In a Financieele Dagblad column, Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) chair Laura van Geest argues that, despite the Netherlands now having a licensing regime for crypto services under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR), supervisory tools are still not sufficiently developed to protect consumers and financial markets and further legislation is needed. MiCAR took effect in the Netherlands on the penultimate day of 2024 and requires a licence to provide crypto services. The AFM has so far granted ten new licences, assessing whether firms’ structures appear solid and whether policymakers are suitable and reliable, and is now moving into ongoing supervision to test whether compliance “on paper” holds in practice. The column points to rising retail exposure and persistent risk drivers, citing Rabo Research estimates that 26% of Dutch investors now invest in crypto(trackers), representing around a quarter of their freely available assets, with ownership spread across age groups. Van Geest highlights fragmented EU supervision, limited conduct and distribution rules, challenges in tackling market manipulation where platforms only need to report transactions on request, and gaps for activities such as staking and lending and for decentralized finance. She also flags enforcement challenges around illicit use, including action against unlicensed providers that bypass anti-money-laundering rules, and notes US policy shifts and the expansion of stablecoins under the Genius Act as creating additional risks for Europe. She concludes that the European proposal for a Savings and Investment Union should be accompanied by a “MiCAR 2.0” featuring centralised European supervision, a broader scope and fixes to omissions in the current regime.

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