Two competing bills leave Poland's crypto market in limbo before the July 2026 EU deadline, with Zonda's failure affecting 30,000 users and no clear path to a unified law.
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Poland’s cryptocurrency market is now governed by two competing legislative proposals, neither of which has a clear path to becoming law, while the deadline to transpose the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation into national law sits at July 1, 2026. The political deadlock in Warsaw leaves exchanges, investors, and service providers without a licensing framework, and the recent collapse of the Zondacrypto platform has turned the regulatory vacuum into an immediate consumer-protection crisis.
President Karol Nawrocki submitted his own draft crypto law to the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, on Wednesday, according to local media reports. The bill is positioned as a direct alternative to the government-sponsored Crypto-Asset Market Act, which the president has already vetoed twice. The ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, failed to override those vetoes with support from conservative and nationalist opposition factions.
The president’s proposal rests on three stated pillars, as outlined by Chief of the Chancellery Zbigniew Bogucki:
Bogucki stressed that the bill is addressed to everyone waiting for regulatory clarity. Yet the legislative math is unforgiving. The president’s bill lacks the votes to pass, and the government’s bill is widely expected to be vetoed again. This is not a negotiation nearing compromise; it is a standoff where both sides are digging in, and the market is caught in the middle.
The urgency of the debate was reshaped by the early-April collapse of Zondacrypto, a Polish-rooted exchange that was among the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. Thousands of customers lost access to their funds amid liquidity issues, and government estimates suggest up to 30,000 Poles may be affected. The Tusk administration has blamed the crisis on opposition politicians and the president, arguing that their sabotage of the regulatory effort left consumers unprotected. Officials also alleged that the Estonia-registered company funded conservative political events and figures in Poland while lobbying against the government’s bill.
Regardless of the political blame game, the Zonda failure exposes a structural vulnerability: without a national licensing and supervision regime, Polish retail investors have no clear recourse when a platform fails. The event has given the government a powerful narrative to push for tougher penalties and expanded supervisory powers, but it has not broken the legislative impasse.
The government’s returning bill, which Prime Minister Tusk announced would be reintroduced to parliament this week, contains one significant amendment: harsher punishment for platforms and individuals who defraud crypto investors. Tusk was quoted by Banker.pl as saying:
“The only change I will propose in this project is to make the penalties even more severe for those who, taking advantage of people’s dreams, sometimes their naivety, sometimes their lack of knowledge, deceive them and also put the Polish state and our security at risk.”
The bill also strengthens the role of Poland’s Financial Supervision Authority (KNF), giving it the ability to issue investor warnings before law enforcement steps in. Industry critics have already argued that the original legislation granted excessive powers to the KNF, and the latest amendments only deepen that concern. The government’s approach is seen by opponents as going far beyond MiCA’s baseline requirements, creating an overhang of compliance costs that could squeeze smaller firms.
The president’s alternative bill, by contrast, appears designed to push back against what Nawrocki has called overregulation and excessive burden on small businesses. His vetoes were explicitly motivated by those concerns. The presidential proposal aims to balance oversight with a more permissive environment for crypto entrepreneurs, but it has not yet been tested in committee or floor debate, and its chances of passing are slim without a shift in parliamentary alliances.
Poland must transpose MiCA into national law by July 1, 2026. After that date, all crypto service providers operating in the country must hold a license. The current deadlock means there is no domestic legal vehicle to issue those licenses, creating a cliff-edge risk for exchanges, custodians, and wallet providers that serve Polish customers. If neither bill passes in time, firms could face a choice between operating in legal grey territory, relocating to another EU jurisdiction, or shutting down Polish-facing services.
The European Commission can launch infringement proceedings against member states that fail to implement MiCA on time, but that process is slow and does not solve the immediate problem for market participants. The practical risk is that Poland’s crypto market – arguably the largest in Central and Eastern Europe – enters a period of regulatory fragmentation just as the rest of the EU moves toward a harmonized framework. That could drive liquidity and talent to jurisdictions with clearer rules, such as France or Germany, while leaving Polish retail investors with fewer regulated options.
For traders and platforms with exposure to the Polish market, the risk is binary: a compromise bill that passes before the deadline, or continued paralysis. A compromise would likely involve the government accepting some limits on KNF powers and the president accepting a tougher penalty regime. The Zonda collapse could serve as a catalyst for such a deal, but the political incentives are not aligned. The ruling coalition wants to use the crisis to paint the opposition as soft on fraud, while the president is positioning himself as the defender of small business against bureaucratic overreach.
What would reduce the risk:
What would make the risk worse:
The next concrete marker is the parliamentary debate on the government’s bill this week. If it passes the Sejm but is vetoed again, the market will have to price in a prolonged period without a national MiCA framework. For anyone trading or operating in Poland’s crypto space, the watchlist item is not just the bill’s progress but the reaction of the KNF and the European Securities and Markets Authority to a potential implementation failure. The Zonda collapse has already shown that the cost of inaction is measured in lost customer funds. The question now is whether that cost is high enough to force a political resolution before the July 2026 deadline.
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