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I think using a noncustodial wallet in the beginning to keep your small UTXO depends on the amount that you are buying always. The reason why I said this is because for someone that is buying $50 bitcoin and above every week or month can transfer after buying to his noncustodial wallet regularly because the transaction fee will not be affect what he will have as his balance that much and when fee are cheap he can consolidate all his transactions to one output.
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Most newbies don't even know the difference with a self custody wallet and an exchange, in the beginning they do feel that exchanges are wallets and they are cool keeping their coins there but as time goes on when they have begin to increase their bitcoin with regular DCA weekly, they will want to learn on how to keep their coins more safer which will make them know about self custody wallet. When I was a noob, I didn't know this too.
As you mentioned, we should be thinking about current exchange fees / and also future exchange fees which are somewhat unpredictable. I have nothing against the idea of a newbie withdrawing early and/or practicing in order to learn about transacting in bitcoin and learning how to get his private wallet(s) set up.. My main objection remains guys seeming to insist (or to imply) that there is a need to learn about self-custody and to get started with self-custody right away, as if that were required to learn about prior to even getting started with accumulating bitcoin price exposure.. so in that regard, maybe I am a bit of a broken record about continuing to emphasize that newbies get started in bitcoin right away, even if the early times may end up keeping the value on exchanges... and yeah every person is going t have his own particulars in terms of both what he needs to learn and various aspects of his particulars that he might need to sort out, so in no way am I advocating a lack of learning,
Getting started with self custody and learning how to perform transactions (withdrawal, buying and selling), have somehow become an overheated discussion, which am not sure should be overemphasized on. Like I said yesterday, "it literally won't take a week to learn how to perform Bitcoin transactions". Same goes for other basic things as mentioned above. Learning, especially about things like self custody, withdrawal, buying, etc are just what we can practice as we continue to make our investment. So, by making emphasis on the word
learning , makes it sound as if: one is just going to focus on that area for eternity.
Here is a brief example for a beginner who is not following this thread. Assuming Mr A happens to be a newbie who seems to be interested in Bitcoin investment. The first thing that comes to Mr A's mind is: how much do I need to get started. Next is to think of where to purchase Bitcoin and where he can also store. Let's assume Mr A found an exchange that offer sales of Bitcoin and also allow users to store their purchased Bitcoin on it, Mr A can simply follow the steps on how to make purchase, thereby making his first purchase. This means Mr A has already learned. So, inorder for Mr A to
master(put to practice), what he has learnt, he will definitely need to keep making more purchase as well. And inorder to keep making more purchase, Mr A needs to identify his goals and cross check his income background, so he can be able to choose which buying strategy to continue with.
So you can see that there is never a big deal about learning this stuff at the beginning. It's clearly what one can learn within a very short period (at most a week), and master(put to practice) what he has learnt as he continues to make further purchases.
some people may well not be capable of learning more, and so we have to be careful about demanding too much upon normies, including any kind of suggestion that we might start to make that dumb people cannot buy bitcoin.. which I would think bitcoin is for anyone and everyone, whether they are smart or dumb and whether they are willing to learn beyond NGU or not. Yes, it is likely that smart people and those willing to learn are going to have advantages, but not everyone is at the same level, so there are always going to be gradients in terms of what newbie bitcoiners are ready, willing and/or able to do in regards to bitcoin or in regards to anything related to bitcoin that we might be discussing in a thread like this.
In as much as learning about Bitcoin technology is also important, I think trying to propel those with zero knowledge to learning it is not the way forward. Bitcoin as a currency should be what anyone can use just by knowing how to use it, and nothing more. Am sure that not every Bitcoin investor today can explain some terminologies that are related to Bitcoin. They simply understand the value of Bitcoin, and see that it is worth investing. Just because I don't understand certain terms, should not be enough reason to call me or anyone dumb. Remember that Bitcoin is still A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, and cash system are meant to be simple for use.