Knaken's €7M shortfall leaves 30,000 customers as unsecured creditors

Around 30,000 customers are left with unsecured euro claims against a collapsed company that allegedly had a €7 million hole in its books.

Dutch authorities have liquidated seized digital assets from bankrupt crypto broker Knaken, generating roughly €2.2 million (about $2.4 million) to feed into the bankruptcy estate. The estimated shortfall in customer funds sits at approximately €7 million, meaning the recovered cash covers barely a third of what clients are owed.

Knaken Cryptohandel B.V., which had operated since 2017 and built brand recognition through sponsorship deals with Dutch football clubs Feyenoord and Ajax, was declared bankrupt by the Rotterdam District Court on July 16, 2026. The petition came from the Dutch Public Prosecution Service.

The core issue is the ownership structure. Knaken purchased crypto in its own name rather than holding tokens on behalf of individual customers. Court-appointed trustee C.F.W.A. Hamm has confirmed that this arrangement leaves customers with euro-denominated claims against the bankrupt entity, not claims to specific digital tokens. Clients don't own any crypto. They're unsecured creditors standing behind whoever else the company owes money to.

Around 30,000 customers found themselves locked out of their accounts in early June 2026 when Knaken halted services. The shutdown came after the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets, the AFM, rejected the firm's application for authorization under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, known as MiCA.

FIOD, the Dutch fiscal intelligence and investigation service, conducted the investigation that led to asset seizures. The digital tokens that prosecutors sold on or around August 16, 2026, were part of those seizures. The €2.2 million in proceeds now sits in the bankruptcy estate, where trustee Hamm is working to inventory what's left and figure out how to distribute it across a long list of creditor claims.