I agree with your statement,it's easier to make profit and see the coin price multiply in past years, now we got tons of alt and tons of regulations for crypto, and the kyc requirement make the crypto investment same with Fiat investment,so the regulations is disadvantage for crypto, and I think we won't see any huge rising anymore in crypto
I heard the mane of cryptocurrency in 2017 when bitcoin become 9 years old. I dont know what happened in 2014, but I know that the investors of 2014 are now millionaires due to bitcoin investment. They bought for very low price almost few dollars and sold them in 2017 for a huge price and earned thousands of dollars in each bitcoin. This is called luck.