After 18 months of holding on coinbase, i jumped ship to a cold wallet - here's my thoughts to those thinking of doing the same

So tonight was the arrival of my ledger nano s plus. Super chuffed. I've been happily holding on Coinbase and selling/buying through Coinbase Pro for the last year and a half and all has been easy, felt safe. I held some coins like Algo on a hot wallet for staking, so was familiar with the concept and importance of the passphrase/private key.

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Anyway, considering the uncertain confidence in CEX's atm, I decided to finally heed the voices of so many and take the plunge going offline. Here's some points I learned about things that some others might not know (and get that moment of panic):

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• Your receiving Bitcoin address will change after every transaction
  Despite having Bitcoin for months, I've never got exposed to the public address until now.
• If you bought Matic on Coinbase, it'll appear in your Ethereum portfolio
  It's an ERC20 token on Coinbase rather than a native Matic network coin, don't panic if your Polygon portfolio is empty on LedgerLive, look in Ethereum
• If you watch the current Gas Fee on coinmarketcap or similar, you'll save a chunk of change
  I was expecting the worst when it came to sending on the Ethereum network. When the gas was 35gwei on coinmarketcap, I paid no more than a fiver for my transactions
• Bitcoin transactions are way cheaper than I thought
  The charges for transactions was really small compared to Ethereum, a nice surprise
• You'll need an OTG cable to set up on mobile
  At least for this Nano S Plus, a cable with USB-C on both ends is needed. Nano X has bluetooth
• It's very uneasy seeing your Coinbase portfolio completely cliff-face
  On the other hand, it's REALLY sweet seeing your portfolio grow back on LedgerLive. Especially knowing it can never be taken away from you by a CEX closure/hack.

I know much of this is probably common sense to most people who are in the crypto space. For those like myself who basically bounced between coinbases' exclusively, got sheltered by network fee's and the like.

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It's not so bad out here in the wild. Cosier than I thought. And there are still pretty portfolio graphs to look at.

REMEMBER, KEEP DEM PASSPHRASES REAL SAFE AND PRIVATE