My job is collecting your data. I’m a Compliance Officer at a regulated crypto exchange. My job is collecting your data. 4.2 million passports this year. Selfies. Utility bills. Proof of address. Proof of income. Proof you exist.
Last Tuesday we froze a user’s account – $48,000. He tried to withdraw to self-custody. The system flagged it “Suspicious activity.”
Suspicious means we don’t know why you want your money. So you can’t have it. Until you explain. To us. In email. He explained. We reviewed it. It took six weeks. Missed his rent. That’s called “compliance”.
Our Head of Security went on a podcast last month. Said user data is “safe”. Safe means stored on AWS servers in three jurisdictions with two-factor encryption.
Sounds safe. Ledger had encryption too. Celsius had encryption too. Equifax had encryption too. 147 million records leaked. Our encryption is better. We think. We hope. We don’t actually know. But we said “safe”. That’s what matters.
We reported 340,000 users to tax authorities this year. Automatically. They didn’t know. That’s not a bug. That’s a feature.
A user in Turkey asked why he needs to upload a selfie to swap $50 of Bitcoin. I said “regulatory requirements”. Requirements means a bureaucrat in Brussels decided your $50 swap is a national security matter.
I can’t change it. I don’t believe in it. But I enforce it. That’s compliance. Believing is optional. Enforcing is not.
Last year we got hacked. Not publicly. Internally. Hacker got access to 12,000 KYC records. Names. Faces. Addresses. We handled it “internally”.
Internally means we didn’t tell you. But we told legal. Legal said don’t tell anyone. So we didn’t. Your passport is probably fine. Probably.
The board asked me last quarter if no-KYC exchanges are a threat. I said “they serve a niche market”.
Niche means millions of users in Turkey, Argentina and Nigeria who stopped uploading selfies and just started swapping.
In 90 seconds. No account. No passport. A platform like b1exch.to does in seconds what we do in weeks.
No account. No database to breach. No contractor accessing your face at 2 AM while you take a dump.
They don’t collect data. We collect everything. We report everyone. The regulators say no-KYC is dangerous. Dangerous means they can’t control it. I still work here. But last Thursday I swapped on b1exch. Took 90 seconds. You think the people who build the cage sleep inside it?
