Interview with Lorenzo Rigatti, Founder of BlockInvest, Weltix’s Technology Partner for Financial Instrument Tokenization

Afterward, I moved to Switzerland, jumping into the heart of the European blockchain ecosystem. First with Noku and then with Luxochain, I deepened my understanding of both the technical and business aspects of blockchain, including working on luxury authentication through NFTs.

That experience made me realize not only the technology's immense potential, but also its limitations when it fails to engage with the regulated world. The synthesis of my entire journey emerged from that insight: BlockInvest.

How did you discover the world of blockchain?

I was still working at Fincantieri when I realized that blockchain was a technology capable of profoundly transforming the inner workings of financial markets, asset management, and digital trust. From that point on, I began studying protocols, infrastructure, and use cases in traditional finance.

How was BlockInvest born, and what were its key development milestones?

BlockInvest was officially founded in Milan at the end of 2019, but the idea had matured the previous year while I was working in Switzerland alongside Fabio Pacchioni, who would later become the company's CTO. Our initial idea was to tokenize real estate, but we quickly ran up against European regulatory constraints.

From there, we realized the real opportunity lay not in tokenizing real estate directly, but in working on financial layers and regulated instruments. That was the strategic pivot that led us to become a smart-contract factory for finance.

In the following years, we built a very gradual yet concrete track record. In 2021, Crédit Agricole Italia fully subscribed our pre-seed round, providing strong industrial validation for the project. In 2022, we entered the European market by working on tokenized green bond operations in Luxembourg. In 2023, we were selected both by Borsa Italiana for Euronext’s TechShare program and by the Bank of Italy in its Call for Proposals.

The year 2024 was likely our breakthrough year: we won CDP's tender for the first Italian institutional tokenized financial instrument, subscribed by Intesa Sanpaolo. In 2025, we carried out the equity tokenization of Weltix, the first E4 tokenized minibond purchased by UniCredit and CDP, and the first structured note issued by UniCredit aimed at retail investors. Finally, in 2026, UniCredit itself acquired a stake in BlockInvest as the lead investor.

What does BlockInvest offer?

BlockInvest is an institutional tech infrastructure for the tokenization of financial instruments. One of our key defining features is the "permissioned token on permissionless ledger" model: we leverage public blockchains like Polygon to ensure transparency and resilience, but with proprietary control layers that grant full regulatory compliance over token management.

What is the nature of the partnership between BlockInvest and Weltix?

The collaboration with Weltix is very close and represents one of the most advanced examples of regulated tokenization in Italy today.

BlockInvest provides the tech infrastructure for issuing and managing digital financial instruments, while Weltix operates as a DLT Register Operator authorized by Consob. In practice, the two companies work complementarily: we develop the technology layer and smart contracts, while Weltix handles the regulatory component related to the digital circulation of financial instruments.

The main tokenization transactions carried out in Italy mentioned earlier—stemmed directly from this partnership. Our shared goal is to build a new infrastructure for European financial markets one that is more digital, efficient, and accessible.