The catastrophic implosion of Zondacrypto, once a titan of the Eastern and Central European cryptocurrency market, has cast a dark shadow over the crypto industry.

It has also produced a bizarre true-crime saga: the disappearance of two consecutive chief executives in the span of four years, according to a report by the New York Times.

Going dark

The exchange’s website went completely dark in April. Its proprietary digital token, the ZND, has lost 99.9 percent of its value.

Sylwester Suszek, Zondacrypto’s founder, was born to a coal miner in Katowice, Poland. He then transformed himself into a flashy “crypto king.” After launching the exchange under the name BitBay in 2014, he lived large with a fleet of luxury vehicles,…