The topic was the situation surrounding the Zondacrypto cryptocurrency exchange — one of the most high-profile stories in the region’s crypto industry in recent times. According to investigators, it may involve fraud running into hundreds of millions of zlotys, as well as suspected money laundering and misleading of clients. Financial documents point to a sharp fall in client assets — in a single year, some 379 million euros may have “disappeared” from the platform. Experts compare the situation to a classic bank run, but in the setting of the crypto market. The programme’s guest is Dr Grzegorz Sobiecki, head of the “Blockchain, Business, Law, Technologies” programme at the Warsaw School of Economics.
At the same time, there are reports of problems with payouts, of client funds possibly being used without proper backing, and of discrepancies between official reports and the company’s statements. The situation is further complicated by international transactions, links with foreign entities and the disappearance of one of the exchange’s founders.
Against this backdrop, a key question arises: are we dealing with a crisis in a new technology industry, or with a systemic problem of trust and oversight? And what does it mean for the thousands of investors who have entrusted their money to the crypto market?
As Dr Grzegorz Sobiecki, head of the “Blockchain, Business, Law, Technologies” programme at the Warsaw School of Economics, explains, the first doubts arose when users began having trouble withdrawing funds. Later, a news portal reported that the amount of funds in the public crypto wallet used for bitcoin payouts had fallen sharply.
This is what is known as a crypto wallet — a digital tool for storing cryptocurrency. With public wallets, the balance is open: anyone can check how much is held in them and how the funds move. That is exactly why such a sharp fall in assets aroused suspicion.
The company put the situation down to technical difficulties: payouts, it said, were temporarily impossible because of problems with the technology and were therefore being processed manually, which took more time. Later, however, it emerged that the problem might run deeper. An analysis of documents submitted by the exchange itself to the Estonian regulator revealed a series of unusual actions and suspicious decisions.
For Polish clients the situation was even more difficult, as these documents were written in Estonian and were not available in Polish. This made it much harder to understand what was really going on.
According to the company’s explanation, the funds had not disappeared but were being held not in the public wallet but in a so-called “cold” wallet. In the crypto world there are two types of wallet: “hot” ones, connected to the internet and open to scrutiny, and “cold” ones, disconnected from the network for greater security. With cold wallets, however, it is impossible to verify publicly whether the funds are really there.
As the expert points out, that is not the only problem. According to the exchange’s management, some of the funds held in the cold wallet were transferred by the company’s former president, who disappeared several years ago. This is a situation in which the private keys — that is, access to these funds — were never handed over.
In other words, the money is supposedly there, but access to it has been lost. With cryptographic protection, that means getting access to such funds is practically impossible.
Serious doubts about the situation remain. Some experts are asking: could this be a pyramid scheme? After all, similar mechanisms have been seen before, where new clients’ money was used to pay out existing ones.
Attention is also being drawn to the role of marketing — partnerships with respected institutions, sponsorship deals and aggressive recruitment of new users. Such approaches have often been used in schemes that later turned out to be pyramids, although at the outset this was not always obvious.
For now, however, this is mere speculation, and it is for the investigation to draw final conclusions.
In a wider context, the question arises: is the problem with cryptocurrencies themselves? After all, even if this case does not end in total collapse, there have already been examples around the world of crypto exchanges failing, including in the United States.
At the same time, there are stable platforms that have been operating for years. People deposit money, withdraw it, sometimes make a profit, sometimes suffer losses — as in any other market.
In the expert’s view, the problem is not the technology itself. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain are not dangerous in themselves. The difficulty, however, is that such assets are easy to create, which fraudsters exploit. Besides, this is a relatively new type of asset, to which legislation was not adapted for a long time.
As a result, the market long remained under-regulated, which means a lower level of protection for clients.
When it comes to regulation, the picture is mixed. In the tax sphere, rules exist: profits from crypto assets are taxable. In the provision of services, however, things are different — companies cannot obtain a full Polish licence.
According to available information, Zondacrypto does not hold a MiCA licence and is not subject to the same level of oversight as banks or other financial institutions. This means limited supervision and the absence of many client-protection mechanisms.
In this context, the so-called “Russian factor” also comes up. Cryptocurrencies are widely used for cross-border transactions, including to circumvent sanctions. Since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, such transactions have been under particular scrutiny.
Questions have also been raised about possible links with clients from the East, although this information has not been confirmed. At the same time, the very structure of the company — registration in Estonia, international transactions — makes it harder to trace the movement of funds and fuels suspicion.
It should be stressed that most of these questions remain, for now, at the level of suspicion or journalistic investigation. The final answers must come from the official investigation.
Dr. Myroslav Trofymuk
Born in Lviv. Designer, director, musician, researcher, founder of ZEMLA STUDIO. Master of classical philology and digital marketing, PhD in the history of Ukrainian literature. Member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine. Since 2022 he has authored the CENTRUM MUNDI audio show for Polish Radio for Ukraine, continuing the same research into the contemporary music scene in Ukraine and Poland.
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