BitBay’s fate hangs four years after Sylwester Suszek’s disappearance

Sylwester Suszek, founder of the Polish crypto exchange BitBay, disappeared on March 10, 2022. Four years later, the exchange he built has been rebranded twice, his sister is leading a public campaign to find him, and Polish prosecutors have merged his missing-person investigation with a probe into the exchange’s finances. The case sits at the intersection of crypto’s recurring governance nightmares and something far darker: potential links to organized crime, roughly 4,500 BTC reportedly under one person’s control, and an exchange that kept changing its name while questions about its founder went unanswered. The day Suszek vanished Suszek’s last confirmed location was a fuel base in Czeladzi, Poland, where he met with an associate identified as Marian W. His phone signal dropped shortly after 15:08 that afternoon. His white Porsche Taycan was later found abandoned. Marian W. was subsequently linked to organized crime. By late 2024, he faced kidnapping charges, though the full scope of his alleged involvement in Suszek’s disappearance remains under investigation. Despite years of police work, Suszek has not been found. No body has been recovered. No confirmed sighting has surfaced....