Poland's lower house failed to pass the crypto regulation bill after President Karol Nawrocki refused to sign it for the third time. On September 4, 2026, the Sejm voted 241–198 to override the president's veto, with three lawmakers abstaining. However, this fell 25 votes short of the required three-fifths majority of 266 votes needed to pass the legislation. The bill would have designated the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) as the country's crypto regulator, supporting Poland's implementation of the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
Nawrocki has consistently rejected the legislation, citing concerns about its restrictiveness. When he rejected the bill on June 11, 2026, the president stated that lawmakers had addressed only one of the 16 changes proposed by his office. The president has argued that the bill could place excessive burdens on Polish crypto companies and encourage some businesses to operate from other jurisdictions. Nawrocki submitted a separate proposal offering stronger safeguards against fraud and financial crime without imposing the same costs on legitimate companies, but Parliament has not supported his version. "Bad law does not become good law simply because it passes a hundred times," Nawrocki stated in his rejection.
Poland now remains the only EU member state without a functioning national framework for MiCA implementation. All EU member states were required to implement MiCA by July 1, 2026, a deadline Poland has now missed entirely. The regulatory standoff leaves Polish crypto firms facing continued uncertainty over licensing and enforcement, with KNF publicly acknowledging that the country still lacks any designated authority for the sector. Unlike Poland's bill, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Crypto Assets proposal focuses on securities offerings and does not create a national operating license equivalent to MiCA authorization. The stakes are particularly severe as MiCA's transitional period ended on July 1, 2026, meaning every crypto-asset service provider operating in the EU must now hold a license issued by its home regulator or by a regulator in another member state.
The regulatory standoff plays out against a deepening criminal investigation into Zondacrypto, the exchange formerly known as BitBay. Prosecutors have charged Roman Ż., a former business partner of missing BitBay founder Sylwester Suszek, with two offenses as the investigation expands beyond 3,600 customer complaints. The scandal has reached deep into Polish public life, with Olympic Committee President Radosław Piesiewicz also charged with paid influence and favoring one group of Zondacrypto creditors over others while the exchange was approaching insolvency. Zondacrypto's Estonian operator, BB Trade Estonia, was declared bankrupt in August 2026, with creditors set to meet on September 17. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has repeatedly invoked the investigation while pushing lawmakers to pass the legislation, arguing that stronger oversight could have prevented the alleged fraud. The total exposure may now run as high as 2.4 billion zlotys (approximately $535 million), with the victim count surpassing 30,000 customers.
For the roughly 2,000 crypto firms registered in Poland, the legislative stalemate has created a business crisis. Polish firms cannot obtain domestic MiCA licenses because the KNF lacks the authority to issue them. This leaves two options: get licensed in another EU member state and passport services back into Poland, or shut down EU-facing operations entirely. The passporting route is the preferred option, with Lithuania, Latvia, and Germany emerging as the most popular destinations. The process is expensive and slow, with MiCA applications taking months to process and regulators dealing with backlogs. As of the July 1 deadline, 1,062 EEA crypto firms lacked authorization, and only 281 of 1,343 registered providers had secured full MiCA licenses. The economic cost to Poland is substantial, as the country loses jobs, tax revenue, and technical talent to jurisdictions with functioning regulatory frameworks. Polish consumers using crypto platforms have no recourse to a domestic supervisor if something goes wrong, creating a dangerous combination with the absence of domestic regulation.
