\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t It is no secret that President Javier Milei wants to position Argentina as the ideal destination for investments in the technology sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A bill sponsored by Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger, which was recently sent to the Argentine Congress, is a concrete step in that direction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the initiative, which seeks to reform the General Companies Act, is approved, it would grant legal status to \u201cnon-human companies\u201d\u2014 i.e., managed exclusively by AI \u2014 and would also create the legal entity of decentralized organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Companies Act regulates the creation, operation, and dissolution of companies operating in Argentina. Under the guise of modernizing it \u2014 the law dates back to the 1970s \u2014 one of its main changes would be introducing the concept of an \u201cautomated company.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a report by the Legal and Social Sciences School at the National University of La Plata (in Spanish, UNLP), this means \u201ca company that can operate completely autonomously through algorithms or artificial intelligence, without the need for employees for its day-to-day operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The legislation \u201cenables a business model where decision-making and the execution of operations are handled by the automated system, not by individuals during working hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mar\u00eda Eugenia Lafuente, the general counsel for the multinational legal and business advisory firm Binder Dijker Otte (BDO) in Argentina, told the Herald that, \u201cif approved, the draft bill will be the first legislation of its kind in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to attorney Pablo Serd\u00e1n, the closest thing to an automated entity is AI agents. This means systems that \u201cexecute operations, enter into contracts, and move funds on their own, for example, in trading.\u201d<\/p>\n
He clarified, however, that they \u201calways exist within a company with human owners.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is unprecedented about the bill is that it would give that agent its own legal entity, with limited liability and without requiring a human behind it. It is an experiment, not a copy of a proven model,\u201d he explained to the Herald.<\/p>\n
Companies with no employees \u2014 and no accountable parties? The bill clarifies that these AI-run companies must identify themselves as such in their articles of incorporation. They will also be liable with their assets \u201cfor damages caused by their autonomous algorithmic systems or artificial intelligence agents.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Serd\u00e1n, this regulation means three things, and \u201call three are a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
First, he explained that, in the event of harm, \u201cthe AI isn\u2019t sued: the company is sued, and compensation is paid up to the limit of its assets. If the damage exceeds that capital, no one pays the rest. The victim absorbs the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Second, it implies that no personal liability is possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA human can be disqualified or, in serious cases, criminally prosecuted. An algorithm cannot. The only penalty is financial, and it is limited by design.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, he explained that, to determine what went wrong, the code must be reviewed, but the bill protects that code from scrutiny, except by court order.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe victim has to go to court first, just to be able to see what caused the damage, and by then the harm has already been done.\u201d<\/p>\n
He emphasized that under Argentine law, companies are not criminally liable for crimes; rather, it is the individuals with legal responsibility who are. This would not occur in a company of this type, since they do not have human officials who can be charged with any non-economic crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese types of organizations tend to hide the true perpetrators. That is why the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) views them with suspicion, and that is precisely why serious countries do not promote them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Decentralized and automated companies Another change is the creation of companies operating as DAOs, an acronym for decentralized autonomous organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These companies record their operations using blockchain technology \u2014 the same technology used by cryptocurrencies \u2014 and follow predefined guidelines in automated agreements known as smart contracts.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike automated companies, whose operations rely on centralized algorithms, DAOs are based on smart contracts and a power structure distributed among their members,\u201d the UNLP representatives explained.<\/p>\n
While acknowledging that she is not aware of any DAOs currently operating in Argentina, Lafuente, from BDO, explained that, unlike automated societies, there are indeed regulations governing them in various parts of the world.<\/p>\n
One of the first sovereign nations to recognize DAOs was the Marshall Islands in 2022. The Cayman Islands and the Bahamas have a figure known as foundation companies, which act as the \u201clegal umbrella\u201d for DAOs.<\/p>\n
Within the U.S., for example, Lafuente highlighted the case of Wyoming, which passed its own law to attract DAOs in 2021 and was later followed by Vermont, Utah, and Tennessee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Europe, for example, she cited the case of Switzerland, where DAOs are typically structured under the legal framework of Swiss associations or foundations. The Cardano Foundation, for instance, operates representing the blockchain platform and cryptocurrency of the same name.<\/p>\n
Cardano\u2019s ambassador in Argentina, Mauro Andreoli, explained to the Herald that \u201cthe Cardano blockchain decides autonomously, like a large DAO, how to spend the treasury budget. It is not decided by an executive body.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAny individual in the community submits a proposal, it is voted on by the various holders, and that amount of funds is awarded to the person who made the proposal,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Andreoli clarified that DAOs \u201care an older concept than they appear.\u201d The first ones, which appeared between 2017 and 2018, are currently \u201cbeing used less and less.\u201d<\/p>\n
In any case, he noted that this is a proposal that will bring \u201clegal certainty to investors or to technology development or financial infrastructure companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor large investors, [this change] can serve as collateral to guarantee the existence of that proportional share of equity, and even enforce it in court,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n
In other words, the tokenized shares acquired could be used as financial collateral and recognized by the Argentine courts.<\/p>\n
The problem of identification Serd\u00e1n, however, is also skeptical of the DAO model. He mentioned the promise made by Milei in his column in the Financial Times, in which he pledged that such companies would disclose who their ultimate beneficiaries are so as not to serve as a haven for illicit funds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounds good. The problem is that identifying the owners is exactly what these structures are designed to avoid, and we\u2019ve already seen it fail elsewhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He cited the case of Wyoming, whose regulations, he claimed, did not attract DAOs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey required them to disclose owners, which is impossible with thousands of anonymous members. They had to invent another entity in 2024 \u2014 the Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (DUNA) Act \u2014 to circumvent that requirement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also mentioned the case of Malta, which ended up on the FATF\u2019s gray list for failing to guarantee who was behind those projects.<\/p>\n
Finally, he warned that the very reform Milei is pushing prohibits auditing the code of the smart contracts that govern DAO operations except by court order.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEven the most lax jurisdictions, such as the Marshall Islands, maintain a human point of contact \u2014 they require an identifiable registered agent. It is worth asking what level of control Argentina retains if, in addition to joining that club, it prevents the code from being audited,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is no secret that President Javier Milei wants to position Argentina as the ideal destination for investments in the technology sector.\u00a0 A bill sponsored by Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger, which was recently sent to the Argentine Congress, is a concrete step in that direction.\u00a0\u00a0 If the initiative, which seeks to reform the General Companies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":73972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,791,414,42,668,61],"tags":[7459,19048,595,96,8971,89],"class_list":["post-73971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","category-artificial-intelligence","category-business","category-economics","category-federico-sturzenegger","category-javier-milei","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business","tag-economics","tag-federico-sturzenegger","tag-javier-milei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/261"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}