My friend is a serious guy, he will likely ask various others and move slowly. (I am not all that serious, but do move slowly.) I did tell him to edge into any purchases, I should have mentioned JJG's Dollar Cost Averaging thoughts in regards to his budget, goals and financial means. He DID tell me he is OK with volatility and thinking long term, and I believe that.
I hope that he does not get suckered into ALTS, but that is his decision.
He's not a programmer either -- I hardly know any of them, looks like I come from a different space than most here..
For sure, DCA and incrementalism is a practice that goes way beyond my thinking - even though I do harp on it quite a bit regarding the main part of any common practice that someone just getting into bitcoin should consider.
I share a lot of your frustration with your friend because a lot of people might already know about DCA and they are receptive to the idea of DCA - yet when they are into not seeming to sufficiently understand the difference between shitcoins and bitcoin, they also end up applying DCA to shitcoins (at least many of us bitcoiners who might have some dabblings with shitcoins recognize and appreciate that they are not long term investments - but surely even long term bitcoiners get confused about that point, too).
I frequently seem to be throwing out the idea that DCA works as a method for long term investing because there has already been a determination that either fundamentals are strong in the underlying asset or that there is reason to believe that a determination can possibly later be made that fundamentals are strong in the underlying asset - which for bitcoin has largely come to mean that there are pretty decent odds that no matter what period that anyone starts investing into bitcoin, the price has quite likely strong chances of being higher 4-10 years later in real terms than it was at the time of the purchase, and the odds of the DCA investor to continue to bring down cost per BTC in the event that the price ends up turning against him/her and going down. So in some sense DCA works best when the BTC price is waffling all over the place including getting stuck in a spiraling downtrend, but DCA does not work as well when the BTC price gets on one of its decently long term UP trends. Lump sum investing would work better in those instances - but still lump sum investing takes way more knowledge regarding market dynamics than a DCA approach.
One way of attempting to partially address the dilemma of a problem in which the BTC price may well go up a lot in the short-term is to engage in a bit of a frontloading of the investment - and of course, another dilemma will still be presented regarding how much to frontload.. .We can also recognize that not everyone has the luxury of frontloading their investment either because they do not necessarily have a lump sum amount in which they can choose how to "get started," but for those who do have some kind of potential lump sum amount that they can potentially frontload into their bitcoin investment I tend to consider to strt by dividing that lump sum amount and also a period of cashflow for the next 6 months for example, and then adding all those up and then dividing into three parts one part lump sum, one part DCA and one part buying on dips... the answer regarding how to divy it up exactly over those first six months is not necessarily be obvious - because there would surely need to be quite a bit of accounting for individual circumstances and the employment of discretion that also attempts to account for timeline, other investments, view of bitcoin compared with other investments, risk tolerance and time, skills and abilities to plan, strategize and to learn and tweak along the way and in more advanced approaches (surely not necessary to get started) may well include the use of financial instruments and leverage, trading and reallocation from time to time (also reallocation may or may not be necessary or even advantageous... but of course, discretionary and individuals should be attempting to engage in their investment at least sufficiently to take responsibility over each and all of their investment portfolio - initial allocations and then managing it as it "hopefully" grows.).
So for sure what I am saying is that people tend to get quite confused (I did as well, and probably quite few other people got confused early in their coming to bitcoin), and then we end up wanting to diversify into some various shitcoin projects and attempt to pick the "best of the shitcoins" or the "better of the shitcoins" which does not tend to be a great approach rather than just picking the sector leader, which is quite obviously bitcoin. It seems that people have to learn that bitcoin is the sector leader on their own and probably takes some time - and maybe having them watch around 30-50 Michael Saylor videos might help them out in terms of coming to the conclusion that it makes little to no sense to diversify into shitcoins once the sector leader has been identified....
For starts on a great Saylor clip, go back to that Saylor clip that AlcoHoDL had provided from 2021 and click on the youtube link therein.... it took me a while to find that post.
Great advice.
I watched that clip again, thanks for the reminder. It never gets old. Recommended for newbies and for everyone really.
As for shitcoins and exploring them in the beginning of our Bitcoin journey, I will confess that I also experimented with a few shitcoins back then. Nothing major, I really can't remember the exact allocation then, it was probably something like 95% Bitcoin vs. 5% shitcoins. I still own those shitcoins, I have almost forgotten about them, and the current allocation is more like 99.9% Bitcoin vs. 0.1% shitcoins, which, in itself is a good indicator of Bitcoin vs. shitcoin performance over the 5-6 years I've had them. In terms of numbers, and these are very rough estimates, my Bitcoin investment has grown to about 25x, while by shitcoin investment has grown to a meager 2x. Had I thrown everything in Bitcoin back then, I could have ended up with a few more BTC in my stash.
25x vs. 2x. Something to think about, for those who still have faith in shitcoins...