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When you have basic knowledge about Bitcoin and then decide to run an investment, this will be very good, but you need to remember that when you decide to invest, you must continue to learn until you really understand it well and most importantly for anyone who wants to start, they must be able to keep their wallet keys well and do not lose access to their wallet after collecting Bitcoin.
Yes, in this forum we will be able to gain knowledge about Bitcoin and as a beginner it will certainly be better to choose to maintain their assets in the long term and also have to use funds that they will not take until the target they have set has not been reached.
I doubt that it is necessary for anyone to learn to hold their own private keys before getting into bitcoin or even to do that right away. A person can get started with third-party custodial solutions and then transition into learning various kinds of self-custody possibilities. The level of security that a person needs or even their decisions in regards to UTXO management could affect how they hold coins.
I keep reiterating in various threads that one of the most basic kinds of knowledge that a person needs to get started investing into bitcoin regards whether he has a disposable income or not that he is able to invest in bitcoin for 4-10 years or longer, so even if he might just start with $100 per week, he should at least be able to figure out if that is within his disposable income or not, and as far as knowledge about bitcoin, he likely would ONLY need to consider that bitcoin is a good place to put money for 4-10 years or longer, and if he is not sure about that conclusion, then he can adjust his investment amount downward until he is comfortable and then he can learn about bitcoin enough to reach a conclusion that he is more comfortable investing higher amounts into bitcoin that would be locked away for 4-10 years or longer.
Anyone wanting to buy bitcoin on shorter than 4 year timelines would be trading rather than investing, and personally I consider bitcoin to be an investment rather than a trade, and surely there might be some folks who get into bitcoin and they are considering keeping it for shorter than 4 year timelines and maybe trying to play our current cycle to their advantage, and sure people can do what they like, yet I would still classify shorter than 4 year timelines as trades (or gambling) rather than investing.. which is fine.. people can do what they like, even dumb things (which might be the case if they are not able to spend enough time to actually learn what bitcoin is and/or to appreciate that bitcoin is likely better as an investment rather than as a trade.
Definitely correct and I would add that the higher the amount someone is able and willing to invest, the stronger would my recommendation be to manage their bitcoin holdings on their own. But from my point of view, for the average scale investor, an Electrum wallet is ok. I have been using Electrum for a very long time now, never had any issues like crashing clients and there is tons of info material on how to properly use it, back it up and so on and so forth.
I think it is sometimes not even so much about the wallet you use, but how careful you are when it comes to basic user behavior. You know, there are days my mom still asks me whether she should open this mysterious email from Nigeria and I would probably not recommend my mother to run any clients on their computer that hold bitcoin funds. But if someone knows what to click and - more importantly - what not to click, then a desktop client can get you quite far in terms of security and manageability.
Anyone wanting to buy bitcoin on shorter than 4 year timelines would be trading rather than investing, and personally I consider bitcoin to be an investment rather than a trade
This is the really important point that people keep getting wrong because they are still shocked by the growth bitcoin as a value network has been going through so far. I like that you don't bring up periods that are too short, like 12 months or so. 12 months can fully wreck you and put you in a bad position, perhaps forcing you to liquidate your holdings when they are at their low during that period of time. 4 years sounds reasonable and of course 10 years, well that is a timeframe that gets me really interested. By then Bitcoin could be anywhere. The one thing I still can't appropriately assess is whether any significant progress in computing/quantum computing could become a threat for the encryption technology used in bitcoin.
Anyone could deem bitcoin a trade and if they wish they can leverage it like any other currency, but I concur that the nature of bitcoin is such that it would probably fit much better into the investment category (long term investment). It is of high interest to literally anyone in the world. For some it is for practical reasons, like circumventing sanctions or making use of its essentially unlimited borderless mobility, for others it is because whatever has true value for someone else, can have true value for me regardless of whether or not I use it under specific circumstances.
Bitcoin is a buy in my opinion and while I understand people who said they prefer to be careful when bitcoin was at pennies and dollars, it stood the test of time now and the question is how far it can really go.
