Dutch Prosecutors' Knaken Crypto Sale Nets $2.4M or $2.5M — Depending on Who's Counting

4 min readPublished 17 Aug 2026

Dutch prosecutors have sold the cryptocurrency they seized from collapsed trading platform Knaken, raising money for creditors of a company that went bankrupt in July. Decrypt and Crypto Briefing both reported the sale on August 17, 2026, citing the same court-appointed trustee. They did not report the same numbers.

Decrypt put the proceeds at $2.5 million, converting from €2.2 million. Crypto Briefing converted the same €2.2 million to $2.4 million. Neither outlet flagged the gap, and nothing in either report explains it.

What both outlets agree on

The underlying facts line up. Knaken let Dutch customers buy, trade and store cryptocurrency through an app, according to Decrypt. A Rotterdam court declared the company bankrupt on July 16, 2026, after the Dutch Public Prosecution Service sought the winding-up, both outlets reported. Knaken had gone offline in early June, per Decrypt; Crypto Briefing dates the shutdown to early June 2026 as well, tying it to the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets rejecting the firm’s application for authorization under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, known as MiCA.

Both outlets also agree on the structural problem now facing customers. According to the trustee, Knaken purchased crypto in its own name rather than on behalf of individual account holders. That means a customer’s app balance reflected a euro claim against the company, not a specific coin they owned outright. Crypto Briefing summarized the result bluntly: clients are unsecured creditors, not crypto owners. Decrypt reported the trustee’s own explanation of the mechanics — a customer putting €100 into Bitcoin paid Knaken €1 in fees while Knaken bought a €99 position that belonged to the company itself.

Both outlets also cite Knaken’s sponsorship deals with Dutch football clubs, including Feyenoord and Ajax, as part of how the platform built trust with customers before its collapse. Decrypt additionally names Sparta, Heracles and Heerenveen as sponsorship partners.

Where the numbers diverge

Beyond the dollar conversion, the two reports describe different scales of the problem. Decrypt, citing the trustee, says he has written to about 6,300 customers telling them to temper their expectations, and estimates customers put in $12 million to $14 million (€10 million to €12 million) in total. Crypto Briefing reports a much larger customer base — around 30,000 — and cites an estimated €7 million shortfall in customer funds, a figure it says leaves the recovered cash covering roughly a third of what customers are owed.

Neither figure is necessarily wrong, but neither outlet explains how they relate. It is not clear whether Decrypt’s 6,300 is a subset of Crypto Briefing’s 30,000 — say, those who have filed formal claims versus the full user base — or whether the two figures describe different populations that neither newsroom has reconciled. Similarly, Decrypt’s $12 million-to-$14 million invested-funds estimate and Crypto Briefing’s €7 million shortfall are not measuring the same thing: one describes total money customers put in, the other describes the gap between what’s owed and what’s been recovered. Whether they’re compatible is not addressed by either report.

There is even a discrepancy in the trustee’s name. Decrypt refers to him as Carl Hamm; Crypto Briefing refers to him as C.F.W.A. Hamm. Both appear to be describing the same court-appointed official, but the two reports never converge on a single rendering.

What only one outlet reported

Decrypt alone reports that a lawyer for one affected customer has publicly questioned whether prosecutors were entitled to sell the seized holdings at all. Speaking to Dutch broadcaster Rijnmond, as reported by Decrypt, the lawyer asked, "Whose crypto was it?" and compared the sale to a garage going bankrupt and selling a customer’s parked car. Decrypt reports that prosecutors have declined to explain their reasoning, though Rijnmond said they presumably relied on a legal provision allowing the sale of seized goods at risk of losing value. The trustee, per Decrypt, indicated he found the sale justifiable, noting that "the value of cryptocurrency is completely unpredictable."

Decrypt alone also reports on Knaken’s troubled history: a 2020 hack in which 23 BTC were stolen, worth about $162,000 (€140,000) at the time, and a bankruptcy-hearing disclosure that owner Ronald J. transferred $2.7 million (€2.3 million) out of Knaken to a company under his control, in what the court characterized as a conflict-of-interest arrangement. Ronald J. told Rijnmond, per Decrypt, that the transfer was for marketing work meant to keep functions separate, and that he does not recognize the trustee’s investment estimate.

Crypto Briefing alone reports that Knaken had operated since 2017, that the Dutch fiscal intelligence and investigation service, FIOD, carried out the investigation that led to the asset seizures, and that the trustee is examining whether any wrongful transfers occurred before the bankruptcy that could be clawed back for the estate.

What remains unresolved

The dollar value of the sale, the number of affected customers, and the size of the shortfall are all reported differently depending on the outlet. None of these gaps has been publicly addressed by the trustee, prosecutors, or either newsroom. It also remains unresolved whether prosecutors had the legal authority to sell seized crypto before any court ruling settles who actually owned it — the customer’s lawyer has raised the question, but prosecutors have not answered it on the record.

What to watch next

Readers should watch for whether the trustee or the Rotterdam court issues a clearer accounting of how many customers are affected and how large the funding gap actually is. Also worth tracking: any ruling on the customer lawyer’s challenge to the legality of the sale, the outcome of the trustee’s inquiry into pre-bankruptcy transfers including the $2.7 million moved by Ronald J., and whether Knaken’s collapse triggers further scrutiny of other unlicensed platforms under the Netherlands’ MiCA enforcement regime.