They Confiscated Gold in 1933.
This Can't Be Seized.

The lesson

In 1933, the United States made it illegal for citizens to hold gold. People turned theirs in. The state confiscated it at a fixed price and revalued it shortly after. The whole operation worked because gold has a shape, a weight, a place — and a place is something a government can come to with a court order.

Bitcoin does not have a place. It has a private key — a string of numbers you can write on paper, carve into steel, or memorize as a twelve-word sentence. The key is the only thing in the system that proves ownership. If you hold it yourself, no government, bank, or thief with a court order can move the money. If somebody else holds it for you — a bank, an exchange, a broker — you do not really hold the Bitcoin. They do.

Self-custody is not paranoia. It is the entire reason Bitcoin exists. Everything else is a more polite version of the trust problem the system was built to retire. A small piece of hardware that signs transactions offline, paired with a paper backup of the seed, is enough. The setup takes one quiet evening and removes one entire category of risk from the rest of your life.

Do this now

1. Pick the evening you will set it up. Block the time. Two hours, no phone notifications, no rush. The mistakes happen when this is squeezed between other things.
2. Order a Trezor and follow its first-time setup. Open trezor.io, pick a model that matches the amount you hold. When it arrives, verify the seal, generate the seed on the device itself, write the twelve words on paper. Do not type them into anything.
3. Move a small amount first, then everything else. Send a test amount from your exchange to your new Trezor. Confirm it arrived. Send a small amount back out to a different address. Once both flows work, move the rest off the exchange. Treat the seed paper like the most valuable piece of paper in your home.