Tokenisation in Belgium and the Netherlands.

In Belgium, the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) supervises the issuance and distribution of financial instruments, including security tokens falling under MiFID, and crypto-assets under MiCA since that regulation took effect. The FSMA regularly publishes warnings about providers operating outside supervision or unclear about the legal status of their token.

For a Belgian investor this means a regulated offer of a tokenised security must run through a licensed investment firm or credit institution, with the associated prospectus obligation where applicable. Providers licensed only abroad may not simply solicit actively in Belgium without meeting local rules.

In the Netherlands, the Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) and De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) split supervision: the AFM focuses on conduct supervision and whether a token falls under securities law or MiCA, while DNB oversees prudential aspects at institutions with a banking licence that issue or custody tokens themselves. Since MiCA, crypto service providers need a licence from the AFM for certain services and from DNB for others.

The AFM has repeatedly flagged the risk that retail investors misjudge the legal status of a tokenised product, especially when marketing suggests a guaranteed savings product while it is in fact a risk-bearing investment product.

In the Netherlands, tokenised investments generally fall under box 3, where a deemed return on wealth is taxed rather than the actual return, unless rules on actual return come to apply. The legal qualification of a token as a security does not in principle change this: what matters is the economic nature of the asset, not its technical form.

In Belgium, the tax treatment of capital gains on investments is generally more favourable for a retail investor who does not trade professionally, with the exception of withholding tax on distributed income such as interest or dividends. Here too, the underlying economic nature of the tokenised product, not the blockchain technology itself, drives the tax qualification.

In both countries it is advisable to keep documentation showing what a tokenised product legally represents, since this can matter for a tax return or an audit.

In both countries, institutions and professional parties have so far been the main active users of tokenisation, for example through pilots under the DLT Pilot Regime or tokenised fund structures for institutional clients. Retail access to tokenised securities remains limited and typically runs through a small number of regulated platforms.

For a retail investor in Belgium or the Netherlands, this means the offer is still relatively narrow compared with classic investment products, and carefully checking a provider's licence and legal structure remains at least as important as with a classic investment product.