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........ Bitcoin for immediate transactions can be left with a third party like exchanges, so that it'll be easy for conversion into other cryptos, stablecoins or fiat, that is if there's nobody to do p2p transactions with. Hot wallets that are connected online should be categorized for short and mid term use, while cold wallets should be for long term hodling.
I agree that there are various ways to transact, and I am a little bothered by your suggestion to transact through exchanges or to transact through stable coins, other crypto or fiat. Sure there might be some practicalities, yet there can also be some value in transacting directly on chain and no one can stop you and it can frequently be more private to be transacting online or even through lightning network wallets, even though lightning network wallets become pretty technical too.. including that many of the easier to use lightning network wallets have third party custodial aspects to them.
The biggest responsibilities about being your own bank when you're holding your Bitcoin in a none custodial wallet is to secure your private keys and seed phrase. If a holder is able to do this then he's as good as being his own decentralized bank.
It is very powerful to hold your own keys.. yet people screw up their custodial situation, including locking themselves out of their coins... and even thinking about having back up seeds and devices in the same location and some kind of a natural disaster or even a fire happens.. that could be a pretty expensive loss, and putting your back up keys with someone else at another geographic location can be quite logistically challenging too..
The concept and importance of securing your seed phrase can not be overemphasized, if you lose it maybe through theft or damage, then your BTC is as good as being a donation to the Bitcoin community.
Exactly... and scary too...especially if it might be your life savings that gets lost.. versus if maybe it was merely 5% to 10% of your stash that ended up getting lost. There is a difference.. even suffering higher levels of loss could still be acceptable in contrast to losing most if not all of your BTC stash due to some mistake or oversight, that might have had been preventable...and sometimes we cannot know exactly the various vulnerabilities.;.or to prepare for every single negative consequence scenario.
Through your wallet is the only access that you have to your BTC on the blochchain. So yes if you can be able to protect the privacy of your wallet, then you don't need to worry about Bitcoin technicalities. Understanding Bitcoin circles, the best season to buy and the best time to reap returns on your investment is important. Bitcoin is not a get rich quick scheme like most shitcoins in the market, it's best to buy the dip, hodl and wait.
So yeah, part of the point is which aspects of these do you need to know in the beginning, and in the beginning you mostly just need to know if you have discretionary income enough to buy some bitcoin and then you can work out the details as you go, and so some aspects of holding bitcoin are more complicated in terms of different options and even the changes in options with the passage of time that also might change based on how many BTC that the newbie accumulates, so if the newbie is starting out with a $10, $100 or even $1k purchase of bitcoin, his security may not need to be as much as the person who is either starting or getting to $10s of thousands of dollars, or $100s of thousands or more of value into his BTC stash.