I somewhat doubt that many people were able to do this
That "able" was a thing, I first heard of it when it was first establishing value, and would have bought $100 for a "what if" back then, but found you had to know the right people, no infrastructure... I think Gox had just kicked off, but you could probably have spent $300 to get $100 into it then.
If you bought 100$ worth of bitcoins back then you would have been very tempted to sell after a x10 or x100