2Tokens is a non for profit foundation that formulates a guide, as part of a larger vision, for any type of organization which wants to leverage tokens. It is the aim to come to a shared understanding on the token economy and, as such, it is a public interest initiative supported by a diverse community of technology companies, policy makers, financial advisors, banks, legal & regulatory experts and academia. Another aspect of this vision is the educational aspect that is embedded in the 2Tokens foundation. Through the development of token use-case, the creation of webinars & podcasts, and the documentation of our activities, we increase the token knowledge base of both our participants and interested people and organizations.

Tokens have been around since antiquity, but thanks to emerging technologies such as blockchain, the cost of exchanging tokens have reduced dramatically. In addition, tokens are programmable, which means that you can incorporate certain rules within the token that automatically apply. This will significantly change how businesses are run.
 

Tokens offer us the chance to rethink collaboration across society as a whole, from businesses to governments and citizens. With tokens, value transactions become immutable, verifiable, and traceable without the need for an intermediary, while significantly increasing efficiency and effectiveness.

The potential for tokenization to disrupt existing interactions is huge, offering more efficient solutions to existing paradigms (such as stocks or legal entities) while also dramatically reducing the costs to entry (such as crowdfunding). In addition, until today, real estate, collectibles and art have been perceived as illiquid, but with the advent of tokens, this will drastically change. When such assets are tokenized and sold across the globe, they have the potential to become highly liquid. That would result in an influx of liquid assets (trillions of euros) that could significantly change global markets.

The Netherlands is well-positioned to play a leading role in this transition: a culture of consensus decision-making, solid legal institutions, large enough to matter but not too large, and, importantly, a trusted government and a trusted role on the world stage (The Hague).
 
Competition is increasing as major (France and Germany) and smaller (Estonia and Liechtenstein) jurisdictions actively target being the tokenization epicenter of the future. By their nature, token projects have an extensive network effect built-in. There will be a significant first-mover advantage, which means The Netherlands has to act quickly not to lose out.
 
The path forward requires careful consideration and focused efforts. As always with innovation, the legal and regulatory environment needs to adapt to the new realities – ensuring sufficient oversight while allowing the realization of opportunities from tokenization. Not an easy challenge as centuries-old law, practices, norms & concepts need to adapt to a rapidly evolving space.

The ultimate deliverable of 2Tokens is a set of clear rules and guidelines on how to deal with tokenization. The journey starts with identifying and hopefully clarifying the challenges we need to solve in the coming months. Together with relevant industry partners, we aim to achieve a common perspective and understanding of the benefits for The Netherlands. With that, we want to inspire change.

We understand that to achieve widely supported token regulation; we have to raise awareness, stimulate discussions and bring together knowledge and expertise. Allowing us to reduce the barriers to the adoption of tokenization and help realize the broader societal benefits.

Help realize the benefits of tokenization!