The Dutch government is asking for feedback on a proposed bill that would require crypto service providers to exchange customer data with its tax authority, in order to align with EU legislation.

The bill will essentially put into Dutch law the European DAC8 Directive, which will come into effect across the EU on January 1, 2026. It requires crypto providers to annually collect, verify, and share user data with the tax authorities of all member states.

In addition, this Dutch bill will make the data accessible to non-EU countries that are also part of the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF). These countries include the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and South Africa.

Read more: Dutch police reveal darkweb probe behind $8.7M crypto seizure

The Dutch government plans to submit the bill by the second quarter of 2025. Its introduction won’t change anything for Dutch crypto owners. Tax returns will be filled out the same way. What it does alter is the level of responsibility on crypto exchanges and other service providers to properly report information, in order to prevent tax evasion.

The Dutch public has just under a month to share comments, opinions, and advice on this proposed bill (end date November 21).

Please note that your responses can be public, so refrain from sharing any sensitive information.

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Dutch police have revealed that they conducted a long-term investigation into the “largest and longest running international darkweb market of all time worldwide” that resulted in the arrests of two of the operation’s admins and the seizure of €8 million ($8.7 million) in crypto.

The marketplace, which was made up of two entities, Bohemia and Cannabia, offered users the ability to buy malware and DDoS attacks, and a drugs market that sold predominantly cannabis. According to Dutch authorities, “Never before has a darkweb market of this size been discovered by the police.”

Police say the marketplace had an advertising outreach of 82,000 ads per day, facilitated 67,000 transactions per month, and made €12 million ($13.1 million) in September 2023 alone.  

The investigation began in 2022 and the marketplace collapsed in late 2023 after it performed an ‘exit scam.’ According to Bleeping Computer, various service disruptions and a feud with a “rogue developer” contributed to its collapse.

Read more: Darkweb drugs site Incognito Market threatens to out users who paid in crypto

One of the admins, a 20-year-old from the UK, was arrested at Schiphol airport on June 27, and his electronic devices along with bitcoin access keys were seized.

The other, a 23-year-old Irish man, was arrested by Irish authorities last August. Collectively, the pair made €5 million ($5.46 million) running the site. 

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The Dutch Central Bank revealed today that it hit crypto exchange Crypto.com with a €2.85 million ($3.1 million) fine after failing to register for two years, breaking money laundering and terrorism financing laws.

Crypto.com, registered as Foris DAX MT Limited, was fined by the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) on October 2, 2023, after it failed to register with the bank between May 2020 and November 2022.

This period of non-compliance from Crypto.com was described by the DNB as ‘very severe,’ and led to the bank increasing the fine. The DNB also considered the number of Crypto.com’s customers and its competitive advantage in the country as reasons to impose a larger penalty. 

Crypto firms must register with the DNB under regulations set out in the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act, abbreviated locally as WWFT.

Crypto.com attempted to reduce the fine by arguing the fine should reflect a violation of ‘low severity.’ It argued that the DNB could ‘at most’ fine them for failing to register on time, while claiming Crypto.com followed the objectives of the WWFT, maintained customer due diligence, and reported unusual transactions to Malta’s financial watchdog, the FIAU. 

Read more: Binance execs detained in Nigeria still being questioned over illicit fund flows

Crypto.com to appeal fine

The crypto exchange failed to mitigate the fine as the DNB upheld its decision, claiming Crypto.com “ran an increased risk of becoming involved in money laundering or the financing of terrorism.” It maintained its opinion that Crypto.com’s violations ‘are very serious.’ 

A Crypto.com spokesperson told Protos “We are disappointed and disagree with their (DNB’s) decision to fine Foris DAX MT Ltd and are actively appealing this decision.”

“Moreover, we have already addressed the concerns raised in a timely and transparent manner and received regulatory approval from DNB as a crypto service provider in July last year. We remain fully committed to collaboratively engaging with the DNB, and regulators around the world.”

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Dutch legal teams are hunting a 23-year-old law student and self-styled crypto banker who has vanished after allegedly stealing up to €10 million in a suspected pyramid scheme.

As reported by rtv Oost, for two years a 23-year-old from Hengelo, Netherlands, was reportedly running a crypto bank while accepting investments from his family, close associates, and strangers across town. 

He reportedly accepted a minimum fee of €5,000 for his crypto-investing while taking 50% of the profits as payment for his service. His work is said to have earned the local title of ‘crypto genius.’

On Wednesday, an email was reportedly sent to his estimated 300 investors claiming that, with regret, he can no longer pay them back as he has lost all the invested funds, including his own money.

Dutch lawyers say amounts ranging from €35,000 to €50,000 in crypto have been taken from individuals. One victim said, “We suspect that it could be a rough estimate of an amount between 4.5 and perhaps 10 million euros that is now missing.” 

Read more: Charity worker says bitcoin scam forced him to steal $150K from veterans

According to lawyers representing victims, the law student paid initial investors with money taken from newer customers in an apparent crypto pyramid scheme. Lawyer Arjon Tieman, said it has “all the hallmarks,” while noting the current information is very fresh.

A spokesperson also apologized on behalf of the Dutch ‘crypto genius,’ saying in the email that he was “completely mentally unstable” and is receiving treatment after seeking medical help. It’s reported his Facebook and Instagram accounts have been deleted, his scheduled trip to Turkey with his football club canceled, and his house empty.  

Victims have approached the police, but a report is yet to be filed. Legal teams representing victims are currently working to make a claim.

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Binance has announced that customers in the Netherlands have until August 17 to withdraw from the exchange and that a new partnership with crypto exchange Coinmerce will make this a “one-click” process.

This withdrawal comes after Binance failed to gain a license from the Netherlands’ central bank. The Dutch Central Bank fined Binance €3.3 million last year for providing these services without registration. 

Coinmerce received its license from the bank in November 2020.

Binance has advertised in emails to customers that Coinmerce will serve as its ready-made substitute, offering many of the same assets currently trading on the platform. The exchange also indicated to users that Coinmerce will soon be adding the missing listings, according to users on Reddit and screenshots of emails shared with Protos.

Coinmerce has historically operated as a broker dependent on Binance’s order books, but it claims it has now developed its own exchange and is working on finding other venues to source liquidity. Its new exchange currently only has pairs against Tether. 

Read more: Dutch users urged to withdraw crypto from Binance by August 17

Coinmerce has previously sent withdrawals to customers from Binance wallets, claiming this is a byproduct of its operation as a broker.

Binance has relied on a variety of brokers around the world as part of its growth and regulatory strategy, including firms like Swyftx in Australia. Despite this strategy, Binance has been targeted by authorities in a variety of other jurisdictions, including by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US, and by officials in France and Australia. 

Binance has nominally exited the Netherlands by recommending customers transfer to an exchange that only recently became an exchange and which previously served as a broker for Binance.

Protos has reached out to Coinmerce to determine if its new exchange is based on licensed Binance technology and whether or not it intends to continue to act as a broker for Binance. We will update if we hear back.

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Following an announcement last month that Binance would no longer operate in the Netherlands, the crypto exchange has told its Dutch customers that they have until August 17 to withdraw their holdings.

The firm failed to receive a license from De Nederlandsche Bank, the central bank of the Netherlands. As a result, Dutch users are no longer able to trade crypto on the platform as of Monday, and now have a month to offload their bags.

Binance has signed an agreement with Dutch crypto platform Coinmerce to make the move easier, through a one-click system via the Binance app. According to the firm’s chief exec, Jaap de Bruijn, over 100,000 customers have already transferred their crypto holdings. The number is set to increase, NL Times reports.

In its statement in June announcing the closure, Binance said that its efforts to gain licensure in the Netherlands remain ongoing.

The Netherlands now joins the US and Australia in a growing list of jurisdictions that have shunned Binance. Following the closure of US and Australian dollar deposits, arbitrage opportunities emerged for traders, as sharp influxes of users offloading their bags led to steep discounts.

Bitcoin traded at a 20% discount at the end of May on Binance Australia, following the closure of its on-ramps and the news that its off-ramps would soon cease.

Read more: Dubai’s crackdown on BitOasis spells bad news for Binance

Dutch closure comes amid widespread Binance scrutiny in EU

Binance is the subject of intense international scrutiny. Beyond the Netherlands, its hold over the EU is loosening. Its France-based European headquarters was raided last month.

Protos broke the news in June that the police and financial regulators of several European countries are collaborating with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its investigation. On June 27, Protos learned that EU officials suspect Binance of using its companies in Ireland and Malta to hide illicit activity.

As such, further regulatory action is expected against Binance in the EU. Crypto markets are responding — at press time, crypto prediction market Polymarket shows that traders believe Binance has a 12% chance of insolvency by the end of the year.

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The Dutch National Police have disrupted the Deadbolt ransomware group, recovering the decryption keys of 90% of victims that contacted police, according to a report by Chainalysis.

Since 2021, Deadbolt has preyed on small businesses and sometimes individuals, demanding smaller ransoms that can quickly add up. In 2022, Deadbolt successfully collected more than $2.3 million from about 5,000 victims. The average ransom payment was $476 — far lower than the average across all ransomware scams, which sits at over $70,000.

Deadbolt’s developers designed a unique way to deliver decryption keys to victims. This made it possible to target so many — and as the Dutch police discovered, would ultimately be the group’s downfall.

As reported by Chainalysis, Deadbolt exploits a security flaw in network-attacked storage devices made by QNAP. Once a victim’s device has been infected, a simple message instructs them to send a specific amount of bitcoin to a wallet address.

Deadbolt automatically sends victims the decryption key once a victim pays by sending a small amount of bitcoin to the ransom address with the decryption key written in the OP_RETURN field. Chainalysis believes that developers had pre-programmed transactions to send 0.0000546 BTC (around $1) to its own wallet address each time a victim pays, so that funds are available to communicate the decryption key.

Dutch police trick Deadbolt system

This rather sophisticated method is what led the Dutch National Police to disrupt Deadbolt. Investigators realised they could trick the system into returning decryption keys to hundreds of victims — allowing them to recover data without actually coughing up the ransom.

“Looking through the transactions in Chainalysis, we saw that in some cases, Deadbolt was providing the decryption key before the victim’s payment was actually confirmed on the blockchain,” an investigator told Chainalysis.

This meant there was about a 10 minute window — while the unconfirmed transaction sat waiting in Bitcoin’s mempool — to trick the system. 

“A victim could send the payment to Deadbolt, wait for Deadbolt to send the decryption key, and then use replace-by-fee to change the pending transaction, and have the ransomware payment go back to the victim,” the investigator said.

Dutch police faced one problem, however — they likely only had one shot before Deadbolt would realize what was happening. So, together with Interpol, investigators searched police reports from all over the country and others to identify as many victims who hadn’t paid the ransom yet. 

Read more: Coinbase disagrees with almost $4M fine from Dutch central bank

“We wrote a script to automatically send a transaction to Deadbolt, wait for another transaction with the decryption key in return, and use RBF on our payment transaction. Since we couldn’t test it on Deadbolt, we had to run it on testnets to make sure it worked,” the investigator said.

Once Dutch police deployed the script, it didn’t take long for Deadbolt to catch on and stop its automated method of delivering decryption keys through OP_RETURN. But thanks to coordinated efforts, almost 90% of victims police were able to recover their data and avoid paying the ransom. According to authorities, Deadbolt lost “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Dutch police are keen to remind the public to report cybercrime — after all, it was only through police reports that victims could be identified. Many Deadbolt victims who never filed police reports weren’t able to recoup ransom payments.

As for Deadbolt, it’s still operating. However, the gang is forced to adopt different methods of delivering decryption keys, raising its overhead.

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Dutch police are celebrating their first ever NFT seizure after two raids earlier this month turned up a number of blockchain-powered digital certificates and an undisclosed amount of crypto.

As reported by local outlet NLTimes, the NFTs were snatched two weeks ago when authorities swooped on residential addresses in Weesp and Hilversum in the north of the country.

The raids were part of an ongoing investigation into widespread illegal selling of personal data. Two men aged 19 and 23 were arrested, presumably due to allegations of exploiting stolen data to steal crypto tokens like NFTs.

Dutch police have not revealed exactly what the NFTs are or how they managed to gain access.

However, a tech expert told Dutch outlet NOS that it was likely authorities had obtained the suspects’ private keys with a court order, which allowed them to seize the NFTs.

The fuzz also doesn’t have solid plans in place to handle the seized loot — or even what it’s worth. A Dutch court will apparently decide.

“If the judge decides that we can auction them, then it will become clear what they will yield,” a police spokesperson explained (via NOS).

“Now we do not dare to estimate that because the value fluctuates greatly.”

Read more: [Apple store gunman who demanded $220M crypto ransom dies by cop car]

The crypto captured in the raids adds to the Netherlands’ already impressive and ever-growing tally of seized digital assets.

Dutch police confiscated nearly €35 million ($39 million) worth of crypto assets last year.

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Out now: the first four episodes of our ongoing investigative podcast series Innovated: Blockchain City.

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A 27-year-old man who took over an Apple Store in central Amsterdam, took a hostage, and demanded a €200-million ($223 million) crypto ransom has died in hospital after being mown down by a police car.

The armed suspect, named by Het Parool as Abdel Rahman Akkad, took control of the shop in the city’s bustling Leidseplein area on Tuesday. A tense five-hour standoff with police followed.

The outlet reported the situation ended when Akkad’s 44-year-old Bulgarian hostage, an Apple customer, fled as police delivered water.

The BBC highlighted that the victim was Bulgarian while Dutch media initially claimed they were British.

In any case, the luckless perpetrator, an Amsterdammer, was struck by a cop-driven BMW while attempting to recapture him.

• Police had dispatched several special units to the Amsterdam Apple store to tackle Akkad, who wore military-style clothing and carried a number of weapons.
• Akkad reportedly fired on police four times. While around 70 people escaped, the kidnapper held one man at gunpoint.
• Police robots inspected the assailant and found that, while he did have a small amount of explosives on his person, they were not ready to detonate.

“A car from the special forces reacted very adequately and alertly,” said Frank Paauw, a police chief (via The Guardian).

“The hostage has played a hero role. In a few split seconds, he escaped this hostage situation, otherwise, it would have been an even longer night.”

Akkad’s lawyer, who reportedly represented him in multiple cases, confirmed his death to the media.

In a statement (relayed by MacRumors), Apple said: “We want to thank local law enforcement for their exceptional work and ongoing investigation.”

“Our teams and customers took swift action and showed incredible strength and resolve today, and we are so thankful for the support and care they’ve shown each other under such challenging circumstances.”

Read more: [Black hat hackers hit white hats with ransomware, demand $70M Bitcoin]

While Akkad sent selfies to news outlet AT5 during the stand-off, their motive is not totally clear.

And exactly in which crypto Akkad demanded the ransom be paid hasn’t been reported.

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