In 2026, the crypto-asset industry in Poland operates under conditions the Polish financial market has never seen before: the EU MiCA Regulation is now fully applicable, the transitional period for existing firms ended on 1 July 2026, and Poland, after three statutes passed and three vetoed, still has no national implementing law and no authority issuing licences. On 4 September 2026, the Sejm once again failed to override the presidential veto. Anyone who wants to operate lawfully must now think across borders: authorisation in another EU member state, taxes settled under the watch of the DAC8 reporting regime, AML procedures written to be used rather than filed away, and, increasingly, compliance with the AI Act. We handle all of it, on the legal, tax and banking fronts, and when a crypto investment turns out to be a fraud, we represent the victims.
Areas of support
The catalogue below covers seven formally distinct services, which in reality often complement one another. A licence without a bank account is worthless; an account without AML procedures will not survive the first enquiry from the bank’s compliance department; and a tax return prepared only after an audit costs many times more than a review carried out on one’s own initiative.
That is why we begin by establishing the sequence of actions: which element in a given structure is a prerequisite, and which can be addressed later, without the risk of having to rebuild the entire project from scratch.
However, where a client has a claim of which they are unaware, for example, against the Treasury arising from the effects of a legislative deadlock, we identify it and handle it as a separate matter, rather than as an add-on to our ongoing services.
Failure to implement MiCA and compensation
Companies that have suffered quantifiable losses as a result of this deadlock have strong grounds for seeking compensation from the Skarb Państwa (Polish State Treasury).
CASP authorisation and MiCA compliance
Choice of jurisdiction, the application, policies, organisational substance.
Crypto taxation
Filings, advance rulings, staking and DeFi, a review of past years before the DAC8 era.
State of play: MiCA without a Polish statute
The MiCA Regulation applies in Poland directly, as it does across the Union: since 30 June 2024 to issuers of stablecoins, and since 30 December 2024 to crypto-asset service providers. Firms lawfully providing virtual-currency services before 30 December 2024 could rely, under Article 143(3) MiCA, on a transitional period which expired no later than 1 July 2026. By that date the state should have designated a supervisory authority and a licensing procedure; three successive statutes on the crypto-asset market, were vetoed by the President: on 1 December 2025, in February 2026 and on 11 June 2026. In the case of the first two, the Sejm lacked the votes to override the veto (most recently on 17 April 2026, when it fell 20 votes short of the required 263). On 4 September 2026, the Sejm failed to override the presidential veto for the third time. 241 MPs voted in favour of re-enacting the bill on the crypto-asset market. 198 voted against. Three abstained. The majority required to override the veto was 266 votes.
The result is a paradox. The Polish market is today lawfully served by providers holding a CASP authorisation obtained in another member state, following the cross-border notification procedure of Article 65 MiCA, under the EU freedom to provide services. Polish firms, denied a domestic path to authorisation by their own state, faced a choice: move their licensing abroad, suspend the activity covered by MiCA, or operate in a zone of risk no board should accept. Our position, argued in our analysis of legislative inaction, is that firms which suffered measurable loss as a result of this deadlock have serious grounds to pursue the State Treasury’s liability in damages: primarily under Article 417(1) § 4 of the Polish Civil Code, and on some fact patterns also under Article 417 and the EU principle of state liability for breaches of Union law. What remains to be proven is the duty to legislate, the unlawfulness of the omission, the loss and the causal link, and that is precisely the work we do. It is not a seminar-room theory; it is a real negotiating and litigation position.
CASP authorisation: the licence to practise
A CASP authorisation (in market shorthand: a licence) is now the ticket to the entire EU market: obtained in one member state, it passports across all of them once notified.
We help choose the licensing jurisdiction deliberately, because the differences in supervisory practice, cost and processing time are substantial, and a choice made under deadline pressure can take years to undo.
We prepare the complete application:
- the programme of operations
- the policies and procedures required by MiCA
- and its technical standards
- the ownership structure and governance,
- the anti-money-laundering documentation
- capital requirements
- business continuity plans.
One thing we say plainly at the first meeting: a structure in which the same person is the beneficial owner, a board member, the MLRO and the sole decision-maker raises fundamental supervisory objections on conflicts of interest and the independence of control functions, and in most models it closes the road to authorisation; we do not put our name to such applications. Organisational substance is not a formality to be engineered around; it is a condition of the whole project’s feasibility, and if the business model cannot carry it, we will say so before the application is filed, not after the refusal.
The process is described in detail on our page on CASP authorisation and MiCA compliance, and the boundaries of the exemption for decentralised projects are analysed in our study of DeFi and MiCA licensing requirements.
Crypto taxation
19% and the end of invisibility
By European standards the Polish PIT rules for individuals are simple: income from the disposal of virtual currencies is taxed as capital income at 19%, and crypto-to-crypto exchanges remain tax neutral; tax arises on exit into fiat money, goods or services.
The simplicity ends at the edges of the system:
Staking, airdrops, genesis token allocations, DeFi protocol rewards, or crypto passing through an inheritance or a gift (where inheritance and gift tax applies alongside PIT) are areas where the interpretive line is not uniform;
Companies, service providers and foreign structures need separate analysis, as the PIT regime does not cover them, and a difference of opinion with the tax authority costs real money.
Here we work with advance tax rulings, opinions and properly kept records, before a dispute ever arises.
What is changing is the environment: since 1 January 2026, exchanges and other reporting providers have been collecting data on users and transactions under the DAC8 regime, built on the OECD CARF standard; the first reportable period is 2026, and the first automatic exchange of information between tax administrations begins in 2027. The reporting does not reach back in time, but the new data will give tax authorities a foothold to examine earlier years within the limitation periods, including transactions conducted abroad. For those who settle honestly, the change is cosmetic; for those who have postponed putting their history in order, this is the last moment to review past filings on their own initiative and on their own terms. The scope of the service is described on our crypto taxation page, and the reporting mechanics in our DAC8 analysis.
AML: procedures that work, not merely exist
Crypto-asset service providers are subject to AML/CFT obligations: risk assessment, internal procedures, customer due diligence, the travel rule, and, to an extent depending on their seat and how they serve the Polish market, reporting to the Polish FIU. In licensing and supervisory practice, the AML file is among the first things the authority reads and the first thing exposed by an incident. We write policies and procedures for the actual business model, train the team and see clients through inspections; we do not sell binders meant to sit on a shelf. And when, despite the procedures, a charge under Article 299 of the Polish Criminal Code appears, we step in with the criminal defence.
The AI Act and data
New technologies in our practice mean more than crypto-assets. The AI Act entered into force on 1 August 2024 and imposes obligations in stages:
the bans on prohibited practices apply from 2 February 2025,
requirements for general-purpose AI models from 2 August 2025,
transparency obligations under Article 50 (labelling AI-generated content, informing users that they are conversing with a system)s from 2 August 2026,
requirements for high-risk systems, following the amendment of July 2026 (Regulation 2026/1744), from 2 December 2027, and for systems embedded in regulated products from 2 August 2028.
For firms deploying AI in financial products, client service or analytics, this means an inventory of systems, risk classification, documentation and human oversight, all consistent with the GDPR and sectoral secrecy rules. We run AI Act implementations from the opening review to the complete documentation set.
A bank for the sector
The account is a legal project too
The best authorisation earns nothing without a bank account, and banks still treat the crypto-asset sector with prudential caution: de-risking did not disappear because MiCA arrived. We help build the structure’s banking: from payment institutions open to the sector, through operational accounts and client-fund safeguarding accounts, to relationships with banks in the jurisdiction of the licence. More on our page on banking for crypto businesses.
Where technology meets fraud
The other side of this market is its victims: fake investment platforms, pyramids dressed up as tokens, hijacked accounts and drained funds. We represent more than 130 clients in the criminal proceedings concerning the Zondacrypto exchange and run long-standing cases against investment fraudsters; if you are looking for help as a victim, the right entry point is our page on investment fraud: legal help for victims and the Zondacrypto case hub.
Knowledge base
Two encyclopaedic studies are maintained as continuously updated compendia:
Cryptocurrencies (what crypto-assets are, the MiCA taxonomy, consensus mechanisms, CBDCs, risks)
Cryptocurrency taxation (tax theory and practice from Poland to the world’s main models, DeFi, staking, NFTs).
From our current analyses:
Damages from the State Treasury for the absence of a MiCA implementing statute,
Cryptocurrency transaction reporting under DAC8,
The limits of decentralisation: DeFi under MiCA.
We are compiling content on the subject of artificial intelligence law on the prawo-ai-legal.pl/en/ website.
Ask a lawyer
We start the conversation with three questions: what exactly do you do with crypto-assets, where are your clients, and what has to happen within the next six months. The answers determine whether the matter is a licence, a tax issue, a procedure, a bank, or all of them at once, and in what order. Sometimes, after the first analysis, we advise against the project in its proposed shape; that too is a result. Describe your situation in the form; we reply with a concrete plan of next steps, not an off-the-shelf offer.
