Report contents
Europe · Established
Netherlands
Crypto Livability Index 2025·data to 31 Dec 2025
Scoreboard
Five pillars, then the 22 sub-pillars scored 0 to 4. Empty sub-scores are held out of the total, not zeroed.
The number behind the rank
| Raw capability score | 68 / 84 |
| P2P liquidity bonus (tie-breaker) | +1 |
| Inflation 3.5% · unbanked 1% · remittances 0.4% GDP · capital controls 0 · sanctions 0 | CNI 0.019 |
| Need multiplier | ×0.528 |
| Livability score | 0.428 |
Raw 68/84 = 0.810 capability. Crypto-Necessity Index 0.02, from five components: inflation 3.5% (three-year average 2023 to 2025), unbanked 1% of adults, remittances 0.4% of GDP, capital-control intensity 0.00 (KAOPEN 2023), sanctions exposure 0. Need multiplier ×0.53. Livability score 0.428, rank #38 of 79.
Three findings
Arnhem is the densest single-city Bitcoin merchant cluster in Western Europe
The Dutch city of Arnhem, branded Bitcoinstad, runs roughly 60 verified crypto-accepting merchants, down from a peak of 120, and remains the tightest concentration on the continent. Together with clusters in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, it gives the Netherlands a merchant score of 4. The country also hosts Bitvavo, the world's largest euro spot exchange, MiCA-licensed in June 2025.
The regulator that handed out the EU's very first crypto licences
On MiCA's first enforcement day the AFM (the Authority for the Financial Markets) issued the bloc's first CASP licences, to MoonPay, BitStaete, ZBD and Hidden Road, and the Netherlands chose the earliest transition deadline in the EU at 30 June 2025. Internet penetration is effectively universal at 99%, the highest in the set, on top of two domestically issued MiCA stablecoins.
The steepest livability slide in the entire European set, 30 places
The Netherlands scores 68 of 84 in raw capability but a Crypto-Necessity Index of just 0.02: inflation 3.5%, 1% unbanked, remittances 0.4% of GDP, no capital controls, no sanctions. The ×0.53 need multiplier drops it from rails #8 to livability #38, the largest fall among the 24 countries. This is the index working as designed, not a defect: a fully banked society where iDEAL handles daily payments and crypto is left with little structural role.
In one line
"The Netherlands licensed crypto before any other EU state and built Europe's densest Bitcoin high street in Arnhem. It still falls thirty places once you ask how badly a fully banked country needs any of it."
Watch in 2026
Trajectory 3/4, trending liberalising. The AFM took over CASP licensing from the central bank in mid-2025, issued some of the EU's earliest authorisations, and published a risk-based supervisory strategy. The decisive future signal sits in tax: a reform passed in February 2026 will tax actual and unrealised crypto returns at 36% from January 2028, which the auditor expects to collapse the tax score in later editions.