Compliance

10 min read

What Should I Do If the Site Where I Bought My Crypto No Longer Exists and There's No Paper Trail?

If the site was legit, the transfers happened and it was all above board, the purchase can still be proven to a bank even though the exchange no longer exists. The platform disappeared, but the evidence did not: the money that funded the account left your bank, and the coins that left the exchange landed on the blockchain, where every transaction is still visible today.

alt.co Team

September 15, 2026

What a bank's KYC and AML review needs is not a statement from a defunct exchange but other sources of evidence which you might not realize you have. It needs a chain it can verify, from the fiat that paid for the crypto to the wallet that holds it now. Customers of Mt. Gox, BTC-e, QuadrigaCX, Cryptopia or FTX face the same question, and the answer is a reconstruction built from the records that survived the closure.

What the closed exchange used to hold	Where the evidence still exists after the site is gone
Your fiat deposit onto the platform	Bank or card statement showing the wire transfer or payment to the exchange
Order history and purchase price	Email receipts, screenshots, old CSV exports, withdrawal confirmation emails
Withdrawal of the coins to your wallet	On-chain transaction and its txid, visible on chain with proof of control demonstrated on your wallet (msg signature or satoshi test)
Your verified identity on the exchange	KYC confirmation emails, liquidator or claims records naming you as a customer
An independent view of the funds	Blockchain forensics screening and a reconstructed source of funds file

Why a Closed Exchange Does Not Make Legitimate Crypto Unbankable

A defunct exchange is a documentation problem, not a legitimacy problem. Banks do not refuse crypto because the platform it was bought on has shut down; they refuse it when nobody can show where the money came from, and a frozen account at the fiat off-ramp is usually the result of a missing record rather than of the platform's failure. When that origin is demonstrated with evidence the bank can check itself, the closure of the site becomes a fact to explain rather than an obstacle.

What the bank actually needs to see

That the fiat used for the purchase was yours, with proof that it came from an explainable source
That the fiat reached the exchange, and that crypto of a matching value left it towards a wallet you control
That the path from that wallet to today's holding is continuous and free of unexplained exposure
That the story is consistent across every document, because customer due diligence tests coherence as much as completeness

The general method for documenting crypto origin is set out in our guide to proving crypto source of funds to a private bank. This article covers the specific case where the platform that could have produced the records is gone.

Source of funds and source of wealth for a purchase that left no paper trail

Source of funds concerns this purchase and the transfer you now want to make: which money bought the crypto, on which platform, and how it reached the bank. Source of wealth concerns how your overall fortune was built, of which this position is one part. A closed exchange weakens the source of funds evidence for one transaction; it does not erase the source of wealth, which is often documented by salary, business income or earlier investments. Keeping the two apart, as explained in source of wealth versus source of funds, stops a gap in one purchase from casting doubt on everything else.

Where the Evidence Still Exists After the Exchange Is Gone

The records you need are scattered across four places, and none of them depends on the exchange being online. Most people can recover more than they expect once they stop looking for the platform and start looking for the traces it left elsewhere.

On the bank side: the wire transfers and card payments that funded the account

Bank statements showing the wire transfer to the exchange or to its payment processor, with dates and amounts
Card statements for purchases made by credit or debit card
Archived statements can usually be requested from your bank; in Switzerland, business records must be kept for ten years

On the blockchain: withdrawals to wallets you controlled

Every withdrawal from the exchange to your own wallet created an on-chain transaction with a permanent transaction ID. A blockchain forensics platform such as Chainalysis Reactor or Scorechain shows the date, the amount and the receiving address, even years after the platform closed and that the sending/receiving wallet is labeled as the closed exchange. A single address or txid from an old email is often enough to rebuild the rest of the movements, because that historical data lets you trace funds forward to the wallet you hold today.

In your inbox and files: email receipts, KYC confirmations, screenshots and exports

An email receipt for each order, deposit and withdrawal, plus two-factor or login notifications that prove an active account
KYC approval emails showing that the exchange verified your identity or that your account is opened
Screenshots of the order history, old CSV exports or portfolio tracker files you kept at the time

In insolvency records: liquidator claims and proofs of claim

When an exchange collapses, its customers usually file claims with a trustee or liquidator. A Mt. Gox rehabilitation claim, an FTX customer claim or a QuadrigaCX claim names you, lists your balance and is issued by a third party, which makes it one of the strongest documents available for a defunct exchange. Correspondence with the trustee and any distribution received belong in the file as well.

How to Reconstruct the Purchase Step by Step

A reconstruction follows the money in the order it moved, and each step produces material the next one relies on. Done in this sequence, it turns fragments into a dossier a compliance team can read in a single review. This is routine for the alt.co team as we have done it for many of our clients in the past.

Step 1: Rebuild the timeline of platforms, dates and amounts

Start from what you know: which sites you used, roughly when, and how much you bought. Write it down before gathering documents, then correct the timeline as evidence comes in. A dated outline is what every later record gets attached to.

Step 2: Match every fiat outflow to a deposit on the exchange

Place each bank or card transaction to the platform against the timeline. Where the payment went to a processor rather than the exchange itself, an email receipt or the processor's name next to the exchange's name on the statement usually makes the link. The objective is to show that the money which bought the crypto was yours and left an account in your name. The standard document pack a bank expects for a crypto cash-out is listed in the seven documents banks require.

Step 3: Trace the withdrawals on-chain and prove control of the wallet

Identify each withdrawal from the exchange to a wallet you held, by txid and receiving address
Follow the coins from that address to the wallet that holds them today, including any transfers between your own wallets
Prove ownership with a satoshi test or a message signature, which matters most for coins kept in self-custody on a non-custodial wallet, so the bank does not rely on your word

Step 4: Screen the wallets and explain any exposure to the defunct platform

Blockchain forensics tools such as Chainalysis Reactor, Scorechain, Elliptic and TRM Labs score each address for exposure to sanctioned entities, mixers or failed platforms. Coins that passed through Mt. Gox or BTC-e can return a high risk score even when your use of the exchange was entirely legitimate, because those platforms are flagged as a category. The score does not end the file: it has to be contextualised, showing when the exposure occurred, that it came from your own account, and that nothing unexplained followed, in a written AML report the bank can keep with your documents. Running that screening before any bank sees the wallet is described in how a wallet is screened before a bank sees your identity.

Step 5: Assemble one consistent narrative

The last step uses everything you managed to reconstruct and joins the pieces into a single account: who you are, where the fiat came from, where it was converted, how the crypto reached your wallet and what happened since. Each statement in the narrative points to a document, a txid or a screening result. Consistency matters more than volume, since a dossier that contradicts itself is refused faster than one with an honest gap. Sometimes, a gap is not avoidable and alt.co knows how to derisk such gaps.

When Part of the Trail Cannot Be Recovered

Some records will not come back: a closed email account, a lost laptop, a bank that no longer exists. Compliance teams reviewing crypto-origin wealth see this regularly, particularly for holdings bought before 2015, and the challenges early buyers meet are covered in why early Bitcoin holders struggle with banks. What decides the outcome is how the gap is handled.

Documenting the gap instead of filling it

State precisely which missing record cannot be obtained, for which period, and why
Show the evidence on either side of the gap, so the missing piece is bounded rather than open-ended
Never estimate a figure without saying it is an estimate and explaining how it was reached

How a Regulated Intermediary Carries the File to the Bank

A regulated Swiss intermediary runs a source of funds audit on the transaction history, screens the wallets, documents any gaps and presents a finished file to a private bank whose risk appetite matches the case. The bank then reviews a documented position from a supervised counterparty rather than an individual trying to explain a closed exchange from scratch.

Altcoinomy SA, CHE-209.239.695, is a Swiss financial intermediary supervised by the VQF under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, audited by BDO SA and based in Geneva since 2017. The compliance responsibility for the file sits with us rather than with the bank, which reduces the bank's own risk and increases acceptance. We are neither a bank, since we take no deposits, nor a standard OTC desk: those stop at fiat conversion, and we pick up where they leave off, through the conversion described in converting crypto to fiat through an OTC desk and the introduction to one of our partner private banks in Switzerland or Monaco.

Intake and compliance review: 5 to 15 business days from a complete document pack, longer where a defunct exchange requires a deeper reconstruction
Account openings at partner private banks in Switzerland from USD 1,000,000 upwards, which can be seeded in tranches from USD 25,000
Currencies settled: CHF, EUR, USD, GBP, AED and ILS; assets handled: BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT, SOL, HYPE, XRP and other liquid tokens (top 100 by market cap)

The FATF standards on virtual assets set the expectations that Swiss and Monegasque banks apply to crypto-origin funds, and a reconstructed file is built to meet them rather than to argue around them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I prove where my crypto came from if the exchange no longer exists?

Yes. The wire transfer records that funded the account, the on-chain withdrawals to your wallet, email receipts and any liquidator claim together rebuild the purchase without the platform. Screened and assembled into one consistent file, they give a bank the verifiable chain it needs.

Which crypto exchanges have shut down?

Well-known cases include Mt. Gox, which halted withdrawals in 2014, BTC-e, shut down by US authorities in 2017, QuadrigaCX and Cryptopia in 2019, and FTX, which filed for bankruptcy in 2022. Many smaller platforms closed quietly, and the same reconstruction applies to all of them.

What if my bank no longer has statements from that period?

Ask first, because archived statements are often still available. If they are not, the purchase can be supported by card records, email receipts and the on-chain withdrawals, with the remaining gap documented rather than left unexplained.

Will my wallet be flagged because it touched a defunct exchange?

It may. Analytics tools can assign a high risk score to coins that passed through platforms such as Mt. Gox or BTC-e. A flag is not a refusal: it is contextualised by showing the exposure came from your own legitimate account and was followed by a clean history.

How long does it take to rebuild the file?

Our intake and compliance review takes 5 to 15 business days from a complete document pack. A defunct exchange often requires deeper reconstruction of bank records and on-chain movements, so the preparation can take longer, depending on how much evidence survives.

Bought crypto on a site that no longer exists?

A Confidential Compliance Review looks at what evidence survived, screens your wallets and tells you whether the purchase can be documented before any bank is approached. We then rebuild the file as a VQF-supervised Swiss intermediary and introduce it to one of our partner private banks in Switzerland or Monaco.

Request a Confidential Compliance Review

Need help with your crypto compliance?

Book a free consultation with our Swiss-regulated compliance team.

alt.co is a Geneva-based, Swiss-regulated financial intermediary (Altcoinomy SA) supervised by VQF and audited by BDO SA. We help crypto holders access private banking in Switzerland and Monaco.

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