Saudi Arabia has not tokenised a property. It has struck at the heart of a system Europe has protected for two centuries.
In Riyadh, a minister approves a resolution and, with no further formalities, a real property title is split into digital units directly linked to the state registry (the official wording is, literally, “linked”). It is traded, transferred, settled. Operational. Real. Without asking anyone’s permission.
In Europe, meanwhile, a legal committee debates whether a notary can accept a smart contract without destabilising the legal edifice built since 1862. That is the difference. And it hurts.
Because this is not about technology. We all have the technology. This is about who controls the institutional architecture that gives life to property rights.
In Saudi Arabia there is a single centre of decision-making. In Europe there is not one guild but twenty-seven corporate ecosystems — registries, notaries and professional bodies — that make their living from property working the same way it did two centuries ago.
MiCA is an impeccable piece of regulation. It puts us ahead in the digital management of the token. But as soon as the token tries to touch the title, it hits a wall: delegated notarial authority (fe pública), numerus clausus, mandatory in-person attendance, fees nobody questions and a registry that still operates as it did in the 19th century, only with better connectivity (wifi).
Spain is no exception. It is the clearest case. Here the Property Registry has immense functional autonomy, and the notary is still the mandatory gatekeeper of the contract. No one — neither politicians nor regulators — dares to suggest that a state ledger might perform some of those functions without charging 1,200 euros per mortgage.
Italy keeps a Catasto that no digital plan has managed to shift. France preserves a notarial monopoly worthy of Napoleon. Germany keeps territorial notaries by district as if they were fiefdoms. Portugal and Italy restrict access to the professions with impenetrable numerus clausus. Mexico and Brazil sustain cartórios whose local power exceeds that of many regulators.
Everyone digitises processes. No one gives up power.
Argentina moved fast: RG 1069, RG 1081. Tokenisation of real estate, trusts, funds, machinery and invoices. But in the end the escribano (notary) is still there, the trustee is still there, Caja de Valores is still there, and the traditional title still has the final say.
Institutions do not disappear. They reconfigure. And while they reconfigure, they block.
Saudi Arabia does not have that problem. It does not need to negotiate with anyone.
In 2026 it will publish the technical standards and, if it so chooses, today’s “linked to official records” will become a model in which the state ledger is the main operational reference for property rights.
In 2026 Europe will still be debating whether a hash can be incorporated into a notarial deed without the system collapsing. The blockage is not caused by a single professional body. It is caused by an entire institutional architecture — notaries, the registry, the cadastre, fees, territorial powers and mortgage-law principles — designed so that property does not change abruptly.
This is not a technology race. It is an institutional execution in real time.
The humiliation lies not in what we don’t know how to do. It lies in what we cannot do without permission from structures created to perpetuate themselves.
Of course, the notarial profession is not the cause; it is just one more cog. The system as a whole is built to preserve stability, not to absorb structural innovation.
Europe does not work through isolated guilds. It works through institutional architectures that interlock:
– notaries – the property registry – the cadastre – professional associations – fees – territorial powers – settled case law – ministries with inherited functions – minimum-harmonisation EU directives – historical civil legislation – numerus clausus of rights in rem – delegated notarial authority (fe pública) – 19th-century mortgage-law principles
And that is the truth no one wants to admit: over the next decade, digital ownership will be complete where institutions do not block it… and will remain a decorative reflection where institutions protect themselves under the pretext of protecting the citizen.
Welcome to the real world. Here the best programmer does not win. The winner is whoever has the institutional capacity to use technology where it matters: in the title.
Saudi Arabia already has it. Europe is still waiting for its turn to speak.
The final proof? For ten years the Big Four have been billing blockchain consultancy to the very notaries and registries that then slow adoption down at the “legal feasibility” stage.
They charge for the report. We pay for the inertia.
It is deliberate institutional design. Europe does not block because it does not know how to move forward; it blocks because it was designed not to move fast.
By Antonio Tejeda Encinas, President of the Euro-American Committee of Digital Law (CEA Digital Law)
