You're totally right! People need to get that they can't become rich overnight. It just doesn't work like that. I've seen so many people investing in some random shitcoins, hoping that they'll strike it rich, but they end up losing everything. Crypto currencies are all about long term investment. There is no easy money here. And like you said, we got to be prepared to lose some along the way. And if you do lose, learn from it and make sure to use what you have learned to maximize your profit in the future. If the coin promises quick money, very likely it is a scam. Just invest in the top coins but only whatever you can afford to lose.
If I hear the phrase cryptocurrency and long-term investments, then I associate it only with bitcoin, since all my successful investments in altcoins were medium-term transactions. And almost all of my long-term experiments with altcoins ended in failure. Therefore, I believe that altcoins are quite suitable for trading and in some cases can give us very good results, but here, everything is not so simple, and before choosing altcoins for trading, you need to analyze the project and look at its prospects.