A lot of people in this thread have got it wrong. The key difference is that Greg was not a bitcoin "holder". He was a bitcoin "trader". In the early days there was many traders, even I was one of them. There was not enough Bitcoin maxi's that never sold and held forever.
At the same time, most of these people didn't end up with zero, and that's what people are missing about. Like for example Laszlo had 100k+ bitcoins when he bought those pizzas, and yet people never talk about it, doesn't mean he is rich now, maybe he sold all of them or maybe he didn't, but that pizza was less than 10% of his entire bitcoin portfolio, meaning that if he kept the rest, he would have billions right now, yes with a B, don't know if he kept it though, maybe he didn't, maybe he sold earlier too.
And this is same for Greg as well, those 1700 weren't his entire stash, and he had some, go check his twitter and will see that he made more money than I could ever think of, and he is richer thanks to this, he gained literally fame from this that turned into money. Yeah, maybe he would have preferred to have his 1700 bitcoins instead, but not like he is some poor person neither, he still has some money and some coins, so he is doing alright, not a bad life.