Im still a relative newbie, about two months into mining etherium.

For now i've been mining it straight to an exodus wallet.

I guess doing this is less than ideal in terms of either being able to stake or auto selling a portion each month?

I read around on staking, but its still unclear to me if the eth i put into staking now gets locked (related to eth2 eventually somehow), or if it can be freed if needed.
Of course there is the whole security of doing staking vs sending this to say a ledger, but i guess either way to sell, i have to transfer a portion monthly to an exchange to cash out some of it (?)

I also read about regulation thats in progress or has happened, i thought i read that blockfi is not regulated yet either, so ideally it goes somewhere there is regulation in the long term.

At this point i guess either way im stuck with gas fees getting things from exodus to another location (or the offline ledger).

Thanks for any suggestions