The Dutch Public Prosecution Service petitioned a Rotterdam court to declare Knaken Cryptohandel B.V. bankrupt on June 30, 2026, citing public interest, weeks after the unlicensed exchange went dark and locked roughly 30,000 customers out of their holdings.
MiCA license rejection triggered an abrupt shutdown. Now the court process begins, and customers are still waiting.
Key takeaways
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) asked a Rotterdam court on June 30 to declare Knaken Cryptohandel B.V. and its affiliated entity Stichting Knaken Payments bankrupt in the public interest. The OM estimates approximately 30,000 customers have been affected, though that figure is the OM's own estimate and not a precise audited count. Customers have been locked out of their holdings since the platform went silent in early June, and they are still waiting for a court ruling that has not arrived.
The AFM described conditions at Knaken as "a very worrying situation." That language, now embedded in the OM's petition, is the regulator's admission that its own licensing regime produced an outcome it cannot quickly fix.
Knaken went offline in early June 2026 after the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) rejected its MiCAR license application. Under MiCA, any firm serving Dutch crypto customers needed a valid AFM license by July 1, 2025. Without one, Knaken was legally required to halt operations. The gate slammed shut, and customers had no warning and no exit.
On June 29, the day before the OM's bankruptcy petition, the FIOD (the Dutch financial crime unit) raided Knaken's premises, seizing laptops, mobile phones, and company assets. No arrests were made. The criminal investigation and the bankruptcy proceeding are running on parallel tracks, handled by separate OM teams.
Knaken's own 2024 annual report had disclosed the company was "financially vulnerable," according to NL Times. The company stated on June 30 that it was not bankrupt and expected to begin a customer settlement plan before July 1. That date has now passed. The bankruptcy petition is sitting with the court.
This is where the "investor protection" framing breaks down. MiCA's licensing requirement is designed to screen out bad actors before they can harm customers. What it actually did at Knaken is compress the harm into a single moment: the license rejection triggered the shutdown, the shutdown locked the assets, and the legal machinery needed to recover those assets is now moving on a timeline that has nothing to do with how quickly customers need their money.
Customers were frozen out weeks before any FIOD raid, weeks before any bankruptcy petition, and weeks before any court ruling. At each step, access depends on someone else's process completing first. The regulatory "protection" arrived after the lockout, not before it.
Knaken's 2024 annual report had already flagged financial vulnerability. If the company's assets were already under strain, the gap between what it owed customers and what remains in the estate is the number that actually matters. The court-appointed trustee, if the petition is approved, will reveal it. That number is the real thesis checkpoint here, not the petition itself.
The pattern is not isolated. Per DutchNews, other Dutch brokers including LiteBit and Anycoin Direct have already closed or been absorbed under MiCA pressure. Knaken is not an anomaly; it is a data point in a failure cascade that MiCA's all-or-nothing licensing structure is producing across smaller European brokers. Each one is a forced lesson in counterparty risk for European retail holders.
The only position that eliminates this attack surface entirely is one where the platform's license status, financial health, and legal exposure are irrelevant: self-custody. If the bitcoin is not on the exchange, the FIOD raid changes nothing for you.
The Rotterdam court's ruling on the bankruptcy petition is the immediate trigger. If approved, a trustee takes over and begins auditing the estate. The recovery rate, and the timeline to get anything back into customers' hands, will determine whether the "orderly wind-down" framing the OM used holds any weight. A fast resolution with full recovery would challenge the argument that regulated custodial failures are structurally slow and lossy. A slow process with a haircut confirms it. The FIOD criminal investigation runs separately and could produce arrests or charges on a longer timeline. Both proceedings warrant continued attention.
The Rotterdam court has not yet ruled on the bankruptcy petition. If approved, a court-appointed trustee will audit Knaken's estate and distribute remaining assets to creditors. Full recovery is not guaranteed and the timeline is uncertain. Knaken's own 2024 annual report disclosed financial vulnerability, which means the estate may already be short.
MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) is the EU's licensing framework for crypto-asset service providers. Dutch firms were required to obtain an AFM license by July 1, 2025. Knaken applied, was rejected, and was then legally required to halt all services. It did so in early June 2026, locking customers out immediately upon shutdown.
The FIOD criminal investigation and the OM's bankruptcy petition are separate proceedings. The FIOD raided Knaken on June 29 and seized devices and assets. No arrests have been made as of June 30, 2026. The criminal investigation is ongoing and independent of the civil bankruptcy process.
