True, mining was possible back then but considering the price at the time, it's also easier to just buy Bitcoin, and in 2010 Bitcoin was worth less than a dollar, it was basically worthless. If we had seen it coming, maybe dropping $1,000 on Bitcoin back then wouldn’t have been a big deal. And if we had held onto it until now we’d be living the kind of life most people can only dream of.
I know Bitcoin was below a dollar and it was easy to buy thousands of Bitcoins at that time. But there were not too many exchanges at that time. The main thing is, people did not know Bitcoin would grow that much in the future. So risking a thousand dollars on something that has no future does not make sense to a lot of people. Compared to buying Bitcoin, mining was much easier and I believe a lot of people mined Bitcoin back then. But a lot of them did not save their seed phrases carefully which is why they lost their Bitcoin.