Zondacrypto Investigation Widens as Estonian Operator Enters Formal Bankruptcy
The collapse of Zondacrypto, once one of Central and Eastern Europe’s largest crypto exchanges with close to a million registered users, has moved from a customer-withdrawal crisis into a formal bankruptcy case — and the investigation behind it keeps reaching further back in time.
Late 2022: the point of no return, according to the trustee
Zondacrypto grew out of BitBay, a Polish exchange that later rebranded under the Zondacrypto name. According to findings from the court-appointed trustee overseeing its bankruptcy, the company’s insolvency likely began as early as the end of 2022 — coinciding with the disappearance of BitBay founder Sylwester Suszek. That disappearance reportedly left the company without access to a cold wallet holding around 4,500 BTC, an amount worth several hundred million dollars at today’s prices. A forensic review by recovery firm Recoveris found that the exchange’s visible operating reserves had since fallen by more than 99%.
April 2026: withdrawals freeze, then the site goes dark
Trouble became visible to ordinary customers starting in April 2026, when withdrawals from the platform began freezing or facing heavy delays. By April 23, the Zondacrypto website was taken down entirely, cutting users off from an exchange many had used for years without incident.
June 2026: Estonia pulls the license
The exchange’s operator, BB Trade Estonia OÜ, was registered with Estonia’s Financial Intelligence Unit. That regulator first suspended and then, on June 29, 2026, fully revoked BB Trade’s license — a formal acknowledgment from Estonian authorities that the operator could no longer be trusted to hold customer funds.
August 2026: bankruptcy is declared
On August 27, 2026, the Harju County Court in Tallinn adjudged BB Trade Estonia OÜ insolvent and declared it bankrupt, appointing Margus Lentsius as trustee. The first general meeting of creditors has been scheduled for September 17, with claims required to be lodged within two months of publication in Estonia’s official gazette, Ametlikud Teadaanded.
The investigation widens
Running in parallel to the bankruptcy case is a criminal investigation by Polish prosecutors, who have merged their fraud probe into Zondacrypto with the earlier case into Suszek’s 2022 disappearance — treating the two as connected threads of the same underlying story rather than separate matters. Ownership of BB Trade Estonia OÜ traces back to Swiss holding company Divisio Holding AG, with Przemysław Kral identified in corporate filings as the beneficial owner. Reported estimates of the damage vary depending on which claims are being counted: Polish reporting has cited estimated losses near 350 million złoty (roughly €82 million) tied to fraud complaints from around 30,000 people, while total creditor claims in the bankruptcy proceeding could reach closer to €700 million once every category of claim is included.
For the exchange’s former users, the practical path forward now runs through Estonia’s bankruptcy court rather than the exchange itself: filing a claim before the deadline is the only route to potentially recovering any funds, and even that recovery is contingent on how much value the trustee can actually locate and unwind from a balance sheet that, by the trustee’s own account, may have been hollow for years before anyone outside the company knew it.
This article is not financial advice. Exchange insolvencies can result in partial or total loss of customer funds regardless of a platform’s prior size or reputation. Learn how to evaluate exchange custody risk in coin680’s Bitcoin Academy.