I've been asked recently, "Why are your transfers so slow?" Basically, it's the mempool queuing... When there's congestion, the moment you send it isn't considered complete; it's just like slipping a small note into a bunch of people's hands, and miners/packagers pick and load them onto the vehicle. If you give a lower fee, it's like getting a later number tag, possibly being pushed to the corner all the way, or even being cleaned up by nodes for being considered spam if you wait too long, and then you have to do it all over again.

Large on-chain transfers, or hot and cold wallets on exchanges, being interpreted as "smart money" when they move, makes me nervous too, but now I stay calm: I have a habit of first checking whether this transaction is urgent or not. If it's not urgent, I don't compete for a spot; I set the fee at the median, and if it’s slow, so be it. If it's really urgent, I just add more fee honestly, and don't sit there guessing "Is someone trying to dump the market" and get scared into trembling. Anyway, I usually wait until the last hour to vote, so I’ve learned to keep a calmer mindset about "waiting"... That's all for now.