Dutch prosecutors seek to liquidate Knaken after freezing funds of 30,000 customers

The Dutch Public Prosecution Service has asked a Rotterdam court to force crypto exchange Knaken into bankruptcy, a move that would effectively kill a platform that has been part of the Netherlands’ crypto landscape for nearly a decade.

Roughly 30,000 customers currently cannot access their funds. It’s the consequence of an exchange that kept operating without the regulatory credentials to do so.

What happened to Knaken

Knaken Cryptohandel B.V. and its affiliate Stichting Knaken Payments halted operations in early June 2026. The trigger: the company failed to obtain a license under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, better known as MiCA.

The Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets, known by its Dutch acronym AFM, had previously warned Knaken about its non-compliance. The company didn’t fix the problem. Instead, it eventually stopped functioning entirely, freezing customer accounts in the process.

On June 29, one day before prosecutors filed the bankruptcy request, the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) conducted searches and seized assets, including electronic devices. This is a parallel criminal investigation into the exchange’s practices.

Then on June 30, the OM formally requested the court to wind up both Knaken entities. The stated goal: protecting those 30,000 stranded customers by ensuring an orderly liquidation rather than letting the company attempt to manage the process itself.

A decade of operations, undone by compliance failure

Knaken had been operating for close to ten years in the Netherlands. The company even sponsored local football clubs. In a 2024 report, the company itself acknowledged financial vulnerabilities.

What this means for investors

For Knaken’s 30,000 affected customers, the immediate question is whether they’ll ever see their crypto again. A court-ordered bankruptcy process would appoint a trustee to manage the liquidation, which generally offers more protection than letting an insolvent company handle its own unraveling.

The risk worth monitoring is whether the FIOD’s criminal investigation uncovers something worse than mere regulatory negligence. If Knaken’s issues extend beyond licensing failures into fraud or mismanagement of customer funds, the recovery prospects for those 30,000 locked-out users get considerably grimmer. The seized electronic devices suggest investigators are looking for answers that go beyond the obvious compliance shortfall.

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