As I mentioned on Sunday, I recently moved the "big three" off MEXC.

CoinEx won't pay interest in the UK, MEXC forcing KYC in EEA, the US preparing to do whatever money-grabbing nonsense they plan to do... there are so many annoying rules appearing everywhere that my alarm bells were ringing.

So I figured I'd go self-custodial for most of my Banking, foregoing the shitty interest exchanges offer in exchange for security. I moved all my non-Trading BTC, ETH and SOL.

But then I realised that my wallet probably wasn't secure.

I use Exodus on desktop, since I don't trust Web3 (or mobile, for that matter).

My wallet was very, very old: I created it when Exodus first launched, way back in 2016, I think.

I didn't really know much about security back then. And things have changed a LOT in the last ten years.

For example, my seed phrase was stored on the desktop, which is not intrinsically bad since I'm the only person who has access to it.

But it was also backed up to Dropbox. 

And not in an encrypted form.

So yeah, I figured I needed a new one.

Now, Exodus doesn't do "start a new wallet". It's a one-user, one-wallet thing.

That's a bit of a bitch, to be honest.

Because I needed access to my old, insecure wallet (to get the funds out before someone stole them) and a new, secure wallet.

The only way to do this in Windows is to create a new user and screw around with user files.

I'm happy to do that. I've been doing that with Windows for a very long time.

So off I went:

• built a new "Temp" user
• installed Exodus
• set up the old wallet (the recovery seed worked, yay!)
• went back to my actual user
• manually removed the Exodus wallet
• restarted Exodus
• created a new wallet
• wrote down the seed phrase on paper
• went back to the "Temp" user
• sent a small test amount from each crypto
• went back to the actual user
• checked they arrived
• went back to the "Temp" user
• sent the rest
• went back to the actual user
• checked it all arrived
• went back to the "Temp" user
• manually removed the Exodus wallet
• restarted Exodus
• checked the new recovery phrase worked
• deleted the "Temp" user

Bloody hell, what a palaver!

But you know what the weirdest thing is?

It actually feels less secure.

We all know that exchanges are only as reliable as the last time you withdrew funds successfully.

We all know they can be hacked.

We all know they rug you, they go bankrupt, they do stupid-ass TradFi bollocks that causes their own destruction.

But it still felt safer to have funds somewhere with support.

Somewhere I could push if they fucked up, somewhere with good trust scores and a reliable history.

Self-custody is scary.