Well fuck, nostr, it happened: I've become a statistic.
As much as I might like to consider myself vigilant, convenience, complacency, and residual trust in a fiat institution got me.
First, the good news: the overwhelming majority of my sats are in cold storage self custody. Thank goodness for that. Worst case scenario, my wife and I will be fine.
The bad news: I have a decently sized TFSA, RRSP, and a small but meaningful number of sats that are seemingly at risk. (Queue the litany of I-told-you-so's; I deserve it)
What happened: There are a couple of different places where I acquire bitcoin. The first place I ever bought bitcoin from, when I knew absolutely nothing about anything, was Wealthsimple. I now understand that it's a crap place to get bitcoin from, but it's also where I've "held" more traditional, tax-advantaged stuff, and they have a no-fee DCA program if you get your paychecks direct deposited there, so it was convenient.
That's why I continued to have a small recurring purchase from them, because of the zero fees. Periodically, I would move to cold storage when I had built up a decent size UTXO.
Today, I tried to do one of these regular transfers. However, right when I hit send, the app glitched and signed me out, and when I tried to sign back in I was told that my account had been locked due to "suspicious activity."
To regain access to my account, it says I have to verify my identity with their third-party verification partner, Persona.
You know, Persona: the digital panopticon that takes your data and shares it with 17 different subprocessors (that we know of), screens you for terrorism and espionage, and retains your data for three years (or so they say)? Nevermind the fact that everyone they share it with probably keeps it forever, even if they don't.
Yes, this is all KYC'd to shit anyways, but what if I don't want to give my data to this awful company, specifically? (Reports indicate that Wealthsimple partnered with Persona sometime around February 2026, just as all the terrible news about them was coming out. Bang up job WS, you really nailed this one).
What if I refuse? Does Wealthsimple just seize my assets and tell me to get fucked? We shall see, customer service isn't open on the weekends. Maybe my previous KYC information is already shared with them anyways and I'm just crashing out over a done deal (probably, now that I think about it), but I still don't like this.
I knew better. I knew my KYC stack was big enough and that I should just focus on acquiring clean bitcoin from now on. But I was lazy.
If you're in Canada, there is still a limited time window open where you can put on a covid mask, a hat, and a pair of sunglasses and walk up to a
@Bitcoin Well ATM with a fat wad of cash and get clean, anonymous bitcoin sent straight to your custody for a mere 7% markup after all fees and spreads. Pretty reasonable, I'd say. This won't last long; the eye of Sauron (Mark Carney) is upon them.
I'm done with custodial exchanges and I'm done with KYC. This is so stupid.
