I think the hardest part for newcomers is the first bull run followed by a hefty correction. It's hard to deal with the "I'm a genius" followed by the "shit I fucked up" roller coaster of emotions. Many of those newcomers sell and call it a loss. Some of the newcomers tough it out and live to see the next bull run with newfound confidence in the bitcorn.
This is a big reason to do the "don't invest what you can't afford to lose". Being down and in a shitty position can force you to do things that just make things worse.
This is very true. However, "what you can afford to lose" becomes a sliding scale for many people while facing losses they may not have expected. Maybe they initially thought "Shit, I can afford to throw $10,000 at this and lose it worst case scenario." Then suddenly they see $10,000 turning into $4,000 and start thinking "Well better to have $4,000 instead of $3,000 in my pocket".
There are many studied psychological theories such as Status Quo Bias and Risk Aversion Bias that greatly impact people and thier decision making abilities. Simply put, you may find yourself doubting the decision you made today even though you're currently 100% sure of it. Emotions are a very powerful and funny thing that many folks do not understand how to control or be self aware of.
A close friend of mine went to college for many years and studied investing and finance. While speaking to him during one of the bear markets he asked "How are you feeling with the current bear market?" I told him that it's just part of the cycle and I've been buying as much as I can on a weekly basis. I told him everything has cycles including the stock market. Now is the best time to buy. He told me that this strategy and mindset is one of the hardest things to overcome in the investing/finance world and something many (even expierenced) investors struggle with.
This is a great example in which the person who bought $10k worth of bitcoin subsequently suffers a 60% or greater crash (loss of value), and if he continues to buy, then he may well bring down his average cost per BTC and end up in a much better position based on such persistence in his buying... see my examples earlier in this post.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. What I am trying to say is many (I would argue majority of the general population) don't think like this or understand this. Maybe thier faith in Bitcoin just isn't there and they feel like they've "been had". Especially after thier Uncle Joey saw a video on YouTube explaining how "Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme" and calls them an idiot for buying it. Or maybe they are thinking they should buy the new SuperElonGTA6DogeRocket coin thier coworker told them about having a better return potential.
Also, thanks for the merit pushing me to "Full Member" status.
Of course, we can take into account the various misinformation that people have about bitcoin and their distractions into shitcoins, but sooner or later more and more people will be getting into bitcoin and we are still in the very early stages of bitcoin adoption in which we likely have to be mostly making sure that we protect ourselves and that our bitcoin investment is both sufficiently stacked but also that we have engaged in a certain amount of sustainable balancing and security in order to make sure that we do not lose our bitcoin and/or we are not forced to sell any or all of our bitcoin at a time that is not anything other than our complete own choosing.
Even with your own forum registration date of late 2017, you have had the potential of enough time in bitcoin in order to have had been able to accumulate some bitcoin along the way, and surely some people are in better positions than others in order to be aggressive in their BTC accumulation, but some people do not have enough cashflow to put themselves into real solid BTC accumulation, even after 6 or more years being in bitcoin.
Even though some of us who had already stacked most of our BTC prior to the most recent cycle from 2019 to now (let's say the last 4 years), there still might have been a lot of advantages to those who have not been in bitcoin as long in the last 18 months, the BTC prices have provided quite a few opportunities to stack sats for seemingly low prices relative to the 200-week, moving average, and so hopefully you were able to take some advantages of that period of time that may well now be behind us... perhaps? perhaps?