Zondacrypto collapse — what creditors were owed and recovered (2026)

Zondacrypto was Poland's largest cryptocurrency exchange and the successor to BitBay, which Sylwester Suszek founded in 2014. It was run by BB Trade Estonia OÜ under an Estonian virtual-currency licence. Customers had complained of slow withdrawals since December 2025, and in early April 2026 withdrawals stopped being processed for most users while an analysis reported in the Polish press showed the exchange's visible hot-wallet bitcoin had fallen to a fraction of one coin. Chief executive Przemysław Kral blamed a security upgrade and pointed to a wallet holding about 4,500 BTC, worth about US$330 million, as the exchange's reserve, then acknowledged that the company had no access to it: the private key, he said, was held by Suszek, who has been missing since March 2022. No proof of reserves was published. Staff contracts were terminated and the website went offline later in April.

Polish prosecutors opened a criminal investigation on 17 April 2026 into fraud on a large scale and money laundering, covering the exchange's conduct since 2022, and put the damage reported to them at no less than PLN 350 million, about US$98 million at that day's rates; they said the figure would change as complaints came in. The Estonian regulator partially suspended the licence on 18 May and revoked it on 29 June. The investigation was later merged with the inquiry into Suszek's disappearance and taken over by the National Prosecutor's Office. From late August prosecutors detained and charged several people in connected proceedings; none has been convicted. Poland's Minister of Justice said more than PLN 100 million had been secured towards future compensation, and EUR 4 million had been frozen in a bank account in France.

A customer based in Vienna petitioned for bankruptcy in Estonia. On 27 July 2026 the Harju County Court in Tallinn restricted the company's disposal of its assets and appointed Margus Lentsius as interim administrator, and on 27 August it declared BB Trade Estonia OÜ bankrupt, case 2-26-14436, with Lentsius as trustee. The court recorded liabilities of at least EUR 431,944,846 as of 22 April 2026, about US$503 million at the European Central Bank rate on the day of the bankruptcy order, which is the figure recorded here. It rests on tax filings and April accounting data rather than on admitted claims, because the trustee did not receive the company's source records; much of its documentation is with Polish investigators. Against it, the administrator identified about EUR 167,000 of assets in Estonia, mostly bank and crypto balances as of 31 March 2026, around 0.04 per cent of the liabilities.

In the administrator's view the company may have been insolvent since late 2022, when it lost access to the cold wallet, and was insolvent beyond doubt by the first quarter of 2026, when the withdrawal failures became widespread. His report did not establish a cause, and he has said crimes or serious management errors cannot be ruled out. Creditors have until 27 October 2026 to file claims with the trustee. By the first creditors' meeting on 17 September close to 2,000 had filed, and Lentsius has said the final total could exceed EUR 700 million. Nothing has been distributed.