DCA strategy is always a long term profitable strategy. The DCA strategy is for middle-income people, that is, those who don't have a lot of money but are interested in investing in Bitcoin. If such a person had started investing in Bitcoin 5-10 years ago, he would still have made a lot of profit.
As an example I am showing a DCA chart for the last 5 years: ~snip~
Here you can see that if a person had invested $50 on a monthly basis using DCA 5 years ago today, his total investment portfolio would have been $3000 today, and holding these 5 years his profit portfolio would have been worth $6926, which is his investment, 230% more than that, and his total savings would have been $9926. Also it's current price is $56,185, so imagine if you continue investing like this, and when Bitcoin crosses 100K, then how much be your profit? This will benefit you considerably. So always think of DCA, it is the best way to invest. This will benefit everyone in the long term holding.
The thing is that comparing DCA with lump sum will always depend on the actual prices in the period of time involved.
You sound mixed up, since DCA versus lump sum will always depend on if the person employing lump sum even has lump sum available at the time that he starts investing in bitcoin.
If you are hypothesizing that a person has lump sum available when he starts investing into bitcoin, then he can choose whether to invest all of it right away or alternatively to also employ DCA (which is delay based time considerations) and/or he could choose to employ buying based on dip due to price dips that may or may not end up playing out.
Most people (or more likely an overwhelming majority of normal people) do not tend to have money that they can just invest into bitcoin as a lump sum, so it seems that DCA is more practical for a large number of people who can invest into bitcoin as the money comes available to them.
Seems pointless to try to compare lump sum and/or DCA unless getting past the presumption that someone actually has an ability to lump sum buy.
Using historical data you can always move around your window until it fits either DCA or lump sum as the better strategy.
One thing is looking back at facts and considering when you started investing, and so the longer that you have been investing, then the more likely that you would be doing better. Also, if you have a certain budget and money comes available at a certain time, then you have to take into account when the money comes available.. so dealing with facts.
If you are starting to invest right now, then you have your own budget to contend with.
Are you a proponent of any kind of certain system? or you just want to waffle around with a bunch of assertions that it depends?
Look at your own entry into bitcoin? You registered in the forum in June 2021, so that is a bit over 3 years, so you could compare what you could have had done based on your budget versus what you chose to do, and there are likely not very many cases that could beat a DCA approach. Of course, if you had a lump sum that was available at the beginning of your getting involved into bitcoin, then you could have started with the lump sum, yet when you got into bitcoin (or at least when you registered in the forum), we were in the midst of a bullish year, yet the summer of 2021 was a dipping portion of the year, and so even if you had a lump sum available at that time, you might have had considered whether it would be good to invest with a lump sum right away or the extent to which to employ DCA and/or buying on dips to supplement whatever you were considering choosing to do with your lump sum. For sure people with lump sums have more options, yet like I mentioned, an overwhelming majority of folks do not have lump sums available when they come to bitcoin or any other investment, which is also one of the reasons that DCA is so effective and broadly applicable as an investment technique.
So, in some cases DCA will be the better strategy and in others it will be lump sum at the beginning.
Most of the time DCA is best for newbies, yet surely adults can do whatever they like and be responsible for their choices.. and yeah, if they have lump sum available then they have more options, even though surely most people do not have lump sum available, so there is a need to figure out that part first in regards to how much is available. Maybe you want to provide some kind of an example rather than waffling around with unclear and somewhat vague answers in terms of proclaiming that "it depends?"
In a simplified way, if the price goes up, lump sum is better, but if the price goes down DCA is better because you end up with more Bitcoin for your fiat in the end.
Many times, we are not going to know if the BTC price is going to be going up or going down, so if someone does not have any bitcoin or has hardly any bitcoin, then the ONLY way to prepare for UP is to buy some bitcoin, and if he has lump sum available he can invest some or all of it right away or he can divide the lump sum into parts that allow for DCA and/or buying on dips. If he has an income then he can DCA with the income, and surely if he does not have any BTC, then waiting to invest and/or waiting for dips ONLY prepares for down without preparing for UP, so I really doubt it is a good idea, especially with bitcoin, to ONLY prepare for down, especially if you are a low coiner or a no coiner. Once you have some coins, then you have more options, yet it seems that an overwhelming majority of the world's population is either no coiners or low coiners, so it seems better to presume that most people should be buying BTC no matter what the price, otherwise they are not prepared for up, which surely does not seem to be a good place to be. But, yeah, each person is responsible for his own decisions regarding whether to invest into bitcoin and then if so, how to invest in bitcoin, and decisions to not invest into bitcoin are decisions as well and he has to live with the consequences of that, which does not seem too insightful if someone knows himself to be a low coiner or a no coiner.