In my ongoing quest to avoid paying fees, the Nexo Exchange is proving very helpful.
I'm tired of paying withdrawal fees and taking time to plan withdrawals efficiently. I'm even more tired of the fees killing my profits. (I sent one AAVE from Kraken to Celsius months ago and the interest to date has barely paid the fee!) For a handful of crypto-currencies at least, I've figured out a way to avoid fees almost entirely (and hopefully 100% soon).
Like many of us, I started on Coinbase. After getting tired of paying them 1.49% on every transaction, I joined Kraken and Kucoin. KUCOIN seems to have the lowest trading fees, but some of the withdrawal fees are far too high. If you're planning on purchasing to withdraw to cold storage or CEFI/DEFI, it's prohibitively expensive to purchase and withdraw small amounts at a time.
Rather than buy BTC or ETH on Kucoin (or another exchange with similar withdrawal fees), you'd be better off buying BNB and sending it to Nexo and swapping the BNB for BTC or ETH in the Nexo exchange. It's free to swap and free to withdraw afterwards. I just completed my first few feeless swaps yesterday and have withdrawn from Nexo many times previously. I've used Nexo generally as a way to earn interest on a part of my holdings and I have invested the Nexo coin itself. Having platinum status gives me 5 free withdrawals a month, but 1 per month should be available to anybody.
As for funding, my strategy had been to purchase USDC on COINBASE for free. I'd then transfer the USDC to Kucoin (paying a $8-$18 fee) and either buy BTC/ETH with it or swap it to USDT for other coins.
Nexo also apparently offers to the opportunity to deposit fiat--though only through wire transfer currently--and is currently working on enabling ACH transfers. That would be the best way to buy the coins available on the Nexo exchange.
Once Nexo enables ACH transfers, you could buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Chainlink (and others) for no fee and either withdraw it for free or leave it there to earn interest. You may want to start accumulating some Nexo now if you haven't already to get yourself some free withdrawals, grow your crypto, and take advantage of CEFI's potential, but you should definitely consider using the Nexo Exchange to avoid fees.
