How tokenization actually works in Europe.
Tokenization in Europe is not one regime. Securities sit under MiFID II. Crypto-assets that are not securities sit under MiCA. Custody, settlement and fund administration each carry their own permissions. This section explains each piece plainly, one question at a time, and states what is live and what is pending.
Tokenized funds and private markets
How a fund becomes a token, and what stays exactly the same when it does.
What EU law allows, what ESMA has actually said, and what the depositary does when fund units are tokens.
The category pillar: structure, what the token legally represents, register, redemption and the real risks.
The complete process: wrapper, classification, the four roles, a week-by-week timeline and indicative costs.
Eight due-diligence questions, with COSIMO’s own answers to all eight published in full.
The mechanics end to end: legal wrapper, manager, register, transfer restrictions and settlement.
Both are wrappers. They differ in who can hold them, how they trade and how title moves.
Where the NAV strike, the cash leg and the on-chain register meet, and where they still do not.
COSIMO X has been live since 2021 and listed on Securitize Markets since December 2021. What that record shows.
European regulation
Which regime applies, who has to be authorised, and what is still pending.
What is in force, what is coming and who is authorised, dated per item with a crawlable month-by-month archive.
The anchor page: MiCA, MiFID II, CSDR, the DLT Pilot Regime, custody, and how Europe compares to Switzerland, the UK and the US.
What a DLT MTF, SS or TSS permits, who holds a permission today with the exemptions granted, and the Commission’s reform proposal.
Services in scope, the EEA passport, capital and governance, timelines, six jurisdictions compared, and why a VASP registration is not the same thing.
No. Security tokens are financial instruments under MiFID II. MiCA excludes them by its own terms.
Roughly 210 of approximately 1,200 pre-MiCA firms, about one in six. What happened to the rest.
Custody, settlement and operations
The unglamorous layer that decides whether an institution can hold any of it.
Infrastructure, product issuer and fund manager compared on asset classes, regulation, EU access and pricing.
Custody of a financial instrument and custody of a crypto-asset are different permissions. Which applies, and what each requires.
Fifteen providers, their regulators and licences, which can serve EU issuers, and what each one does not do.
Delivery versus payment inside one transaction, and the reason the cash leg is the hard part.
Whitelisting, permissioned transfer and the standards that enforce eligibility at the token level.
The register still needs an accountable owner. On-chain does not mean unowned.
Digital asset treasury
Balance-sheet discipline for digital assets, and how the market prices it.
Ten products on size, yield, chain, issuer, custodian and the column nobody else publishes: EU professional investor access.
A policy, a custody framework and a reporting line, not a product.
What mNAV measures, and the structural reasons a discount opens and persists.
Custody, counterparty limits, liquidity ladders, valuation and disclosure.
Where these explanations come from
COSIMO Digital builds and operates licensed rails that take real-world assets from issuance through custody, settlement and asset management. Black Manta Capital Partners is BaFin-licensed and operates under MiFID II for the regulated issuance and placement of tokenized securities. It is live today. Fortuna is registered as a Virtual Asset Service Provider with the Central Bank of Ireland (register ref C459043, under s.106A of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Acts), with MiCA CASP authorisation in process. COSIMO X, a tokenized evergreen venture fund, has been live since 2021 and listed on Securitize Markets in December 2021.
These pages describe the framework we work inside every day. Read the group's regulatory authorisations and their exact status, how BaFin-regulated issuance of tokenized securities works in practice, or the market notes in Insights.
This page is for informational purposes only. Nothing in it is an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, and nothing here is investment, legal, tax, or financial advice. Regulatory authorisations are described as of the date stated; pending authorisations are not effective until granted.