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I can already live off of my crypto earnings comfortably. The type of profits I suggested would be in a range where I could dump some 20~50m into the development of a game without even flinching about potentially never making it back. Basically make something that I
really want to see but never find due to CEOs cutting costs and keeping everything in a bland cookie-cutter manner. Not that I blame them, they are a business after all and need to appease their investors, but I do miss the wonder that old games made by nerds with a passion for the craft brought about and would like to see it brought back with cutting edge tools over tiny indie games. It's nothing of importance, but something that would be fun if I somehow managed to make all the right moves by gitting gud or lucking out.
Scholarships are a different story, since you can start handing those out even without being filthy rich, so I'm looking forward to that at some point (after I feel like I've spent enough time researching how to best go about it). And funding research I have no clue about. I suppose funds for a tenure and some assistants for a few years would be a good start. Also doable in the foreseeable future and more practical.
Surely I can relate to what you are saying here - of course, your passions and amount that you would invest differs considerably from me, but that merely shows individuality focuses can cause one person to pursue one direction with passion and fulfillment, while another person would chose to employ his/her relatively "excess" millions in another direction.
As far as people who bought in above $10k goes. Most of them will only have fractions of Bitcoin and not much spare cash to buy any more than a few more fractions of, or one or two Bitcoins at best. So it'll be pretty hard for them to retire without Bitcoin ballooning well above $100k. They're also most likely going to be the type that will lose most or all of their stash by trading, which doesn't make it much easier.
I'm sure that there is going to be a decent amount of variation with these types in terms of how they may have managed their budget in buying into bitcoin and also possibly learning along the way. Surely, some of the BIGGER mistakes might still include average costs per BTC that are above $10k, but there are decent possibilities, so it seems, to attempt to dollar cost average down the average cost per BTC, especially at these prices without necessarily gambling or leveraging (or over leveraging).
I guess part of my point would be that depending on age and timeline and cashflow and a variety of circumstances, a guy/gal could still be considerably in the red on his/her bitcoin investment and still end up becoming rich on it in the future without necessarily acting irresponsibly or gambling too much in terms of ongoing strategy and tweaking... and in this regard, I am kind of presuming that BTC prices are going to go up from here in the future, and they would not necessarily even need to reach $10k or more for investors (even those currently in the red) to come out decently profitable (yet there is always some risk of BTC going to zero which must be kept in mind, and maybe even moreso if your investment is still in the red).
There are also very promising altcoins that increasingly reveal themselves as unicorns, albeit with the obvious associated risks involved. Those could help an average pleb increase their Bitcoin stash considerably, beyond what would be possible by cost averaging, buying dips, or trading the BTC/USD pair.
Personally, I say fuck the alt coins, and you don't need them in order to develop and employ reasonable and decent BTC plans... . but of course, cannot stop folks from playing around with some of them.
But that game requires hundreds of hours of research and ideally some previous experience with analyzing the unknown and should never be done with sizeable amounts of one's Bitcoin portfolio, especially without extensive experience. The "y house gone" memes are even more fitting here than for just Bitcoin.
Again, I don't think that it is necessary or wise to get involved in other projects, especially if your are already in the red with your BTC, but there could be ways to play a decently small portion of your total investment on such other projects.. but seems like a decently BIG ass waste of time, unless you are able to figure out ways that they might be long term monetizeable and fit into various sound money aspects of bitcoin.
Of course, getting into the game and sticking around religiously will help them, even if Bitcoin goes to zero. Because they would eventually have spent a considerable amount of time paying attention to markets and learning about investing money and seeing it grow, rather than waiting for their fiat to drop to half its value every so many years. And investing is pretty much what separates the average net worth individuals from high net worth ones, so losing money to learn this lesson is surely worth it as long as people heed the mantra of not burning money they need for bills and whatnot.
I pretty much agree with you that practicing brings experience and learning that is likely to be appliable in a large varieties of life including continued investing, and really, even though I am suggesting a mostly bitcoin plan, I understand that if someone is really young and has a very long time line, there is likely going to be more experimentation that they can reasonably incorporate into such plan and still end up coming out quite positive, even if some aspects of their plans fail in large ways.