Argentina drafts a bill letting investment funds hold digital assets

Argentina's Deregulation Ministry, run by Federico Sturzenegger, has drafted a bill that would let investment funds hold digital assets and accept bitcoin as collateral for loans, Bitcoin.com News reported on July 23. The draft also covers tokenized securities and smart contracts. It is an early text with a long road ahead.

Early estimates cited in the reporting talk about billions in potential new demand if regulated funds get the green light. We would treat that as a ceiling rather than a forecast. The direction is clear, though, and it arrived while bitcoin was fading under $65,000.

What the draft changes

The text goes wider than the bitcoin-in-funds headline suggests. Four planks matter, according to the reporting.

First, investment funds could invest in digital assets whenever the fund's stated investment policy allows it. That turns crypto from a prohibited category into a normal allocation decision. Second, digital assets would gain standing as loan collateral, a structural move US lawmakers have circled for years without landing.

Third, the bill authorizes full tokenization of negotiable securities, covering issuance, custody, transfer and sale. That is an attempt to move the plumbing of Argentine capital markets on chain rather than merely tolerate crypto beside it. Fourth, smart contracts would get full legal recognition, which makes automated settlement enforceable rather than experimental.

Taken together, the four planks cover the whole stack at once: the asset, the credit market around it, the settlement layer and the contract law underneath. Most jurisdictions have taken a piecemeal approach, which is why the draft deserves attention even at this early stage.

A long road through the CNV and Congress

None of this is law, and the draft says so in its own caveats. The text sits inside the executive branch and may change before it is presented. It then needs presidential approval, followed by congressional review.

Even after that, an unnamed source in the reporting frames crypto allocations as investment options subject to regulations that the CNV must approve. The CNV is Argentina's securities regulator. The realistic sequence runs draft, presidency, Congress, regulator, and each stage can dilute or stall the bill.

The pattern behind the draft makes us take it more seriously than a trial balloon. In December 2025 Argentina's central bank moved to let domestic banks offer crypto services during 2026, CoinDesk reported. The Milei administration has treated deregulation as its signature project, and the bill comes from the minister whose portfolio is removing rules. In our reading, it is the logical next step, from banking services into the country's fund industry.

For US readers the contrast with the Clarity Act is instructive. Washington is negotiating that bill clause by clause toward an August deadline, as we covered when its odds improved. Argentina is attempting the same kind of change through an executive-branch draft.

The market it landed on

The market greeting this news was in no mood to celebrate. Coingabbar's July 24 update had the total crypto market cap easing 1.3 percent to roughly $2.3 trillion. Bitcoin traded near $64,961, down 1.4 percent over 24 hours on about $23.7 billion of volume. The Fear and Greed index sat at 28, deep in fear.

That extends the fade after bitcoin stalled above $65,500 going into Fed week. Yahoo Finance's July 23 session note had prices mixed while analysts debated whether the market has already put in its bottom. The one green corner was DeFi, up 9.8 percent as a sector, with Polkadot and the XRP Ledger ecosystem leading gainers.

None of that changes on Argentine headlines, and it should not: a draft bill moves no money this quarter. What it moves is the map. If it passes, Argentina would join the jurisdictions where regulated funds can hold bitcoin directly, and demand built by statute tends to outlast the week's sentiment reading. The Fed meets on July 28 and 29.