Layer 2 networks to reduce gas fees — but only once you’re in.

Someone posed a question to me recently — one that I see come up on the interwebs quite a bit.

“Are the gas fees required to move a token from the Ethereum mainnet to an l2 tied to the token or is it just a byproduct of Ethereum? If i buy $100 USDC on coinbase, move to to metamask w/ the Ethereum mainnet, then try to move to that loopring l2, will that yield the same gas fees as me just moving $100 of ETH via metamask to loopring l2 directly?