Topic: Use self custody wallets, don't use exchange wallets. Check mempools these days. (Read 135 times)

Well, it is pretty much better they leave their funds in their bank account, than to buy Bitcoins and leave it in exchanges. Being your own bank through Bitcoin comes with quite a lot of responsibilities, and tbh anyone who's not ready to carry these responsibilities should prolly forget about using Bitcoin and stick with fiat/banks, because i'd rather trust a bank with my funds than coinbase/binance/centralized exchanges. Having said that, no doubt there are complicated aspects of the Bitcoin network, but i think buying, selling and storing it in a non-custodial wallet is prolly the most basic and straightforward aspect of things, because you do not have to be tech-savvy to do it.

If we take the fees as a criterion, then Binance is the worst, but it is not a reference to judge that the fees are bad compared to the wallets, and the reason for that is that the withdrawal transaction contains one input and several outputs, and therefore the fees that you pay for each address are much cheaper than the fees that are paid to one address.

In other words, the withdrawal fees from some CEXs may be much lower than your self custody wallet fees.

Despite this fact, many CEXs charge high withdrawal fees (compared to what they pay) to achieve more profits.

The purpose of all this is to withdraw all the savings from the trading platforms and keep them in my own wallet.  It would not be possible to do this without trusting one of the alternative networks, since the Bitcoin network is not in its best condition at the moment. 
As I understand from your position, none of the other networks should be trusted.  I may partially agree with you, especially with regard to stable currencies, but at the same time it is possible to rely on Ethereum, for example, or Monero, which are networks that have proven their solidity over the years.  Do you really think that one of them would collapse after they used withdrawals from the platforms?

Not all will go like this. Users can get compensation from hacks, immediately or gradually. Users might not get anything.

But users must prepare for worst thing if an exchange gets hacked, stopped their service, scam exit.

If you can move your coins from one address to another address, from you to your friend or trade partner, you can move it off exchanges. It is only you want to do it or don't want to do it.

When you move your coins off exchanges, you must store your coins in a non custodial wallet and on a clean device. You are going to fully self-custody and fully responsible for your coins. If your device is infected, your coins can be stolen.

It is for lazy people only. They are lazy and use anything they have in hands to save important information even it is related to safety of their capital.

Reliable network can have technical problems and attacks too.

If you want to minimize risks, you can use different networks for your transactions at the same time or you can make different transactions on one network at different times or in different days. It has less risk than making one transaction, on one network. If shit happens, you can lose your money with only one transaction.

We all agree that it is so risky to keep money on centralized platforms and that it is better to use a private wallet that is not also affiliated with a central authority. The problem with this is that users wishing to diversify their portfolio will not be able to do so by using one wallet if they are unable to purchase and use a hardware wallet, and using a private wallet will be a little difficult for those who are accustomed to platform services and have never tried to install a decentralized private wallet.
Regarding the point about bitcoin withdrawal fees from exchanges, I think it is never wise to use the bitcoin network these days and do not expect exchanges to pay all the fees that you will give them in order to pay the network fees. The transaction may remain pending indefinitely.
I suggest using any other reliable network to carry out withdrawals, and today, I think, all platforms support one of the USDT pairs or any other reliable currency in which withdrawal fees are low and transactions are fast.

Nope, you don't need to be tech savvy for you to be able to keep your private keys. Just follow those tips that have been said like not storing your private keys on cloud storage or by simply online.

Don't save a record of it on your email or social media accounts. That's the weakest way of keeping your private keys. And you don't have to be too techie on it because by simply writing your private keys on a plain paper, that's it.

Now, the next part of it is how you're going to store that paper in your house. Well, you know your house or apartment better so keep it on an area where you're the only one who knows that it's there.

You don’t have to be tech savvy to be able to move your coins off exchange, if you can have an exchange and even have funds on the exchange then you should be able to click withdraw and input the address(private wallet) you want to send it to.

Never compromise your safety on the excuses that you aren’t tech savvy, rather than leave you funds on an exchange regardless of what ever exchanges (Coinbase etc), it’s best you learn how to transfer your funds of it.

It's true that we should take our coins off exchanges but only if you are reasonably tech savvy and know how to protect your private keys. For others who are less able and are more used to online banking then pick a good one like coinbase to do it. Showing someone to buy a ledger wallet, setup the secret phrases, hide it (but make it restorable in a fire), learn how to withdraw etc.. I'm sure they rather just leave it in paypal and accept the higher fees

If an exchange is going down, then always get prepared for your crypto with them are going down along with them entirely, if they got hacked, same thing, no remedy from loosing them as well, the event of the brc20 token trending onbthe internet could be a major reason to why some exchange will soon liquidate when the hype on the token has reached a maximum peak and on a sudden the investors removed their investment and the value turns backwards, recent events should have taught many a lesson regarding this, that not your keys not your coins is nevwr a joke in cryptocurrency, but what should be treated with caution and total adherence in avoiding a custodial wallet.

Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts was written in November 2022 but maybe people did not learn this reminder.

These days, Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens, Unisat.io are spamming Bitcoin mempools and triggering the fee rate race that causes very expensive transaction fee and long waiting time.

Along these crazy days, Binance postponed withdrawal of Bitcoin in Bitcoin network a few times. If you store your bitcoins on Binance, you will not be able to withdraw it.

It is funny fact as in normal days, exchanges charge very expensive withdrawal fee on users and now they reject to support users, waive the withdrawal fee for their users but simply benefit themselves by putting withdrawal on hold.

Again, do you want to have control of your coins?
Use self custody wallet.

With self custody wallet, you can control your coins, can broadcast your transaction anytime and can choose fee rate to have waiting time you are ready to take.

Do mempools checking with
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weight
https://mempool.space/graphs/mempool

You can broadcast your transaction with any fee rate you want. But you must know that if you use too low fee rate, your transaction will probably be dropped of mempools after a while. Usually mempools make drop on waiting transaction (with very low fee rate) after 2016 blocks or 14 days approximately.

Like on Mempool.space or jochen-hoenicke.de, you will see different charts. With full waiting transactions (bigger size) and with possible remaining waiting transaction after dropping of low fee rate transactions. See screenshots.



From 250 vMB (second chart, BTC) to about 35 vMB (third chart, BTC default mempool), difference is around 210 vMB. Network difficulty will be retarget after 2016 blocks (14 days) and the estimator uses it for estimation of possible dropped transactions.

When you check fee rate, use the third chart is better. If you see fee rate is too high, you can wait for a few days, two weeks to broadcast your transaction with cheaper fee rate. You can make your transaction like 5 - 10 vMB from tip of mempool and wait for your luckiness.

Use Segwit address to save your transaction fee.

Exchanges
Binance
They charge same withdrawal fee for Legacy and Segwit address. They don't want to force users to use Segwit address.

Binance is the same and they even charged more expensive withdrawal fee on Segwit address.
Archive of BTC withdrawal fee on Binance in April. It is the same hours ago today.

Fortunately they changed it recently and now withdrawal fee with Segwit is cheaper than with Legacy.


Kraken
https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000767986-Cryptocurrency-withdrawal-fees-and-minimums


Kucoin
https://www.kucoin.com/vip/level


Bitstamp
https://www.bitstamp.net/fee-schedule/