Different people see it differently, but yeah, generally, BTC is seen as the true store of value to be hodled for a long time, 4-5 years at minimal, to see good results, accumulating little by little.
Other coins cannot be used for the same logic simply because they are not as stable.
You seem to be referring to the inflation of fiat currency.
To be honest, smart people never hold fiat currency (except for emergency funds).
Let's say you deposited $50,000 in a bank five years ago and you received a dividend from it every month.
To you, that may seem like a profit from investing money, but to me, it never seemed like a profit because if you add up and subtract the value that fiat currency lost in five years, you will see that your principal amount is less than your profit.
But if you had invested that amount in Bitcoin five years ago, your current balance would be several times higher (excluding inflation).