Don't you use exchanges for traditional investments, like Interactive Brokers (IB)? Don't you have a bank account somewhere, where you did KYC? They need your documents as well. Are you affraid they are going to sell it online?
In Germany we still have some "less invasive" requirements to open a normal bank account (without online banking). It's possible to go to a local bank store, ask for a bank account and your identity will be verified there, by showing them only your government ID. Of course they'll note your name, address and ID number to link it to your account but when I see which crazy requirements users have to deliever on crypto exchanges, maybe even after funds are already locked, thats insane. So, the procedure here is much better.* AFAIK, there is no need to upload documents if you register locally.
For everything else I'm using cash, Germany is one of the few countries where cash is still very valued in public even if some people are pushing negative and misleading claims against it very hard.
*I know, this procedure is still not perfect since the database of the bank can be hacked, a better model would be where the name of the account owner isn't directly linked but is stored offline in the (offline) archives of the bank and if there's any violation by the bank account the name of the account owner can be checked in case if there's a suspicion
manually. Everything stored offline. That would work finde to prevent money laundering / terrorism financing while securing the privacy of normal users...I've still the hope that people will realize how important privacy is and start to claim it (again).
I'm always wondering why consumer protection doesn't play any role in the KYC discussion. There's only much talk about how to prevent terrorism, how to prevent money laundering and how to push stricter KYC. It's nothing about consumer protection when we are put at risk of identity theft by enforced KYC everywhere. And even if we don't handle much money we are forced to do KYC if we want to convert fiat to crypto / crypto to fiat or if our exchange has already frozen our funds because of some random reasons.
The whole problem is digitalizing user data and sending it away where we don't know how it's handled. Is it sold to 3rd parties? Will it be hacked? Who will gain access? I've no doubt that digitalized data handled on centralized services will be hacked somewhere in the future and that's why I've also a strong aversion against using any fingerprint / retina scan verification (besides KYC
). If that's hacked we can't get it back (never!) because it's an unique data set. Hackers can do a lot of damage when they gain access to such biometric data.
Users are exposed to huge risks with submitting digital data like for KYC and I'm missing the consumer protection part totally in this debate. The KYC discussion has gotten way to unbalanced and it seems it's going further away from any customer perspective.
We don't have much choice here I guess but personally I'm boycotting as much as possible all services where invasive KYC is required. The purchase of physical gold with cash in Germany was
lowered to 2000€ (2200$) per day recently and some crypto services require much lower levels already when KYC is enforced...
