My first serious week with Bitcoin.

I'd bought a little. Now the goal was clear: self-custody. Get my bitcoin off the exchange and take responsibility for holding it myself.

So my Trezor Safe 3 arrives. I set it up, go through everything properly, and quickly discover something: every time I handle that little device, enter my PIN or go through the 20-word backup check, I vaguely feel like the President of the United States checking the nuclear codes.

Then the receiving address appears.

I verify it on the Trezor.

Then verify it again, obviously.

At this point I'm checking that address with the seriousness of a man defusing a nuclear warhead while the James Bond theme plays in the background.

Now for the interesting part: moving my bitcoin out of Bitstamp and onto my own hardware wallet.

About €1,000.

Nothing extraordinary by Bitcoin standards. Enough by mine to make the whole exercise stop feeling like a YouTube tutorial.

I'm a rational adult. The address is correct. I've checked it. The confirmation email has arrived. Everything is fine.

I click Send.

And then...

Nothing.

T+2

First refresh of Trezor Suite.

Still zero.

No problem.

Bitstamp had told me the transfer could take around fifteen minutes.

So I calmly go back to Bitstamp.

Well, "calmly."

The withdrawal history says In progress.

Good. It's progressing.

So am I, theoretically.

T+3:30

Second refresh of Trezor Suite.

Still nothing.

Back to my email.

The confirmation is still there.

I read it again.

Why?

No idea.

Maybe Bitstamp had added a line in small print since the last time I checked:

"By the way, Wazor, we've just sent your bitcoin to a Bulgarian plumber. Have a nice day."

Nothing of the sort.

Everything is normal.

T+4

Third refresh.

Still zero.

And that's when THE question appears.

What if I sent it to the wrong address?

I know I checked it.

I distinctly remember verifying it directly on the Trezor.

That was literally the whole point.

But apparently my brain has decided that information four minutes old now requires a parliamentary inquiry.

So I find the address again.

Compare it again.

It's correct.

Of course it's correct.

T+5

Fourth refresh.

Then fifth.

I start to feel a couple of drops of sweat.

Nothing dramatic. I'm not calling Interpol yet.

But something has changed.

A few minutes earlier, I had bitcoin visibly sitting somewhere.

Now Bitstamp tells me it's gone, or at least going, while Trezor Suite is essentially saying:

"What bitcoin?"

It's a strange feeling.

Popular explanations of quantum physics sometimes tell us that a particle can exist in more than one state at once.

My bitcoin had apparently achieved something even more impressive:

in my head, it existed nowhere.

Not really at Bitstamp anymore.

Not yet with me.

Somewhere in a parallel dimension where, presumably, network fees are cheaper too.

T+6

And that's exactly when Doctor Strange enters the room.

In Infinity War, he looks through over 14 million possible futures trying to find the one where Thanos can be defeated.

My brain starts doing exactly the same thing.

With a slightly less ambitious objective:

finding my €1,000.

Scenario one: wrong address.

Scenario two: wrong move.

Scenario three: I missed a step.

Scenario four: the Trezor doesn't work.

Scenario five: the bitcoin really did go to that Bulgarian plumber, who is now having a fantastic day.

Then begins Wazor v. Wazor.

"Why the hell did you send €1,000 in one shot?"

Good question.

"Why didn't you start with €50?"

Even better question.

"You could've paid a few extra euros in fees and done a test transaction first, couldn't you?"

Thank you, counsel. The defense appreciates your contribution.

"You always have to go big, don't you?"

Ah.

There it is.

Nothing bad has actually happened yet.

But my brain has already delivered its verdict.

I should have done it differently.

I should have started small.

I should have tested first.

And since we're already here, I even start thinking about all the things I could have done with that €1,000.

Which is fairly impressive.

The money isn't lost.

There is no error message.

Nothing abnormal has happened.

The withdrawal is In progress.

Yet internally I'm already halfway through organizing the funeral.

T+8, T+9, T+10...

Refresh.

Bitstamp.

Trezor.

Email.

Address.

Trezor.

Bitstamp.

Another refresh.

By the end of it, I refresh Trezor Suite about a dozen times.

As if somewhere in the world the Bitcoin network might sense the growing intensity of my index finger and say:

"All right, guys, speed it up. Wazor's starting to sweat."

Obviously, none of those clicks change anything.

But for a second, they make me feel as though I'm doing something.

And afterwards, that almost interested me more than the transfer itself.

T+15

Back to Bitstamp.

Confirmed.

I immediately switch to Trezor Suite.

And there it is.

The balance appears.

My bitcoin is there.

Relief.

No explosion.

No Bulgarian plumber suddenly becoming a millionaire.

No digital black hole.

Just Bitcoin doing exactly what it was supposed to do while my brain produced the director's cut of Mission: Impossible - The Missing €1,000.

And that's where this little experience became interesting to me.

Not because I was afraid of losing money. That's hardly a groundbreaking psychological discovery.

What interested me more was what my brain did with the empty space between "sent" and "received."

First, it tried to close the uncertainty.

Refresh. Check. Email. Address. Check again.

Not because any of those actions could make the transaction move faster, but because waiting without being able to act had become uncomfortable.

Then it started rewriting the past.

"I should've sent less."

"I should've tested first."

"I should've done it differently."

Psychologists call this counterfactual thinking: mentally constructing an alternative version of what happened, usually one in which we made the smarter decision.

The amusing part here is that I was already regretting a decision before I even knew how it had turned out.

But something else may have been even more interesting.

I was doing exactly what I'd been told Bitcoin was about: taking control of my bitcoin.

Getting it off an exchange.

Moving into self-custody.

Removing an intermediary.

And at the exact moment I gained more control, I felt less in control.

Because along with that autonomy came something slightly less sexy than the word "sovereignty":

responsibility.

If I use the wrong address, make the wrong move or lose access, there isn't necessarily a customer service department sitting in the middle ready to put things right.

Self-custody doesn't remove risk.

It changes who carries it.

I'm obviously not going to turn fifteen minutes of abusing the Refresh button into some grand universal law of human psychology.

This is simply what happened in my head.

But that's exactly why I'm curious about what this scene brings back for people who went through it before me.

Some of you made your first serious transfer ten years ago. Some two years ago. Some maybe last week.

Do you still remember the first time you sent an amount that actually mattered to a wallet you alone were responsible for?

Maybe some of you watched the screen in perfect serenity.

And maybe others discovered, like I did, that the fifteen minutes between "sent" and "received" can contain a remarkable number of imaginary catastrophes.

That may be one of the things I find most interesting about Bitcoin since I started actually using it.

You come here trying to understand money, wallets, keys, transactions and sovereignty.

And every now and then, without warning, Bitcoin holds up a mirror too.

A little further reading

APA Dictionary of Psychology, "Counterfactual thinking"
On our tendency to imagine how events might have turned out differently, often with a healthy dose of "if only I'd..." attached.

https://dictionary.apa.org/counterfactual-thinking

APA Dictionary of Psychology, "Need for closure"
On our tendency to want a firm answer rather than remain stuck in uncertainty or ambiguity.

https://dictionary.apa.org/need-for-closure