How much to fund
A decision people make on convenience and then discover was a risk decision.
Only what you are about to spend
- What you gain
- Nothing sits anywhere unprotected. Whatever happens to the platform, your account or your attention, the exposure is bounded by one order.
- What you give up
- You repeat the funding step each time, which is the least pleasant part and takes about twelve minutes of waiting.
- Suits
- Almost everyone, and particularly anyone who visits infrequently.
A working balance for several orders
- What you gain
- One funding step covers a stretch of activity, and the network fee is paid once instead of several times.
- What you give up
- Everything above the next order is sitting outside escrow and outside every protection. That is the most frequent loss in this subject.
- Suits
- Frequent buyers who genuinely order weekly, and who withdraw the remainder when the stretch ends.
A large float so you never think about it
- What you gain
- Convenience, and never being caught short.
- What you give up
- The largest avoidable exposure available to you, held indefinitely, for a benefit measured in saved minutes.
- Suits
- Nobody. This is the shape of most losses that have no attacker attached.
The fee argument, answered
It is the one real argument for funding in bulk, so it deserves a direct answer. Each movement pays a network fee, and on this kind of chain that fee is a fraction of a cent. Funding once rather than four times saves a sum too small to write down, and carries an unbounded downside for as long as the balance sits there. That is not a close comparison, and it is the only place on this site where the arithmetic is that lopsided.
What a parked balance actually is
Money handed to a platform and not committed to anything. It is not in escrow, because escrow governs orders. It is not protected by the signing arrangement, because nothing has been contracted. It is held on your behalf by a party you cannot identify and have no recourse against.
What tips it
Frequency, and honesty about frequency. People who order weekly can defend a working balance if they actually withdraw at the end of the stretch. People who intend to order weekly and then do not are the ones who end up with money sitting somewhere for eight months, which is the next decision and the more important one.