Saudi Arabia has not just tokenised a property

Saudi Arabia has not just tokenised a property. It has struck at the heart of a system that Europe has protected for two centuries.

In Riyadh, a minister approves a resolution and, with no further formalities, a real-property title deed is split into digital units directly tied – literally ‘linked’ – to the state registry. They are traded, transferred and settled. Operational. Real. Without asking anyone’s permission.

Meanwhile, in Europe, a legal committee is debating 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, notarial professions and professional bodies – whose livelihoods depend on property working the way it did two centuries ago.

MiCA is an impeccable piece of regulation. It puts Europe ahead in the digital management of tokens. But as soon as the token tries to touch the title, it hits a wall: delegated public attestation (fe pública), numerus clausus, compulsory in-person attendance, fee scales no one questions, and a registry that still operates as it did in the 19th century, only with better connectivity (Wi-Fi).

Spain is no exception. It is the clearest case. Its Property Registry (Registro de la Propiedad) enjoys immense functional autonomy, and the notary is still the mandatory gatekeeper of the contract. No one – neither politicians nor regulators – dares to suggest that perhaps a state ledger could perform some of those functions without charging €1,200 per mortgage.

Italy maintains a Catasto (land cadastre) that no digital plan has managed to budge. France preserves a notarial monopoly worthy of Napoleon. Germany keeps territorial notaries district by district, as if they were fiefdoms. Portugal and Italy lock down professional access with an impenetrable numerus clausus. Mexico and Brazil sustain cartórios (notarial and registry offices) whose local power exceeds that of many regulators.

They all digitise processes. None of them gives up power.

Argentina moved quickly: 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, the Caja de Valores (the central securities depository) is still there, and the traditional title is still the one that counts.

Institutions do not disappear. They reconfigure themselves. 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 the property right.

In 2026, Europe will still be debating whether a hash can be incorporated into the execution of a notarial deed without bringing the whole system down. The blockage is not caused by a single professional body. It is caused by an entire institutional architecture – notaries, land registry, cadastre, fee scales, territorial powers and mortgage-law principles – designed to ensure that property does not change abruptly.

This is not a technology race. It is institutional execution in real time.

The humiliation lies not in what we do not 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 in the machine. 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 interlocking institutional architectures:

– notaries – land registry – cadastre – professional associations – fee scales – territorial powers – settled case law – ministries with inherited functions – lowest-common-denominator EU directives – historical civil legislation – numerus clausus of rights in rem – delegated public attestation – 19th-century mortgage-law principles

And that is the truth no one wants to admit: over the next decade, digital property will be fully realised where institutions do not stand in the way… and will remain a decorative reflection where institutions protect themselves on the pretext of protecting the citizen.

Welcome to the real world. Here, the winner is not whoever writes the best code. It is whoever has the institutional capacity to use technology where it matters: in the title.

Saudi Arabia already has that capacity. Europe is still waiting for its turn to speak.

The final proof? The Big Four have spent ten years billing blockchain consultancy to the very notarial bodies and registries that then put the brakes on adoption at the ‘legal feasibility’ stage.

They get paid for the report. We pay for the inertia.

This 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