spread between gateways

[The Knight of Ahhrrgg]

Hi all,

As some of you may have noticed previously, I'm on Bitstamp. Simply because of the trustworthiness of the company (including a Luxembourg banking permit).
During the past few spikes up for XRP, I've been checking back and forth between the spread that occurs, not between buyers& sellers, but between Bitstamp and Poloniex.
Last run was big fun: there was even a 3 $ct spread between Bitstamp and Poloniex. Currently, they are  getting more in line again (Bitstamp always being the more 'conservative' one during this run).

Now - I do indeed know there is a price differential - Poloniex having the higher XRP/USDT price (most of the time about 2-3%) since USDT is  basically an USD.iou versus the USD.fiat at Bitstamp. I do get that.

What I'm interested in is this: what might your reasons be to trade at Poloniex? 
- If you'd want to bail out into fiat -->  then I see no reason to be holding USDT. Useless for that matter, since you would then want someday-exploding  fiat instead. 
- If you'd want to switch from the one alt into another alt: I can understand trading at Poloniex given the good volumes there
- If you'd want to do arbitrage, there may at times be reasons to use Poloniex

But for the long term hodler, and/or those entering the market using EUR fiat or USD fiat - so why bother going through the USDT stuff at Poloniex?

Why not :
-either use Gatehub (after validation at least from Europe I could fund/withdraw easily from a fiat bank account)
-or: with those same features + even a banking permit : use Bitstamp instead? 

Please share your thoughts on this. I'm not trying to mock or propagate exchanges here - just trying to look from every angle on this.
As said, I'm a hodler.

Thanks!

[tulo]

I usually use Poloniex for CRYPTO:CRYPTO trades, but I always store there not more than 5-7 BTC equivalent (6k-12k USD) because I don't trust them enough.

For CRYPTO:FIAT and for Ripple/XRP I usually use Bitstamp and Gatehub. Also to cash in-out Bistamp/Gatehub is a must.