I've definitely burnt a lot more than I could have just in network fees playing around. Understanding UTXOs and such, I feel it was worth it.

I feel like unless you're really irresponsible with seed phrases (which I'm guilty of early on, managed to fix that before anything bad happened) or your doing some really deep developer stuff, it's actually been remarkable just watching those sats do only exactly as I tell them.

The sense of direct control is pretty huge. I'd rather make one of the potential mistakes than have it stolen or frozen by an exchange.

For all the "you can't expect regular people to learn this shit", as a regular dummy, I've found it challenging yet surprisingly easy to slowly add to my understanding enough to accomplish it so far.

Appreciate the response!