Some people might be able to figure out their focus fairly early and clearly, and other people might not be able to develop a focus, so not everyone is going to figure out their own views on the topic, which may end up affecting whether they invest into bitcoin and how much they invest into bitcoin.... Some folks might be able to figure out that they are ready, wiling and able to invest into bitcoin based on 5-10 hours of study. Others might take 50-100 hours, and others might take more than 1,000 hours.
We cannot necessarily figure out these kinds of matters for others, and surely many of us longer time bitcoiners will suggest that a person does not need to figure out all of his details in order to get started investing into bitcoin, so a guy might start out with merely $10 per week investing into bitcoin, and that might be a relatively low amount for him to invest out of his discretionary income, and while he is investing his $10 per week, he also might be studying in order to figure out his view about bitcoin as compared with other places that he could put his time, energies and/or monetary value.
One must not hesitate in investing as soon as he understand Bitcoin and benefit of investing in it, whether it takes 10 hours or 100 hour. Take as much time as you can to clear your doubts but once you are familiar with Bitcoin then don't hesitate in jumping in.
Surely newbie coiners are going to vary in regards to how long it might take them to just get started in bitcoin, so there are likely thresholds of learning that could help folks with level of conviction once they get past answering the question of "wether?" in the affirmative. Many times a person can jump in with an initial $10 with hardly any knowledge at all, and then learn as he goes.. so then the level of conviction would thereafter end up helping to potentially reinforce ideas of how much time, energy and value to invest into bitcoin, which also the level of conviction and the amount of time, energy value could end up playing out as reinforcing loops.. such as the more you learn, the stronger your conviction becomes and the more you end up investing... so you would not necessarily have high levels of conviction in the beginning and you might be very skeptical but still decide to start out with $10 or some other relatively small amount while researching further into both the bitcoin matter and also into how your own personal budget might fit into how much you are ready, willing and/or able to invest and whether on a weekly basis or some other kind of an investing frequency.
10$ is not a bad start as long as a person is willing to invest it regularly because with time his knowledge and experience about Bitcoin will go up and there is fair chance that he will go bullish in future. Everyone of us is afraid in the start, it's the time that matures us.
We have discussed cases, that investing 10$ per week for last 5 to 10 years can give you an adequate number of Bitcoins. Based on that one can formulate a strategy on how to accumulate Bitcoin.
I understand that not everyone is from the west, and so we have a lot of folks that have to struggle quite a bit to put together discretionary income in order to be in a position to invest into bitcoin.
Surely right around my first year in bitcoin (from late 2013 to late 2014), I was not really talking to anyone in my real life about bitcoin. It may have been that while I was investing into bitcoin I was continuing to study bitcoin and also figuring out my own level of conviction about bitcoin, yet I recall at the end of 2014, I started to recommend folks who I knew in my real life to invest into bitcoin and I started to send small amounts of bitcoin as gifts to people. There was a feature with the company Circle that allowed the sending of bitcoin with ONLY having an e-mail address, and so a person could send bitcoin and the sending of the bitcoin ONLY became irreversible (or officially sent to the person) once they opened their e-mail, yet if they did not open their e-mail then the transaction could be canceled and the bitcoin returned back to the senders account.
It may have taken me a bit of time to develop an amount that I was recommending, but I frequently would say that a person should just invest $10 per week into bitcoin, yet after March 2020, I started to recommend that people in the west (at least those with some kind of meaningful discretionary income or other investments/assets) should invest $100 per week... so after March 2020, $100 per week became my recommended starting amount for people in the west. Surely the punchline is to do what you can, and surely a person investing $100 per week will end up with 10x more bitcoin 10 years down the road as compared with the person investing only $10 per week.. yet surely $10 per week might still be as much as some folks are able to set aside to invest into bitcoin.
Of course, another consideration might be how much of our gross income that we might invest into bitcoin, and so in my earlier years, I would recommend between 1% to 10%, and after March 2020, I started to recommend 5% to 25% of gross income invested into bitcoin, yet surely that is assuming any money invested into bitcoin would come from discretionary income rather than money that is needed for expenses. Surely we could appreciate that a person investing 10% of his gross income into bitcoin would take 10 years to reach 1 year's income invested into bitcoin, yet a person investing 25% into bitcoin would be able to reach 1 whole year of income invested into bitcoin ONLY after 4 years... so levels of aggressiveness can make a difference, yet at the same time, bitcoin remains a great asymmetric bet to the upside, so you are correct that even a relatively small amount invested on a consistent and regular basis may well end up with still having great returns over a long period of time.
Choosing to invest into bitcoin or choosing not to invest into bitcoin, and figuring out how much to invest are all individual choices that individuals are responsible for whatever ramifications in terms of the choices they make and actions they carry out (and non-action can also be considered a kind of choice and/or action that has repercussions).
That's the worst situation, but usually, scammers use the lack of knowledge as a way to promote their "guidelines" or "guidance", and then people get rugged.
The first rule is to do things yourself, you will be right or wrong, but it will be you, not somebody else.
Sometimes, people with good knowledge also fall for scams. Scammers are always inventing new methods, and some of them actually work. Even people who have been crypto space for a long time fall for these traps. I was scammed a few months ago even though I thought I would never fall for scams. I was scrolling social media at late night and I received a phishing email. I didn't notice who is the sender and I connected my metamask wallet to a phishing website which drained my entire metamask wallet. Another Legendary forum member was scammed in the same way. Do you think it's because of a lack of knowledge? In my case, I didn't pay enough attention to the website before I connect the wallet even though I know how these scams works.
Perhaps this is more of my reasons why I say bitcoin is risky and it's not guaranteed that one will succeed with bitcoin even after observing all of the investment methods which we advocate for, perhaps success can not be quantified with the amount of bitcoin one has accumulated over the years but his success rate at which he makes use of one of the Sustainable bitcoin withdrawal methods which JayJuanGee also talked about in one of his threads, which may not also be a real success as on whole time of investment could be whipped out in less than an hour of encounter with scammers.
Perhaps being careful is not just enough but also educating ourselves with the right knowledge regarding scams, phishing links etc is very important hence to protect us a little bit more as the internet itself is not a safe place.
Regarding scams and hack attacks I have once urged JayJuanGee to include security related issues into one of his writings as having to educate on every other part of bitcoin and leaving the security wise of it seems too left out IMHO.
I talk about coin security sometimes, but I don't really feel that qualified to really get into security and/or coin storage details, and sometimes it can also become problematic to get into too many details of our own personal security practices.
Part of the punchline with coin security surely relates to the quantity of coins held, so in the very early times that a person is just getting started investing into bitcoin, there might not be a lot of value to protect, yet with the passage of time the value of the bitcoin holdings will likely grow with both ongoing adding of value to the investment over time, and also with decently good odds that bitcoin prices will continue to go up in value, especially for folks holding BTC 4-10 years or longer.
So the level of your security and coin protection likely has to relate to both the value of the coins at any particular time and the fact the coins can change in value quickly, but also there likely needs to be some concerns about level of competency for people to establish their BTC storage system and to employ decently good coin security /protection practices. Of course we should also attempt to account for possibilities that from time to time bitcoin might go through considerable increases in its value in a relatively short period of time, and for sure BTC coin holders are going to want to protect our coins more if they are higher percentages of our networth and as the coins might end up going up in value we might need to increase our coin security practices.
Another aspect of BTC coin security is that there seem to be ongoing developments in regards to various ways that we can hold our coins, sometimes even discovered vulnerabilities in regards to how folks had historically held their coins. Normies also might have bitcoin that they keep more in cold storage (and maybe they only check access a couple times a year) and other coins that might be medium accessible or even other coins that might be on hot wallets.. so there are also levels of security, and surely in the bitcoin community there is value placed in open source kinds of security set ups rather than closed sourced, since closed source could end up having back doors, so guys might end up choosing wallets that are not as secure at they believe them to be, and so in that regard, guys likely have responsibilities to figure out the security of their own set ups and if they might be putting their coins to unnecessary risks in regards to how they are holding them.
Guys also need to be careful as to not overly complicate their security set up, since a lot of guys lose coins by making their security set up too complicated, and then if they cannot remember their password or they lose it, then they may well end up losing their coins forever, and no one can help them to recover their overly complicated coin storage set up. Being your own bank can be difficult for some folks and even folks who are technologically capable, they can end up messing up their own coin storage security.