Crypto-fascism
In reality, the connections between Zondacrypto and parts of the Polish right were visible long before the platform’s spectacular collapse.
In May 2025, the company co-sponsored Poland’s edition of the US Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, where speakers included President Andrzej Duda and then-candidate Nawrocki. Alongside were prominent American conservatives including Kristi Noem, who publicly endorsed Nawrocki as Donald Trump’s preferred candidate. The following day, Nawrocki vowed not to regulate cryptocurrencies.
“Poland needs innovation, not regulation,” he said on Facebook. “As president, I will guarantee that draconian laws restricting your freedom will not come into force.”
Zondacrypto also sponsored events surrounding Nawrocki’s first visit to the White House in 2025, including a Polish-American business summit organised by the right-wing broadcaster Telewizja Republika.
On December 1, cryptocurrency became a new front in the conflict between Nawrocki and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, when the president vetoed a government bill expanding state oversight of the crypto market and authorities’ powers to intervene in suspicious transactions.
In his formal veto submission, Nawrocki argued that the legislation went beyond what EU regulations actually required, imposing fees and administrative obligations “not found in other EU member states” that would make Poland’s crypto market one of the most restrictive in the bloc. The bill, he said, would discourage innovation and push businesses toward more permissive jurisdictions.
The second version of the bill met the same fate in February – shortly before Zondacrypto began collapsing.
For Mateusz Mazzini, political journalist at Gazeta Wyborcza, the veto reflected less a coherent position on cryptocurrency regulation than Nawrocki’s broader political instincts. “His default position is to block almost everything put forward by the government,” he tells BIRN. “Sometimes he does so for ideological reasons, as was the case with SAFE, and sometimes simply because the proposal comes from the other side.”
On crypto specifically, Mazzini argues, Nawrocki appears largely indifferent to the substance of the issue, making him susceptible to pressure from allies with stronger interests in keeping the sector unregulated.
“If regulating crypto is fundamentally irrelevant to him, but someone in his political environment treats it as a matter of political survival, then naturally he will be pushed in that direction,” Mazzini says.
In early April, Tusk publicly disclosed that a month before the first parliamentary vote to overcome the president’s veto, Zondacrypto’s CEO Kral made large payments to organisations linked to right-wing politicians, including nearly half a million zlotys (roughly 100,000 euros) to the Sovereign Poland Institute of former justice minister and now exiled Law and Justice (PiS) politician Zbigniew Ziobro – a claim the foundation later confirmed.
“It’s no secret that certain political forces in Poland – parts of [far-right] Confederation, but also Ziobro’s camp – had very strong ties to the crypto market,” Mazzini says.
For companies like Zondacrypto, he argues, proximity to politics offered a practical benefit above all else. “It gave them a lack of regulation and the possibility of bringing in capital that otherwise would not be allowed in,” he says.