What's all this talk about early adopters taking "risk?" If anything, people nowadays are taking more of a risk with current prices of bitcoins.

Early adopter wants 10,000 coins a year ago? he sells someone a pizza.

A bitcoiner these days wants 10,000 coins? he sells his house.

Mining coins was a hell of a lot easier during the early-adopter stage, a lot cheaper too. It didn't require you to go out and buy thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of hardware in order to make 5 bitcoins in a day. Hell, most people would set-up their miners, leave their computer running all night (like most people do here regardless if their mining or not) and probably not even notice that their electricity usage went up.

The stage we're at now is risky. Businesses are popping up every day, people are investing in coins to hold, hardware is being purchased at a value worth tens of thousands of dollars by the sum of all miners, etc. etc. You can't honestly believe that the early adopters took any real risk...