Regulatory questions to confirm with a lawyer
This is a list of questions, not answers. Engage a Dutch financial-services lawyer (and, for crypto, a MiCA specialist) to assess these before enabling live and crypto auto-trading. Document their conclusions.
Our positioning is "software only — not a broker, not an adviser, no custody." The following must be confirmed by counsel because the gated auto-trade feature (currently disabled pending regulatory review) sits close to regulated activity.
1. MiFID II / Wft (AFM)
Confirm whether any feature constitutes a regulated investment service requiring AFM authorisation, in particular:
- Portfolio management — does running bots on a user's account on a discretionary basis qualify? (Our position: no — the user defines all logic and authorises each deployment; we exercise no discretion.)
- Investment advice — do templates, defaults, rankings, or any suggestion amount to personal recommendations? (Our position: no advice, no recommendations, no signals.)
- Reception & transmission / execution of orders — does routing user-generated orders to the user's own broker via API implicate RTO/execution? (Our position: the user's broker executes; we transmit the user's own instructions on the user's authorisation.)
- Impact of providing tools to professional vs retail users, and any perimeter guidance/exemptions.
2. MiCA (CASP)
- Does facilitating crypto trading (e.g. via Coinbase / Revolut X connections) bring any crypto-asset service provider (CASP) obligations under MiCA, given we never hold crypto, never custody, and only act on the user's own exchange account?
- Are "execution," "reception/transmission," or "advice" CASP services potentially triggered by the auto-trade feature?
- Any marketing/promotion rules under MiCA for crypto references on the site.
3. AML / KYC (Wwft)
- Given users connect their own already-KYC'd broker/exchange accounts and we never hold funds, do we have any AML/KYC obligations as a software provider?
- Any obligations arising from payment collection (via Mollie) or from the VQS token.
- Sanctions-screening expectations, if any.
4. Other
- VQS token classification (utility vs financial instrument/e-money) and any prospectus/marketing rules.
- Consumer-law specifics for the digital-services withdrawal right and auto-renewal reminders.
- Whether a disclaimer alone is sufficient, or whether feature changes are needed to stay outside the regulatory perimeter.