To see the clear picture and get helpful answers, I suggest to put on the other side a list of unsuccessful investments. OP has mentioned gold, bitcoin and property investments, showed how $1000 turned into hundred thousands. I havent googled much, but offhand I can name Twitter purchase. Suppose you have invested in Twitter. During two last years the value of your investment has decreased. Found
list of unsuccessful investment. HP have bought Autonomy and face multimillion value loss of a company they have just purchased.
So OP, when asking why people make mistakes and did not invest on early stage, think about all the unsuccessful investments people made. Because I feel like ration of successful: unsuccessful early investments are greatly below 1.
Seeing the positive and negative investment outcomes side by side might help you gain a more realistic and practical perspective of what is feasible. It's common for people to lose sight of the fact that the likelihood of their investment failing is considerably higher than that of becoming the next great success story. Furthermore, there's no assurance that their gains will hold up even if they do experience some. Therefore, it's important to consider the risks as well as the potential rewards.