Czech Republic has the first DLT infrastructure permit in the EU

The Czech Republic has the first DLT infrastructure licence in the EU. This is a big deal (see also my status for context: https://bit.ly/4h62w3B). The Czech depository will thus be the first in the EU to enable tokenization of selected financial instruments in the EU in a recognizable and predictable way. There is already a UCITS fund in France that presents itself as the first BTC UCITS ETF in the EU. Impressive. 👏 I confess that when we gave a talk on “real estate funds” last year (see this status of mine for context: https://bit.ly/4dKWLpb ) and I presented the regulatory frameworks for UCITS funds, I couldn’t really imagine even a “real estate” UCITS fund. I was all the more surprised by the existence of a UCITS fund exposed to BTC. Of course, this was made possible by the recent adoption of crypto ETF funds. ➡️ UCITS funds are highly liquid and conservative funds which, thanks to EU harmonisation in the scope of their management and investment policy, are a recognisable and predictable asset on investors’ balance sheets. Daniel Gaspar wants to tokenise financial instruments (we will talk about this at our next conference). Makes perfect sense. It’s more efficient and more accessible to a broader group of investors. This is how we can get an SK issuer with a EUR 2,000,000 issue to a German investor. Without tokenisation, this would not make sense in practice. This is thanks to DLT EU regulation, which makes something originally “punk” a recognisable and predictable institution. And recognisability and predictability is exactly what we need in SR. Because the challenge is not just the “25+15” taxation of FOs on the sale of cryptos, but also a whole host of “incomprehensions” and ambiguities that are, to use tennis terminology, unforced errors. ➡️ For example, the DLT regulation has been in place since March 2023. And since the ministry has recently amended the Income Tax Act because of MiCA, it is difficult to explain rationally why our Income Tax Act will not recognise tokenised securities or even movable/immovable items even in 2025. If a FO sells tokenized property after 5 years, does he have to tax? Or that we can’t properly translate “on behalf of” into the SK version of the regulation. And thus the fact that we still don’t know 100% if ETFs are taxed is just the tip of the iceberg (see my status for context: https://lnkd.in/eedstFvc). 💡 Since SR is a challenge, we need to show clients other jurisdictions so they can consider fitting some of their activities into more sophisticated infrastructures. That’s why our conference (beware there are last few tickets) will feature Radim Kozub and Michal Hanych for the Czech Republic Miloslav Makovini, CAMS for the UAE Petros Rialas (BA, MSc, FCCA) for Cyprus Peter Howitt for Gibraltar. If you are interested in the topic of tax, regulation and foreign structures, I would be happy to see you at the conference. P.S. A big thank you to our general partner Millionero and Syed Suleman Kazim for allowing us to organize such a conference.