Withdraw to your own wallet

After this lesson you can: take coins off an exchange and into your own keys, and know whether Lightning or on-chain is the right rail for the amount.

Why this is the lesson that matters

Everything in lesson 3 comes down to one action. Until you withdraw, you hold a claim. After you withdraw, you hold bitcoin. Many platforms make this easy; some bitcoin-only companies do it automatically on a schedule, and the non-custodial ones skip the step entirely because the coins never sat with them.

Steps

1. 01In your wallet, tap Receive and generate a fresh address (or, for Lightning, an invoice or Lightning address).
2. 02On the exchange, choose Withdraw, then Bitcoin. Paste the address. Never type it. Compare the first and last six characters with your wallet's screen.
3. 03Choose the rail. On-chain for savings and larger amounts: final, slower, fee depends on network demand, not on the amount. Lightning for small amounts: seconds, tiny fee, if both sides support it.
4. 04Send a small test first, a few dollars. Wait for it to arrive in your wallet.
5. 05Withdraw the rest. Check the exchange's withdrawal fee and any minimum; some platforms charge a flat fee that makes tiny on-chain withdrawals wasteful, so batch them.
6. 06Watch it confirm. One confirmation means it is in a block; most wallets treat a few as final. The exchange's job is now done.

Fees, briefly

An on-chain fee is paid per byte of transaction data to miners, so it is the same whether you move $50 or $50,000. When the network is busy, fees rise. Check mempool.space for the current rate. Withdrawing weekly in tiny amounts builds up many small outputs that are expensive to spend later; the Self-custody course covers that (UTXO management).