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.
