After reading this post, I'm going to finally use the Bitshares account. Had opened it a few months ago but it didn't look like much at that time. Your post here indicates it's worth a second look. But have to admit that I'm also rather sore with myself for not buying its tokens when they were at $0.05 :-)
When it comes to exchanges, it's not so much the trading fees they charge. I consider 0.25% as being quite reasonable. But not the transaction fee to transfer Bitcoin especially, and USDT. 0.001 when BTC was below $5,000 might still be okay. But at $15,000... Ouch!
Then there's that worry about our account being suddenly suspended/disabled for some reason or another. Some of us has had this happen at Bittrex. And just like that we lose access to out hard-earned assets.
That's a lesson for us to take steps to be more in control of our cryptos. Can't be too dependent on these exchanges.