Over two years, Zondacrypto put its name on Atalanta, Bologna, Parma, AS Monaco, the Giro d'Italia, a women's WorldTour cycling team and the Polish Olympic Team, making it one of the most heavily branded crypto exchanges in European sport.

Today, thousands of its customers can't withdraw their money from the crypto exchange. Polish prosecutors estimate losses of at least 350 million złoty ($97 million), with roughly 1,500 criminal complaints filed.

Sport gave Zondacrypto its credibility. The badges and the Olympic branding signalled an established, serious business to ordinary savers, right up to the point the withdrawals stopped.

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Zondacrypto spread its money across football, basketball, cycling and the Olympics.

In Italian football, they had a collaboration with Juventus, took Atalanta's first-team shirt sleeve on a multi-season deal, became Bologna's top sponsor and official crypto exchange for 2024/25, and signed Parma for the same season.

In France, they partnered AS Monaco, put its name on the club's Salon Honneur hospitality area, then added AS Monaco Basket, where its logo sat on the front of EuroLeague jerseys.

At home in Poland, Zondacrypto were prolific. Raków Częstochowa, Pogoń Szczecin, GKS Katowice, Lechia Gdańsk on a deal to 2026/27, Wieczysta Kraków, and the basketball side Dziki Warszawa were all part of their sports sponsorship portfolio.

One sport the exchange had focused on was cycling. They were the official cryptocurrency partner of the 2024 Giro d'Italia, title partner of the Canyon//SRAM women's WorldTour team from 2025 with a sleeve extension to 2028, a premium partner of the Tour de Suisse, and main sponsor of the PZU Gran Fondo amateur series.

Beyond this, there were partnerships with federations, committees and athletes themselves. In October 2025 they became the general sponsor of the Polish Olympic Committee and the Polish Olympic Team for the 2026 to 2028 cycle.

On the ambassadorial front, Wojciech Szczęsny, Giorgio Chiellini, Valtteri Bottas and Katarzyna Niewiadoma were some of the names they had secured.

The warning signs go back years.

The exchange started life in 2014 as BitBay, founded by Sylwester Suszek, and in 2019, Poland's regulator, the KNF, added BitBay to its public warning list for alleged unauthorised financial activity. The business was then sold to a US investor and rebranded as Zonda in 2021, with executive Przemysław Kral taking over.

Several months after the sale, in March 2022, Suszek disappeared after a business meeting, with his fate still unknown and still under investigation by Polish authorities. It’s alleged that the private keys to the Bitcoin held in the exchange were never actually handed over to new management. And with Suszek missing, Zondacrypto had no way to access those funds.

Fast-forward to April 2026, and the turmoil begins in very public fashion.

Customers couldn’t withdraw funds from the exchange. And following reports in the media, the board members of the Estonian operating company that Zondacrypto sits under, resigned. They all pointed to concerns regarding customer withdrawals.

An on-chain analysis by Recoveris, reported by Polish outlet money.pl, found Zondacrypto's hot wallet Bitcoin reserves had fallen 99.7%, from roughly 56 BTC in August 2024 to a fraction of a single coin by March 2026. More than $21 million across 30 cryptocurrencies left the wallets in 511 transactions between December 2025 and April 2026. Kral pointed to a cold wallet holding 4,500 BTC, worth around $330 million, as the reserve. Neither he nor the company could open it, because the keys sat with Suszek, the founder who'd been missing since 2022.

Prosecutors opened proceedings citing more than 2000 criminal complaints said:

"104 pieces of electronic equipment and over 13 terabytes of data from Zondacrypto servers were seized. Over 100 of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges were contacted to secure funds and important IT data. A European Investigation Order was filed with the Czech Republic."

The damage then spread to connected businesses, as the Zondacrypto-linked fintech Femion filed for bankruptcy after its złoty payments arm collapsed. Estonia's financial intelligence unit suspended part of the licence held by the exchange's Estonian business, and Polish Olympic athletes were left owed 1.1 million złoty ($300,000) in token-based medal rewards.

Of course, when an exchange collapses in such public fashion as we’ve seen with FTX in the past, sponsors are quick to protect their image.

The Polish football clubs went first, with Dziki Warszawa terminating in April and GKS Katowice, Raków and Pogoń following within days. The Polish Olympic Committee held on at first, set a payment deadline, then took the Zondacrypto neon down from its headquarters on 30 April.

The Tour de Suisse ended their deal with immediate effect in early May, and on 29 May, Canyon//SRAM terminated its title sponsorship, citing breaches of contract, with a full rebrand due by 1 August.

It’s a story we’ve seen before, most spectacularly with FTX.

And indeed, the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK just this week warned Premier League clubs about engaging in ‘questionable’ sponsorship deals with unlicensed crypto companies. They wrote to football teams in the UK, setting out concerns “about sponsorship arrangements between football clubs and firms operating cryptocurrency exchanges or trading platforms without FCA authorisation”.

For sports teams, where there is so much pressure to drive revenue via sponsorship, I do have sympathy. Equally, especially in big, multi-year deals, due diligence is paramount, and clearly there is not enough of that happening.

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