Even though self-custodial is important, you do not need to learn self-custody before getting started investing in bitcoin. In investing in bitcoin, amongst the most important of things is to get started, as long as you have a discretionary income.. start right away, and if you don't know things, then just start out smaller and learn as you go... so for example, if you know that you have $100 per week that you could put into bitcoin, you might start with $10 per week and work your way up to $100 per week as you learn various basic aspects of bitcoin. Each person will be different in terms of how much time he has to learn and at what kind of time line does he need to figure out some kind of a self-custody solution, whether electrum or some hardware wallet or some combination, and of course, there can be needs for timing, but there are likely greater needs to get started buying some bitcoin first.
Of course I would agree with you that it's not much of the basics to invest in bitcoin but it comes along the line of accumulation and fortunately coin security is my most priority I encourage people to start making all type of coin security decisions before or once their accumulation is up to $500 or even below since exchanges pose more risk. Cold wallets on airgapped device is most important for a holder even some are not willing to go for a well secured wallets like electrum yet they can go for any other open source wallets that at least has no backdoors like exchanges and other types of wallets.
Self custody can be difficult for some people, so I would be careful in making too many assumptions that "anyone can do it." Or assuming that "self-custody" is a basic practice that can be achieved by a lot of normies who don't seem to want to do it, so they might have to build their own incentive to learn about it and to put it into practice, and even if they have someone helping them, they still might not be ready, willing or able to do it.. in terms of their motivation and/or abilities.
I agree with your assumption that exchanges are not safe, yet I don't agree that the fact that exchanges are not safe is enough of a motivation to get normies (grandma) to learn about how to safeguard her coins and to put such safeguarding into practice.
I agree.. Good additional links.
I agree with you, In fact, if you invest in Bitcoin in DCA, The amount of benefit it will give you, without DCA It cannot be obtained in any other way. When Bitcoin exceeds $200K - $500K in the next cycle, then DCA investors will undoubtedly benefit the most. In fact, if DCA is continued continuously in the long term, an investor can benefit more than his expectations in the future, That's why for Bitcoin investing (logn term), DCA is the best investment method.
You speak as if DCA is one very specially investment of its own but it's not, every Bitcoin investor doesn't have to use DCA before they become profitable, I am not saying that the strategy of DCA is not good, it's good but let's assume I have $1 million dollars and I invested it all at once into Bitcoin and held it for twenty years and someone else started to DCA on the same month that I invested $1m, assuming he spends $10k every year on DCAing, in 20 years, he should have spent $200k total capital, you can not still compare his profit with mind. Because of my high amount that was invested, I still stand more chance to get more profit.
Since I don't have $1m right now and I am yet a student, DCA is beneficial for me because I will definitely buy Bitcoin only when I have the capital to buy and spread it into partitions to target different buy price.
Your point is correct in terms of DCA being more practical for people who are investing as their money comes available and they do not necessarily have the option for lump sum.
your example is quite a bit extreme, and surely lump sum can be any amount of extra money that you get. So for example, if you are usually buying $100 per week, but you suddenly get $5,000, that would provide lump sum opportunities.
A guy can have lump sum options at the beginning of his investment or lump sum opportunities can come at various points down the road, yet even a large number of folks who suddenly have a lump sum amount come available, they still might choose to defer some of their bitcoin buys with the available amount to employ DCA as a deferral method and/or buying on dip as a deferral method.
The buying on dip may not end up triggering the buys and the DCA might cause comfort to not put so much value into bitcoin at any one time...but yeah, there is quite a bit of discretion regarding how to invest into bitcoin, even if a lump sum is available, and surely guys who ONLY have small amounts of discretionary income each paycheck, they are likely going to find that DCA works a lot better for them to manage their income/expenses and perhaps even their psychology about how much bitcoin that they want to buy weekly (or whatever other time period they might choose).