It was almost a rite of passage to make your exit-post once you reached your goal, or didn’t want the risk/stress. For most that included things like purchasing a home, car, paying off student loans, retiring your parents.
Most of the people I know that became rich off crypto, were those that went all in around 16/17/18. And many of those did buy/sell their way up. Or got lucky with meme coins etc.
I don’t know anyone that bought 1000 BTC in the very early days, and just held onto them with diamond hands. Nor do I know anyone that DCA’ed from 2012 up until today.
(Not that they don’t exist, probably a bunch of them)
When you consider the actual price you would have bought in and the actual price you would have liquidated, those theoretical 10x-100x gains start looking more like 3-10x gains. And for small investments that's not going to make you a millionaire.