Poland MiCA Bill Passes After a $96 Million Collapse Changed the Political Math

Poland spent five months in a political standoff over who should regulate its crypto market while the country's largest exchange was collapsing. The Sejm approved Bill 2529 by 241 votes to 200 on May 15, 2026, making Poland the last EU member state to pass the domestic legislation required to implement MiCA. The bill moves next to the Senate and then to a president who has already stopped it twice.

What the Sejm approved

Poland's Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) will become the national supervisor for digital assets under the bill, which was backed by the Ministry of Finance. Any company offering crypto trading, custody, or advisory services in Poland will need a CASP licence from the KNF to operate legally after July 1, 2026. The vote took place in Warsaw on May 15, 2026.

The KNF has stated its position clearly: Polish firms operating under the older VASP registration will lose the legal right to offer services on July 1 unless they hold a valid CASP authorisation. The MiCA regulation makes that deadline non-negotiable, with no mechanism for national extension. Foreign firms with valid EU licences can already serve Polish users under MiCA's passporting rules, while Polish firms cannot passport out and cannot apply for a domestic licence without a designated national supervisor.

The collapse that changed the calculation

Zondacrypto, once Poland's largest crypto exchange, began showing signs of liquidity problems in early April 2026. On April 16, CEO Przemysław Kral disclosed that the exchange could not access its cold wallet, which held 4,500 bitcoins. The wallet was accessible only to founder Sylwester Suszek, who disappeared in 2022 and whose whereabouts remain unknown. Kral subsequently left Poland for Israel, where he holds citizenship, a detail that substantially complicates extradition under Israeli law.

Poland's cybercrime bureau warned affected users of secondary fraud attempts as prosecutors at the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Katowice opened a fraud investigation under reference 2003-2.Ds.14.2026. Estimated customer losses exceeded 350 million zlotys (around $96 million), with up to 30,000 users unable to withdraw funds and the supervisory board of BB Trade Estonia, the entity operating the exchange, resigning in full after its members found the company's internal disclosures inconsistent with its public statements. Zondacrypto had served a predominantly Polish customer base for years while registered in Estonia, which meant Polish regulators had no formal oversight authority over it.

PM Donald Tusk told parliament that Zondacrypto had been funded by Russian criminal money and that the president's two vetoes had left the government without the regulatory tools to act sooner. He framed the legislation as a national security matter. Lawmakers who had supported the president's position found the public argument harder to sustain as the scale of the collapse became visible.

Three attempts, the same provisions

The Crypto-Asset Market Act came before the Sejm for the third time carrying essentially the same text. Nawrocki vetoed the first version in December 2025, parliament failed to override by 18 votes, submitted a revised version that was vetoed again in February 2026, and the subsequent override attempt fell 20 votes short of the three-fifths majority required. The government resubmitted without substantive changes. The enforcement powers Nawrocki objected to throughout, the KNF's ability to block accounts and transactions and impose fines of up to 10 million zlotys, remain in the current bill.

The central argument against it held that strong enforcement powers would push crypto firms toward lighter EU jurisdictions. It was not unfounded: industry figures warned the legislation could affect a market estimated to serve around three million users, and Estonia and Latvia had been actively attracting Polish crypto firms. The fintech trust gap tends to widen in markets where oversight exists in neighbouring jurisdictions but not domestically, creating an asymmetry between where firms register and where their users carry the risk. In Poland's case, that asymmetry had a price.

What happens next

Nawrocki can sign the bill, veto it, or refer it to the Constitutional Tribunal once it clears the Senate. The provisions he blocked twice remain in the text unchanged. His office has previously indicated openness to regulation that does not exceed EU standards, and part of the opposition's argument is that the Polish bill goes beyond what MiCA strictly requires, a position the government disputes.

July 1, 2026, is 46 days away. A third veto would require parliament to draft and pass a fourth bill, or to override with a three-fifths majority it has not reached on either previous attempt. The US crypto oversight debate is advancing through a similar process of legislative resistance, but without a hard regulatory deadline providing the same external pressure.

The bill that passed carries the same provisions Nawrocki blocked three times. Producing the political conditions for it to pass took a $96 million collapse.

Editor's note

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