Not happy to KYC on some of the funds, but I can do it if need be.
My main question is what constitutes as 'I own these', when there are no receipts or documentation, bank transactions or anything.
I understand things differ depending on jurisdictions, but it's all new to me.
But even KYC doesn't work when the banks refuse transactions from exchanges and they demand proof of initial purchase to the final transaction.
What a headache.
By the way, does anyone know the legality of P2P transactions? Is it legal to buy and sell BTC for cash from a random person in your jurisdiction?
I read something about having to go through an authorised, legalized entity.
If you still have access to the wallets you used in the past, you have documentation in the form of blockchain transactions. When you sell coins on an exchange, you have documentation in the form of the trade history. Just make sure the exchange account is registered to your name.
I never ran into a detailed proof of fund request from an exchange, so I can't tell what those entail. Anecdotal experiences on the German boards vary wildly.
I did have to answer a detailed proof of fund request from a bank though (and another one that wasn't so thorough, but didn't need to be because they straight up told me they'd close my account if I'd received other cryptocurrency related bank transactions in the future). Besides screenshots to proof the ownership of and the trades on my exchange accounts I also provided them with a couple of Bitcoin addresses that were related to the coins I sold. Some were pretty straightforward documented (KYC coins), some not so much (P2P trades). However even the latter didn't result in much of a problem since they each separately were low Euro volume at the time of trade (maybe a few hundred Euro each), ie. the Bitcoin transactions as recorded on the blockchain were sufficient since you can tell the exchange rate based on the timestamp. Some transactions I couldn't quite reconstruct, but again, low volume,
at the time, so negligible. However I also hadn't mixed those coins. So that might be tricky. If you still have records of the coins you sent in versus the coins you got out, that might suffice if you still have a somewhat reasonable source for the coins that went into the mixer.
Your mileage may vary wildly though. In that one case I got lucky that the bank had a compliance officer that was somewhat familiar with cryptocurrencies. Other banks I've dealt with were not quite as friendly. The EU may provide the guidelines with how to handle cryptocurrency-related transactions, but different banks have different policies on how to implement those guidelines.
About creating a company for cashing out Bitcoin profits: I'd be careful with that. First of all, you may not actually get tax benefits (eg. in Germany you don't have to pay taxes on the profits if you hold for a year as a
private person, but a company would have to make these profits part of their earnings). Second, a company selling Bitcoin may itself warrant deeper scrutiny. And third, in my experience banks that don't want private accounts receiving transactions from Bitcoin sales, also don't want business accounts receiving transactions from Bitcoin sales. Again, your mileage may vary.
The legality of P2P transactions varies between the EU countries. Eg. in Germany it doesn't seem to be legal anymore while in Austria I believe it still is. The regulations have changed over time though, so I'm not sure what the current state is.