I agree, there's too many other projects and workarounds for me to just willingly pay gas fees like that.Gas fees are an issue when buying/selling a coin that's only on an ETH based Dex like Uniswap. Moving from exchange to wallet isn't that bad. It's the $300 fee to confirm/$400 fee to buy/sell that's ridiculous.
I just ignore ETH all together. It's just not worth it. The 300 you spend could be a 10x.
A reputable exchange will not keep your money. Binance abruptly added mandatory KYC and still allowed USA users to withdraw funds.