My bank blocked the payment or closed my account
Usually this is not about crypto being illegal where you live. It is a monitoring rule, a counterparty the bank does not like, or a question about where the money came from that nobody asked you yet.
- Establish what was actually blocked One payment, payments to one recipient, card transactions to a category, or the whole account. These are four different events, and only the last is serious.
- Ask for the decision and the reason in writing Through the bank's own complaints channel, not the branch conversation. Banks are often limited in what they may tell you about a monitoring decision, but the request itself creates the record you will need later.
- Have the source-of-funds documents ready before you are asked Payslips, a sale contract, an inheritance document, exchange statements showing what you bought and when, tax filings. Most of these reviews end the moment a plausible paper trail appears, and drag on when it has to be assembled from memory.
- Do not quietly route the same payment through another bank Splitting a blocked payment into smaller ones, or sending it from a second account, is the pattern monitoring systems are specifically built to catch. It converts a question into a flag. This is also how people with nothing to hide end up with two closed accounts instead of one.
- Consider that the recipient may be the problem, not you Banks maintain views on particular platforms and particular jurisdictions. The same transfer to a different, established exchange sometimes simply goes through — and a platform that no bank will pay is telling you something about the platform.
- If the account is closed, get your records out and know the route Download statements while access lasts. Then use the bank's formal complaint process, and after it, the financial ombudsman or equivalent body in your country — most have one, it is free, and it is the only escalation that carries weight.
What the bank is usually looking at
Not the word "crypto" on its own. Three things, in roughly this order: the pattern — a sequence that does not match the account's history, a new large transfer, several payments just under a reporting threshold; the counterparty — where the money is going and what the bank's own risk view of that destination is; and the source — whether the money arriving can be explained.
In most countries buying, holding and selling crypto through a licensed platform is lawful and taxed, and a bank blocking a payment is exercising its own commercial and compliance discretion rather than enforcing a prohibition. That distinction matters, because it changes what you are arguing about: not legality, but a decision the bank made and can be asked to review.
Money coming in is harder than money going out
Sending money to an exchange raises a question. Receiving a large amount from one, or from a stranger, raises a bigger one — especially if it arrives from an account with no obvious relationship to you. This is the point where a P2P trade and a bank problem turn out to be the same event seen from two sides.
What makes it worse
Describing the payment as something it is not. Breaking it up. Moving it onward immediately after it lands. Using a business account for personal trading, or the reverse. None of these are illegal in themselves and all of them look, to an automated system, exactly like someone with a reason to be evasive.
What usually ends it
A clear, boring explanation with documents attached, delivered once. "I bought this on an exchange over four years, here are the statements, here is my tax filing, I am moving it to my own account." Reviews that end quickly almost always end that way. Reviews that drag are usually missing a document rather than facing a judgement.
Before the next one
Which rails actually work for your country, and which routes tend to survive a bank's monitoring, is the subject of your country page — where to buy, country by country — and of buying with a bank transfer. Nothing here is legal or financial advice about your own situation; it is a description of how these reviews generally work.
Anyone who contacts you offering to recover this is the next thief
It follows losses within days, sometimes hours, and it copies the names of real firms, regulators and police units. Nobody legitimate finds you first. How the recovery scam works →
Last checked 19 Oct 2026. This page is procedure, not legal advice — what a report achieves depends on where you live.