Dutch crypto firms must connect licences, promises, transactions and customer outcomes.
A founder is preparing a campaign for a new crypto service. The website promises easy access, the fee screen looks clean, and an affiliate calls the product safe. The compliance officer asks where the customer’s assets will sit, how withdrawals work and what happens if the external provider fails. A short campaign meeting becomes a question about liquidity, liability and trust.
That tension sits inside the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets’ latest view of the crypto market. On 10 November, the AFM said MiCAR had moved the market towards greater maturity. It also said lasting consumer protection still needs strengthening. Around one in eight people in the Netherlands now hold crypto-assets. Volatility, fraud, misleading offers and complex services remain serious concerns.
The Dutch direction is clear. A licence establishes regulatory status for particular services. It does not make every asset sound, every promise balanced or every customer decision suitable. The harder requirement is whether a business can explain what it does and accept responsibility for how that activity reaches the customer.
The licence is only the threshold
The phrase “crypto company” hides too much. One business holds customer assets. Another exchanges them, executes orders or gives advice. A third supplies technology. A fourth launches a token. MiCAR recognises distinct service categories because the legal role changes the obligations, contracts and risks.
That role must remain clear throughout the business. A regulated payment feature should not lend borrowed credibility to a staking or lending offer that receives different protection. The AFM says staking, lending and certain decentralised finance services fall wholly or partly outside MiCAR. Depending on the structure, specific rules covering liquidity, risk management and collateral may therefore be absent.
This is where governance starts. Management should know which legal entity makes the promise, which party holds the asset, who controls the private keys and where the customer stands if liquidity disappears. Technical language cannot carry that responsibility. If the answer takes twenty minutes and three diagrams, the customer probably does not have a fair picture either.
A token launch adds another chain of responsibility. A public offer generally requires a legal person and a whitepaper that is prepared, notified and published. Advertising must be correct, clear, recognisable and consistent with that whitepaper. The AFM can respond to non-compliant offers with warnings, directions or fines, depending on the circumstances.
The customer sees one journey
The AFM reviewed advertising and cost information from 33 crypto service providers active in the Dutch market. It found significant advertising shortcomings at 14 providers and significant cost-information shortcomings at 19. These figures describe the reviewed group. They are not a failure rate for the entire sector, but they give management a direct operating lesson.
Customers do not separate the homepage, referral video, fee table, onboarding screen and transaction confirmation into different compliance departments. They experience one proposition. A risk warning at the bottom cannot repair a headline that suggests safety. Nor can a technically correct fee page repair an affiliate campaign that creates a simpler impression than the service deserves.
The AFM has said its period of supervisory leniency has ended. It will continue supervision and take enforcement action where necessary. For a small provider, the practical response is not more legal text. It is tighter ownership. Someone must approve the claim, compare it with the actual service and preserve the version that customers saw.
Return to our founder’s campaign. The decisive question is no longer whether the word “risk” appears. It is whether the whole journey explains costs, volatility, protection limits and withdrawal conditions without contradiction.
The back office carries the promise
Consumer communication is only the visible side. Since 4 February 2025, crypto-asset service providers have qualified as financial undertakings under the Dutch anti-money laundering framework. They must also address sanctions duties and transaction information requirements under the Transfer of Funds Regulation, commonly known as the Travel Rule.
DAC8 adds another layer. Relevant providers and operators have had to retain reportable customer and transaction data since 1 January 2026. Annual reporting starts in 2027, with the first deadline on 31 January. Depending on the reporting category, the data can include customer identification, asset type, transaction type, units, gross amounts and market values.
This turns reconciliation into governance. If the customer system describes one transaction, the wallet another and the finance ledger a third, the company already has a control problem. The annual report merely reveals it. Compliance must connect identity, money flow, customer communication, accounting and escalation.
That connection costs money. Monitoring, sanctions screening, data retention, customer support and competent staff consume cash before customers see a new feature. A business model that prices only the technology and ignores this operating burden is not complete.
Crypto reaches the ordinary ledger too
The same discipline applies to a design studio, retailer or consultant accepting crypto as payment. The Belastingdienst requires the payment to be converted into euros for VAT reporting. For a private limited company, the euro value received for goods or services is revenue. A later exchange gain or loss enters the profit-and-loss account.
A €2,000 invoice can therefore produce several distinct records: the invoice value, VAT amount, wallet receipt, conversion value and cash finally reaching the bank. If the asset moves before conversion, those figures will differ. Treating the receipt like an ordinary bank payment conceals that difference rather than resolving it.
For both the crypto provider and the ordinary merchant, the useful management question is the same: can one transaction be followed from the customer promise to the wallet, the accounts and the required report? That question joins market conduct, liability, tax and cash oversight without turning them into separate worlds.
MiCAR is an important advance, but Dutch business culture rarely stops at formal permission. It asks who decided, what was communicated, where the money went and whether the records agree. The strongest crypto business will not be the one that waves its licence most loudly. It will be the one that can explain the customer’s position calmly, accurately and all the way through.
If your crypto proposition needs a clear line from regulatory status to customer communication and transaction controls, contact Pavan Geraedts.
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Paolo Maria Pavan. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Paolo Maria Pavan before publication.
References
- Cryptowetgeving is goede stap, risico’s voor consumenten blijven
- Autoriteit Financiële Markten - Marketing, cost disclosure and enforcement risk
- Autoriteit Financiële Markten - Token launches, whitepapers and memecoin offers
- Autoriteit Financiële Markten - Licensing perimeter and supervisory division
- De Nederlandsche Bank - Stablecoins and the limits of supervision
- Autoriteit Financiële Markten - AML, sanctions and the Travel Rule
- Belastingdienst - DAC8 reporting and tax-data records
- Belastingdienst - Business accounting and tax treatment of crypto received in trade
