Depends on the friends that you have. Do you trust them enough with your money? If yes then go for it. If not then go for knowing the ropes by yourself. As what the other guy also said there's a sense of self-satisfaction knowing that you can do shit by yourself without other people helping you out.
Even if we have trusted friends, it is better to do it ourselves. We must believe with our ability, why we must get help from the friends? It is okay to get or share knowledge from the friends, but it is not a good idea to trade Bitcoin through the friends. I've an experience that the the trusted friends turns to be untrusted people when it is related to money, especially a big amount of money. People can change if they know they can get an instant money. Moreover, when they know that we trust them. They will assume that it will be easy to deceive us.
So, the idea to trade Bitcoin through friends, probably leads to an unexpected problem. Remember that people can change their nature because of money! It also can happen to our friends.
Then again, I have friends that I can trust enough with my money that I could just trade crypto with them and they wouldn't have a single thought of stealing from me, be it a dollar or a full bitcoin.
Be careful! Even if they still can be trusted until now, there is no guarantee that they will never do bad things in the future. I suggest you to never using big amount of money, it can motivate someone to steal the money! Friends are human only, they sometimes can make mistakes, too.