Thanks for sharing your experience @czera. Personally (not financial advice), I prefer XRP when transferring from coins.ph to an exchange (I usually use bittrex). The gas is lower compared to ETH. Also, you're right, try out a little but I think with bittrex, you will need 0.05 ETH before they can credit it to your holdings. With XRP I've transferred much lower amounts and it takes a short amount of time to do it. I don't usually use the auto 'convert' on coins.ph but go to coins pro, to get a better price. You can use your coins.ph account there. This is a good experience that you shared. We will all learn something from it.

Be safe with these things, they are really complicated. Congrats on the learning though, you paid tuition fee for it. :) keep safe..