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You'll need a Bitcoin wallet before you buy since some exchanges require one.

Don't have a wallet? Read our guide on the best Bitcoin & cryptocurrency wallets.

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Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is a popular activity in Poland, and the country is well-served by crypto exchanges and facilities. There are dozens of Bitcoin ATMs and all the major exchanges allow Polish users.

The cryptocurrency markets are currently not officially regulated in Poland, although the government regulator has announced its plans to begin looking into it.

In this article, we'll take a look at the specific options available for crypto enthusiasts in Poland, the history of some local exchanges, and one uniquely home-grown idea for an improvement to the Bitcoin protocol.

Read on to find out more about Bitcoin in Poland.

Top Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency Exchanges in Poland

Coinbase is one of the world's most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. Its full suite of services - buying, selling, converting, as well as a range of payment methods - are available to Polish users.

Kraken is the choice of many European Bitcoiners. Poland is a supported country, though the exchange doesn't offer deposits of fiat PLN or any PLN trading pairs.

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There are three main types of Bitcoin wallet and all of them are supported in Poland:

• Software (desktop or mobile - iOS and Android wallets
• Hardware wallet
• Cold-storage (paper or steel wallets, the latter of which are used to backup your main wallet.

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One scam that made it to Polish news targeted those new to crypto, who still make up a large majority of people. The scammers would cold-call people and explain that they represent a cryptocurrency investment fund. Starting off with a friendly, businesslike tone that became relentlessly persistent, they would try to persuade their unwitting mark to purchase Bitcoin. The scammers would walk the "client" through the process of purchasing crypto, with the transaction done on the client's end, adding to the legitimacy of the operation.

Once the crypto was purchased, the scammers would explain that it would need to be transferred to a wallet belonging to Poland's financial supervision authority - the Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego (KNF)- where it would be cleared by the Warsaw regulator as a legal and legitimate purchase. Once approved, the crypto would be sent to the "investment fund's" wallet and they could then begin actively managing it.

Sounds like a fair deal, a small inconvenience that's to be expected when dealing with such a new asset class. But not so. The wallet purportedly belonging to the KNF belonged in actual fact to the scammers themselves. No funds deposited there would ever see reinvestment for anyone but the scammers' benefit. The investors left were with nothing.

In January 2018, Polish exchange Bidextreme.pl was hacked , with customers losing all of their Bitcoin and Litecoin.

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We've got a chart here at Buy Bitcoin Worldwide that tracks the up to the minute price of Bitcoin and provides historical data in USD.

You can check out the Bitcoin Volatility Index or see how many days it's been since the last all time high (ATH).

For price data in a range of foreign currencies such as PLN, Luno has a page where you can check the price of Bitcoin in any of their supported fiat pairs, which include EUR, GBP, IDR, MYR, NGN, PLN, SGD, UGX, USD, ZAR, and ZMW.

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At CoinATMradar.com you can filter by any of the most popular cryptocurrencies, find ATMs that support buying, selling, or both, and find stores and merchants that offer crypto services.

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Does Coinbase work in Poland?

Coinbase does work in Poland. It is on Coinbase's list of supported countries, where you can also see which payment methods and cryptocurrency activities are enabled.h nothing.

As you can see, Polish Coinbase users have the full suite of services available to them. Buying, selling, and converting cryptocurrencies are supported, as are wire transfers, debit and credit cards, and Paypal for payment.

How do I cash out of Bitcoin in Poland?

There are a number of options that make cashing out of Bitcoin in Poland simple and easy.

Coinbase supports a number of methods of cashing out, including bank transfer to your account and withdrawal to your PayPal account.

You can also use Bitcoin ATMs to cash out. The machine will generate an address to which you send your Bitcoin or any other supported cryptocurrency. Once the transaction is confirmed, the machine will dispense your cash. This is one of the simplest ways to literally cash out.

There are other options, including LocalBitcoins and Paxful. These are both peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges, where you're buying and selling with another individual. This does introduce a degree of risk, though by ensuring that you conduct all business on the platform and make use of its escrow services while trading only with users who have a good reputation, you'll minimize any potential problems. Additionally, after looking at the numberous exchange collapses of the last few years, maybe P2P is the way forward.

Centralized exchanges are also getting in on the P2P game, with Binance unveiling its offering earlier this year.

As you can see, the number of providers is quite low, but this should increase with time so it's worth checking back now and then.

What happened to Coinroom?

On April 2nd, Coinroom became the first of two major Polish exchanges to shut down in 2019, taking more than a million PLN in users' money with them.

The only contact from the operators of Coinroom came in the form of an email. This email notified users that the exchange would be closing the next day, and anyone who didn't claim their funds before then would lose them. To claim, users had to get in touch directly with the administrators. This was all framed as being a standard part of the agreement that all users had accepted on signup.

The next day, the exchange did indeed shutdown, and any users who hadn't gone through the process outlined in the email lost their funds.

What happened to BitMarket?

BitMarket was the other major Polish crypto exchange to shut up shop in 2019, although this happened in a decidedly nastier fashion that Coinroom.

Visitors to BitMarket's site found the following message:

Over 400 users of BitMarkets lost nearly 2300 BTC, worth about $23 million at the time.

The operators of BitMarket at the time - Tobiasz Niemiro and Marcin Aszkiełowicz - had taken it over in 2015, when the exchange had an outstanding deficit of over 600 BTC. Earlier that year, it had been temporarily shutdown by a Polish bank for its apparent insolvency. This is disputed by BitMarket's original founder, Michał Pleban .

Whatever the facts surrounding the transfer of ownership in 2015, the story of BitMarket came to a sad end in July 2019. Three weeks after the exchange's closure, Tobiasz Niemiro was found dead in a forest.