Crypto▼ Bearish
Zondacrypto vanishes, executives missing, customer funds frozen
CEO Kral claimed 4,500 BTC in cold storage, but on-chain data shows the hot wallet held 0.086 BTC by April 1. Estonia revoked the license on June 29, two days before the MiCA deadline.
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Zondacrypto, once the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Eastern and Central Europe, went offline in April 2026. Withdrawals stopped. The website went dark. Both of its top executives are now missing.
On June 29, Estonia's Financial Intelligence Unit revoked the operating license of the exchange's parent company, BB Trade Estonia OÜ. The cancellation came two days before the July 1 deadline under Article 143 of the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, which requires providers operating under pre-existing national regimes to either secure approval from the European Securities and Markets Authority or cease operations.
The exchange's CEO, Przemyslaw Kral, told clients in a social media post on April 16 that the company held 4,500 Bitcoin in a cold wallet worth roughly $336 million, with only the missing founder able to unlock it. Blockchain forensics firm Recoveris found otherwise. The main labeled hot wallet had fallen 99.7% from a monthly average of 55.7 BTC in August 2024 to 0.18 BTC in March 2026, the firm said. By April 1 the wallet held 0.086 BTC, around $9,700.
Recoveris also tracked 511 transactions from Zondacrypto wallets to a Kraken deposit address between mid-December 2025 and early April 2026, worth about $21 million, the firm said. The exchange had refused to disclose wallet addresses to prove its cold reserves, citing the EU's MiCA and Digital Operational Resilience Act rules. Both regulations do not prohibit such disclosure, the Times reported.
Founder Sylwester Suszek started the platform as BitBay in 2014 in Katowice, Poland. He disappeared in March 2022 at age 34 after going to a fuel depot near Katowice to meet an associate, Marian Wszolek. Suszek's family believes he was kidnapped and killed. Polish prosecutors later charged Wszolek with organized-crime membership, large-scale VAT fraud, money laundering, and unlawful deprivation of liberty tied to Suszek's disappearance, the Times reported. Wszolek also vanished.