For me in practice, I hardly have made any serious gains from Bitcoin, Yeah, apart from using it as a payment medium for jobs I do for clients. Are there other ways people like us who are late adopters benefit from Bitcoin?
If they are positive with bitcoin, I believe they will make it big in time. For now, learning is the key. They don’t have to rush investing without the required knowledge and little exposure in the market. And once they’re good enough, they can start to invest with little amount of capital, and stick to bitcoin. Although the profits might probably take so long but at least their future profits are secured, unlike if they rush into investing new altcoins in the market, there might be promises of quick profits, but only to find out that they have been scammed all the way. Most of the time, those too good to be true are signs of scams, so we need to be more cautious of that.
As long as bitcoin's volatility exists, there are always opportunities for those who want to invest in bitcoin, and it's never too late to invest in bitcoin. Whether we can benefit or profit from bitcoin will not depend on whether we get involved early or late but will depend on the knowledge we have. If we do not have the knowledge then even having the opportunity to invest in bitcoin early cannot guarantee that we can hold it until it makes a profit. So I agree with you that knowledge will be the deciding factor in our profits.