Source of Funds for Crypto: What Exchanges Accept as Proof

For pay, savings, a sale, a loan, a gift or an inheritance, the trail is usually the paper behind the money (a payslip, tax return, sale contract, loan agreement, will or gift letter) plus a bank statement where it lands. For crypto, add statements or exports from the platform where you held it, the wallet addresses you used and the transaction records that end at your deposit, with proof of whatever paid for the crypto in the first place.

Crypto that came from another exchange, a wallet or mining

Crypto you bring in from elsewhere needs the same trail, only longer. Between them, the exchanges that cover it ask where it sat before, how it moved and what paid for it, so expect to pair a statement from the other platform with a document showing the original source of the money that bought the crypto. If you bought crypto from another person with your own money, the source to prove is that money.

Start from the deposit and work back:

1. The transfer into the account that’s asking. Give the platform name, the name, email address or phone number on that account, the wallet address, the transaction ID (TxID), the asset, the amount and the date. Don’t rely on the TxID alone, because it may not prove the wallet is yours or show where the assets first came from.
2. Proof the sending account is yours. For an exchange account, a statement or export in your name showing your email, wallet address and balance, or a trading history that names you and the platform, covers a date range, and shows deposits, withdrawals, trades, profits and losses and the closing balance. Exchanges differ on which of the two they ask for.
3. The wallet addresses you own or control. You may be asked for these, with exported history or screenshots from specific wallets or other exchanges. For a wallet you hold yourself, the list in step 1 is all you get: the page it comes from asks for evidence that you own the wallet without saying what that evidence should be.
4. What first paid for the crypto. Here your income documents come back in, with the payslips, statements or sale papers behind the money that bought it.

Crypto you sold. Where the money came from selling crypto, pair statements or receipts showing the sale with a tax or bank statement showing the proceeds under your full name; at least one exchange requires both.

Mining, staking and airdrops. Expect to show the pool, dashboard, payout or on-chain record, plus evidence the assets reached your account. Equipment receipts may support a mining explanation, but they don’t replace payout and transfer records. Other lists add mining payout statements that include your name, and staking pool or wallet statements.

The blockchain may be checked too. At least one exchange says it may use blockchain analytics tools to check that your crypto comes from legitimate sources and fits the sources you declared, and may ask you to explain large or unusual deposits or withdrawals, such as those from OTC desks or DeFi protocols. Give the real addresses and amounts, untidy ones included, because they can be checked against the chain.

Bought years ago, or on a platform that has closed. Two of the date rules carry hedges: 24 months “but exceptions apply”, and event-based documents with “different validity periods”. Neither page spells out those exceptions or periods, or says what to send when the first platform’s records are gone. These lists aren’t closed, though. Kraken calls its list “just a starting point” and offers to review a document you’re unsure about, and if gathering documents is taking time, asks you to get in touch before the request expires and says it will work with you.

Tell support before the deadline rather than leaving a gap.

Money you earned, sold, borrowed or were given

For every kind of source, exchanges ask what produced the money and whether it reached you. For a sale, a loan or an inheritance, the agreement or will isn’t the whole answer: send evidence that you received the funds as well, because an unsigned agreement may not be enough. Some exchanges spell that second document out as a requirement. An older help page, from June 2023, goes further, pairing nearly every source with a bank statement and asking to see “the inbound transactions (your income) as well as the outbound transactions” to the exchange.

If your pay lands in the same account you fund the exchange from, we’d send that statement first, because one of the five says a single bank statement showing both your salary deposits and your transfers to the exchange is sometimes enough.

The harder cases:

• You own a business. Company sales, invoices and company bank statements explain what a company does, but don’t on their own show how the money became yours, and a business licence alone may not prove you received anything. Send ownership records with the dividend, salary or distribution record that carried the money to you. If you’re self-employed, the answer one list gives is your most recent tax statement, or a bank statement from the last 3 months showing income payments.
• You’re a student, or between jobs. Kraken says a request may simply be down to your situation, “such as being a student or currently unemployed”. Send documents that match where your money comes from, such as a statement showing an allowance. If you’re living on savings, a bank statement from the last 3 months showing your full name and the balance is the one to send.
• Family paid in. A gift declaration sent with the transfer record should give the amount, date, reason, frequency, the donor’s full name and their relationship to you. An allowance letter for regular support states amount and frequency and is signed by whoever provides it. Which of the two an exchange asks for varies.
• You borrowed it. A credit card statement alone may not be sufficient, and a loan whose terms prohibit using the money for digital assets or investments can’t support that activity.

Declare the source that’s true, even when another would be easier to document. Don’t pick salary unless the money is genuine employment income paid to you, and expect documents that contradict each other to be rejected. Tax returns appear on most lists as evidence only; nothing here is tax advice.

Answering a Binance source of funds request covers that exchange’s tick boxes, upload errors and review time, and the source of funds document checker lists its accepted documents for each kind of income, with “within the last 3 months” turned into a date.

What to write in the source of funds box

The form usually starts with categories such as salary, savings, business income, a loan, an asset sale, a gift or crypto moved from your own account or wallet. Pick the one closest to the money behind this deposit, not your income in general. If it takes one answer, choose the recent and main source; if it lets you tick several, tick each one that’s true and send documents for each.

Where there’s a note or background box, use it to join the documents up: what the money was, the amount, when it reached you, when you moved it to the exchange and which account it passed through. Give names and dates as your documents print them. For money that came through a company or relative, add who owned it, how it reached you and why it went into your account.

Then read the answer against your files: a selected source the documents don’t match is a listed rejection reason. A source of wealth question, if there is one, asks what built most of what you own, not where this deposit came from.

Why a genuine document comes back

The published rules that trip up real documents come down to four things.

• Dates. Three months is the usual window; the two longer ones are 6 months for EEA accounts on one exchange and 24 months on another. The table follows each exchange’s help-centre pages as we read them in October 2026, and those windows can change. If your request names a different one, go by it: the request in your account, not the help page, has the final say.
• Matching details. Your name, dates, amounts and addresses should be visible and match your account information and verified identity. Send a statement with the address on your profile; at least one list also refuses P.O. box addresses and statements with a zero balance.
• How much you hide. Mask only what’s irrelevant. Keep your name, address, account number, the issuer and the relevant transactions fully visible, because too much redaction is itself a listed reason for rejection.
• Partial pages. Send whole statements or contracts, not partial screenshots, as at least one exchange spells out. A screenshot of the deposit itself only shows that it arrived, so leave screenshots of your account deposits out.

Two exchanges list their rejection reasons, and several of them overlap with these four: a document unrelated to the source you chose, ownership that can’t be confirmed, missing pages, blurry details, a password-protected file, signs of editing, details that don’t match your account, and a date outside the window.

A returned item shows a status such as Needs update or Pending resubmission. Correct the stated issue rather than uploading the same unchanged file. If a corrected document comes back with the same reason, stop and ask support which document would meet it, quoting the message you see.

Source of funds vs source of wealth

They’re two questions, and a request can ask about both. The UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Financial Crime Guide says source of wealth “describes how a customer or beneficial owner acquired their total wealth”. Source of funds is narrower, covering “the activity that generated the funds, for example salary payments or sale proceeds, as well as the means through which” those funds were transferred, and that second half fits exchanges asking for the transfer record as well as the income.

Put more plainly, source of funds is the specific money behind a deposit, and source of wealth your overall financial background and how your wealth was built. The two may be the same, but they don’t have to be.

Say most of what you own comes from years of salary, but this deposit came from selling a car. The salary answers source of wealth, and the car sale answers source of funds. Wealth lists reach further back, to a CV or a pension award letter alongside payslips and tax documents.

The guide, written for firms the FCA regulates, says establishing both can help a firm judge whether “the level and type of transaction is consistent with” what it knows about you, and makes it a requirement for politically exposed persons. For where this check sits among the other steps, see what each KYC level asks for.

Deadlines, waiting, and whether the request is real

Open the request by logging in yourself rather than through a link in a message. Requests appear as a banner, task or prompt once you log in, and Kraken currently shows them only in a web browser, not its app. It says a genuine request “will always be visible on your account after you log in”, that a message about one you can’t see there should be treated as suspicious, and that it never asks for your password, 2FA codes or recovery phrase. If a message fails those tests, run the checks for fake KYC texts and support calls before you reply.

If your account was already verified, why exchanges re-check verified accounts explains why a request like this can arrive and the other requests that can follow.

If you miss the deadline, expect the account to be limited until the check is done. Depending on the exchange, that can cover trading, deposits or withdrawals, though Kraken says “Withdrawals are not affected.”

Review time. Only two of the pages give a figure: 3 to 10 business days on one exchange, up to 5 on another. Where no time is given, one page still says your recorded balance “will not disappear because the review is pending.” While a request shows as submitted or under review with no new action, don’t keep uploading the same files.