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 $10 or some other relatively small amount while researching further into both the bitcoin matter and also into how your own personal budget might fit into how much you are ready, willing and/or able to invest and whether on a weekly basis or some other kind of an investing frequency.
I think those guys who jump with 10$ or more without questioning much and in the mean time study Bitcoin are lucky one or wise. If one think that he need answer of all his questions before jumping into bitcoin then he might lose considerable time in getting started or didn't start at all. There are many tools available that can give you idea of how much profit you will get with specific investment. It's also human psyche that we take thing serious in which we have invested money, like people take paid online courses more seriously in which they have paid the fee compared to free online courses.
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.
I am glad you have understanding of this point. In my country, we have average income of 300$ per month. So even putting 10$ every week is quite challenging if you have 300$ of monthly income and has family to look after. In that case, side incomes like working here on bitcointalk and getting 100$ per month or more are a big bonus to invest in 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 $10 per week might still be as much as some folks are able to set aside to invest into bitcoin.
In this thread I was trying to tell what's the benefit of investing in bitcoin i.e. if you just invest and forget about your investment. If someone can invest 100$ or more then it's best investment of current time. That doesn't mean people from other regions (like the one I described above with average income of 300$) should stop investing in bitcoin. Since anything investing in Bitcoin is better then not investing at all.
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.
We have now history of bitcoin where we can easily see how much benefit we have in investing in bitcoin. The more bullish you are towards bitcoin accumulation, the better you see results. You are right that whatever we invest in Bitcoin should come from discretionary income and we must secure money that is required for daily living.