How do I substantiate my crypto assets for a Dutch bank?

By R.T. (Tyler) Dijst, blockchain investigator at Paucitas

What Paucitas does

We reconstruct where your crypto assets came from and when they were acquired. Every transaction is verified separately on the blockchain and set against your exchange and bank data. The result is a report with a timeline, the sources used and an account of the method, so that an employee at the bank can follow the route without having to come back to you for an explanation.

One case from practice: someone bought bitcoin in 2017 through an exchange that no longer exists, moved the balance twice to a self held wallet, and sold part of it in 2024 for the deposit on a house. The export files from that first exchange were gone. By reading the wallet addresses back on the blockchain and linking the data to the original bank deposit, the full route still ended up on paper in a form that could be followed.

To substantiate crypto assets for a Dutch bank is a different exercise from explaining them. A bank has its own duty to establish where funds come from, so it is not looking for your account of events but for data it can verify independently. That is why every figure in the report carries a reference to the transaction or the statement it rests on.

What you supply

You supply the exports from your exchanges, the addresses of your wallets and the bank statements you used to deposit at the time. Beyond that, anything that substantiates the starting point: a sale agreement, a payslip, a deed of gift. Missing years are not a blocker; we work with what exists and state explicitly what can no longer be traced.

What you receive

You receive a report of usually fifteen to thirty pages with a summary at the front, the timeline, the transaction table and the annexes. A standard origin question is normally completed within three working days. The step most often underestimated is the link between private and business accounts: that is exactly where the records a bank wants to see tend to be missing.

The report comes with a statement of the method used, so that a reviewer at the bank can see which data were examined and which steps were taken. In practice that saves a round of follow up questions.

For readers outside the Netherlands it helps to know how Dutch banks approach this. They ask about origin because they are required to, not because they suspect you, and they tend to accept a report only when a reviewer who has never met you can follow it. A report that sets out how the crypto assets were built up, in order and with sources, meets that test far more often than a covering letter does.

How to get started

You contact us with a short description of the question your bank has asked. In a first conversation we set the scope together: which period, which wallets, which question exactly. After that you know what is needed and what it costs, before the investigation starts. The contact page is the place to begin.

Most people come to us with a letter in hand and a deadline of two or three weeks. That is usually enough time, provided the exports are requested from the exchanges straight away. If the deadline is shorter, say so in your first message and we will tell you honestly whether it can be met.

Whether a particular bank accepts it remains for the bank itself.