Look at where the whole network was only 100 GHASH
more than 100 thousand blocks already were already mined in Jan/11
http://blockchain.info/block-height/103000 look how difficult? 18,437.64
5 million relatively easy bitcoins
Which at the time were worth something on the order of a penny apiece, due to the fact that Bitcoin was an unproven system that very few people were using and were afraid to invest large amounts of real money in. Nobody at the time seriously thought (although they all hoped) that bitcoins would be worth anything near what they are today. The only reason bitcoins
are worth what they are today is because these early adopters were prepared to take the risk of expending a large amount of effort into something that may well have turned out to be a complete failure. All investments are like this. Those who take the risks stand to reap the rewards, and they also stand to lose everything if it doesn't work out.
Sure! My point is: there are some rich out there without any herculean effort, some people became rich mining with CPU!
The coins worth nothing at that time, and so were the costs to mine. People just accumulated some digits in a weird piece of software. Like a silly game.
I understand all that and all I can do is to thank all early adopters who brought this currency into the future, which is now!