Everything is easy in hindsight.  I remember buying bitcoins when they were $5 and feeling slightly embarrassed about wasting cash on magic internet money.  Back then things were much more underground and unsure. Most people, myself included, probably didn't really expect bitcoin to succeed, even if we thought the idea was brilliant.  There were a lot of questions about potential bugs, what ASICs would do if/when they were developed, hard forks, upscaling, and legal questions that just had not been encountered yet.  I just looked at my purchase like a donation to an interesting cryptographic protocol that I wanted to support.  After the first big crash in 2011 (after reaching the ridiculous peak of $32), the death of bitcoin was declared and many people sold their bitcoins in the following months at a loss somewhere around $2-5. Since I saw the whole thing as a donation, I never bothered to sell mine.