I’ve been in crypto long enough to know the Golden Rule: Not your keys, not your coins. But honestly, sometimes self-custody feels less like financial freedom and more like being dropped into a dark forest with an outdated map, a flashlight on 1 percent battery, and a random popup telling me to complete a puzzle I didn't ask for.

Earlier this week, I opened one of my hot wallets I use (Trust) and panicked because a significant chunk of by BTC was gone.

It took me 20 minutes with a combination of Gemini, Blockchain explorers and several wallets to find out what happened.

Step 1: the 'innocent' exchange deposit

Back in August, I decided to transfer some funds to a CEX to spend them. Simple enough, right? Except the CEX threw a massive curveball. Before letting me deposit the full amount, they flagged the transfer for ownership verification under compliance rules, which means I had to perform the Satoshi Test. The Satoshi Test is a nightmare. You're required to send an odd micro-amount (something like 0.0000XY BTC) to confirm ownership of the hot wallet.The problem is that most hot wallets do not support such a small amount and, with the CEX I tried, I had a deadline.I had to do within a few hours or the funds would be gone. I spent around 15-20 minutes looking for a wallet that would support the exact amount and found a compatible SegWit one.

Step 2: where did my crypto go?! (address split panic)

I imported my seed phrase into the new wallet, send the amount, and that was it.

Fast-forward to yesterday, and I opened my Trust Wallet and around 35 percent of my BTC was gone.

So I checked my address on the Blockchain explorer and yep, 35 percent gone, sent to a random address I didn't recognise.

So I opened my SegWit wallet and it was all still there.

I tried talking to Gemini, but Gemini, like all AI tools, is useless. It just keeps giving partial and incomplete information and every time you correct it, it's like "ah you got me there!"

To cut a very long very short, here's what seems to have happened.

When I imported my seedphrase into a new SegWit wallet, and then sent a significant amount to my CEX, the Blockchain apparently decided to allocate a much larger amount to cover the transaction and moved it to a new SegWit address from an old legacy address.

Then, when I checked my wallet yesterday and sent a trial transaction, my funds were moved again.

So now when I open my Trust (or SegWit) I see the full amount, but that's apparently split across three BTC addresses.

I had no idea that was even possible, but, apparently, it is.