i feel like when someone has bought even a small amount, it can gives them some skin in the game and can trigger the next step down the path. Unless they buy at the top , right before a crash, then they go the bitter route lol

If a friend asks me if they should buy bitcoin I just tell them no. Because if you have to ask then you didn't do research and I'm not about to take the liability to the dollar signs in their eyes.

Instead I just orange pill people by settling drink money in sats.

That's the best way. I recall in the depths of the last bear I finally convinced a buddy of mine to buy and hold Bitcoin as savings. He has a good job and income but has a spending problem and his job is very physically intensive so he isn't sure how many more years he will be able to do it. I sent him some sats and told him he should DCA a bit every time he got paid and start learning about Bitcoin. A couple weeks later he texted me asking about shitcoins some coworker told him to buy and I thought the plot was lost already but I convinced him to not get involved in any other cryptos and focus on Bitcoin.

When we reached 70k last year he texted me and thanked me and said between his buys and the price appreciation he now had over 10k in his bitcoin savings account. I said "ok now we have to get your bitcoin off the exchange" and I walked him through that.

I just tell him to keep stacking and focus on the sats balance not the fiat balance. Although he still hasn't totally got that part yet. He likes to tell me how much his bitcoin is worth in fiat periodically. Nobody's perfect.