No parked balance
The one habit on this site that costs nothing at all to follow and prevents the most frequent loss.
What a parked balance 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 multisig arrangement, because nothing has been contracted. It is simply held on your behalf by a party you cannot identify and have no recourse against.
Every protection described anywhere on this site attaches to an order. A balance has no order attached, which means it has nothing attached.
What can happen to it
- A platform ending. Nobody predicts it, and every market that ended badly looked healthy immediately beforehand.
- Your account being lost. Far more likely than the platform failing, and it takes the balance with it.
- An extended outage. Not a loss, and a period where you cannot reach your own money and cannot find out when you will.
- Your attention lapsing. The quiet one. Money left somewhere for six months belongs to somebody who has stopped watching.
The fee argument
It is the one people make, so it deserves a direct answer. Funding once and generously does save network fees, and on Monero those fees are a fraction of a cent. You are buying convenience with an unlimited downside and saving an amount too small to name. That is not a close call.
The rule
Fund what you intend to spend soon. Not what you might spend eventually, not a round number, not a buffer. If an order is not going to be placed within a short window, the money should not be there. It is the only advice in the whole register that is free, immediate and complete.