital assets, the Commission analyzed whether Bitcoin’s architecture could enable the evolution of private governance based on private standards and self-regulation, posing a direct challenge to traditional legislative structures.
Moderated by Federico Camargo, the panel included Federico Asto (legal tech expert), Ricardo Mifra (tax law), and Sebastian Heredia Quero (tokenization expert).
Exhibitors agreed that the adoption of these technologies in Argentina was not an aesthetic phenomenon, but rather a response to crises like the 2001 Corralito. The state’s failures encouraged trust systems outside of the decree.
Federico Asto drew parallels between Bitcoin and the birth of the London Stock Exchange. He recalled that 17th-century merchants set their own rules in Change Alley coffeehouses long before securities laws existed.
History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. We are witnessing how legal frameworks seek to adapt the new to the old. What we need is a bottom-up approach, where honest actors self-regulate to avoid fraud and create value.
Federico Asto
One example of this new regime was Kleros, a dispute resolution platform using the Ethereum network. Inspired by ancient Greek juries, this system uses economic incentives to Anonymous judges resolve cross-border disputes.
The kleros act as a popular jury inspired by ancient Greece and the common law or norms established by the community. In this way, it is the community, rather than the central authority, that decides based on precedent.
Federico Asto
Kleros is a decentralized dispute resolution protocol that was born in France in 2017 under the name Coopérative Kleros. CriptoNoticias reports that the project was founded by Ast and expert Clément Lesaege and serves as a “court of the new economy.”
Compared to traditional oversight models, the Commission proposed “bottom-up” governance. In this governance, the legitimacy of the system emanates from the participants themselves rather than from central legislation.
Under this premise, technical self-regulation and incentive design within the network acts as a natural filter to prevent fraud, allowing the community to uphold transparency in transactions and validate or punish the actions of others according to community-established rules.
Bitcoin’s impact on countries with low credit ratings
Self-regulation is becoming increasingly important in regions with weak banking systems. Credit to the private sector was only 13.6% of GDP as of October 2025, according to data from the Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina. For experts, for countries with these indicators, Crypto-economy provides opportunities for financial access This was previously not technically possible.
However, the Commission recognized that this progress creates tensions with tax collection and regulatory bodies that identify tax evasion and money laundering risks.
The discussion maintained a favorable approach to decentralization. However, the NGO Bitcoin Argentina communication had no representatives from the banking sector or the government, so the public oversight advocates’ claims had no counterpart.
In Bangladesh, Bitcoin does not represent a systemic risk. This is an opportunity for economic access that was not possible before. There, entrepreneurs can use a decentralized network to access global services without using traditional banks.
Sebastian Heredia Quero.
Heredia Cuero emphasized that Argentina’s lack of trust is a persistent structural problem. He said the lack of productive financing increases the risk of a repeat of the 2001 crisis, when credit restrictions exacerbated the economic contraction caused when governments resorted to printing money to finance their finances.
In this regard, he defended Bitcoin as a tool that provides economic independence through the direct custody of assets by users and the use of smart contracts, a mechanism that eliminates traditional intermediaries and enables planned transactions without relying on centralized institutions.
The crypto economy poses no danger to society, so let it develop freely.
Sebastian Heredia Quero.
Experts stressed that poorly designed regulations could cause a crisis more severe than without strict rules. Minfra recalled that in Spain, unemployment reached 25% in 2008-2009 after the global financial crisis. Regulatory failures and lack of effective oversight in complex derivatives.
At the same time, he acknowledged that fraudsters operate in all economic and financial systems, but argued that such incidents can be detected and sanctioned without having to limit the development of technology that creates real value for participants.
This dual perspective ended the discussion. They concluded that the risk lies not in the freedom to innovate, but in the quality of the rules that apply, whether in traditional systems or in the emerging crypto-economy.
In Argentina, where fiscal constraints persist, the panelists asked us to assess whether current state interventions are truly preventing abuses or, on the contrary, limiting the practical solutions that the population has already effectively adopted.
(Tag Translation) Argentina
