[edited out].
I have gone through the question you add above and I would rather be the guy who spent $28,500 and had somewhere between 27 BTC and 34 BTC (with an average cost per BTC between $838 and $1,056). Even though I ended up spending more money than the first guy in acquiring my bitcoin. I also ended up having more bitcoin in my possession which is much more profitable than the first guy. Although both of them are successful with their investments.
Each were able to invest according to their financial capabilities. My assertion in making the comparisons is that the first guy ONLY did a lump sum purchase of bitcoin with $5k and the second guy did the lump sum, yet continued to invest into bitcoin through out the period.
So my assertion is that the first guy purposefully chose to be less aggressive in his investment style than the second guy, and it seems that the first guy was more whimpy in his investment style than the second guy.
Sure, it was not guaranteed that all of the extra money that the second guy put into bitcoin over the next 9 years was going to end up paying off, and it cost him $50 per week to put in that extra money over 9 years, which I was presuming to be fairly easily within the means of either one of them to continue to buy bitcoin, yet the first one chose to limit his investment in bitcoin to the $5k amount.
With bitcoin we see that historically it had been the best of assets to invest in, and right now we are faced with similar kinds of choices, and we cannot know for sure whether our choices to ongoing invest into bitcoin are going to end up paying off.
Well for me I think the risk was worth taking. It is better to invest now and find out what the outcome will be in the future than to neglect investing at all, while figuring what the future will be like for bitcoin. If it eventually pay off the person that decided to invest will be considered as a wise person. If it doesn't pay off by that time, we continue holding with the hope that it will pay off someday.
Sure. I understand that it could well be the case that some of the forum members who are actively participating in forum threads may well be more likely to want to interactively continue to buy bitcoin - although it is also true that there are some guys who take more of a wait an see kind of an approach in which they might not really want to continue to buy bitcoin on a regular and ongoing basis.
I do tend to recommend the more aggressive ongoing approach, but surely there is no guarantee that such an approach will continue to pay off better than a more reserved and even whimpy approach.
From your example it was evident enough that lump summing once without following up with DCA during the waiting period is not actually a wise decision. While waiting for the x number of years, one should take the advantage of following up the investment, provided that the investor has the means.
Surely some people are more nervous about bitcoin and also nervous about how much they put into bitcoin, and there is nothing really wrong about that. One of the natures of even having an asymmetric bet like bitcoin, there have been a lot of historical instances in which even fairly whimpy investors have done pretty well with having had taken a bitcoin investment.. and that could be part of the reason why so many folks suggest that investing into bitcoin can end up being just getting off zero, and even if you might not take a very large bitcoin position, historically, the ones who had gotten off zero had been rewarded for getting off of zero as long as they stuck with their investment and did not get scared out of it.
Another thing that can be good about taking a more whimpy approach to bitcoin investing is that there might be less concerned about getting shaken out, since some people who are more aggressive in their bitcoin investment approach, they end up overdoing it without realizing that they had over done it and they might either get overly nervous about BTC price drops or they might end up selling some of their BTC position at the wrong time (meaning when the price is down or selling too much too soon as the BTC price goes up) based partly on how nervous they are.
Even if it wasn't guaranteed that the extra money the investor is putting is not going to pay off in the end. It was an avenue for the second guy to save up his money by investing it in bitcoin through the DCA of $50 per week. It was a risk that was worth it. It was better than the first guy who probably was saving his extra money he was getting in Fiat within that 9 years intervals.
There surely are these kinds of people who either don't invest in anything, consume or maybe they invest into various inferior products, and maybe some of them are more innocent mistakes than others.
For example, I have more difficulties blaming someone who might have had been lured to invest into his 401k, and so by the time he might invest 5% or 10% of his income into his 401k because his employer matches some of that and also the 401k funds are tax deferred, so then he might not want to invest more into bitcoin, since he also has expenses and wants and he feels that he is already investing enough, and so it could become a bit misleading to invest so much into a 401k, when he might still be able to invest into his 401k and also invest into bitcoin, yet sometimes it can become more difficult to invest higher portions of an income.. so there are trade offs and temptations to want to enjoy life.... and some folks might say that they are not even enjoying life, they are investing themselves to the maximum... so they would be risking too much to try to invest more than what they are choosing to invest.