One of the ways I don't feel bad about not making millions in BTC even though I was aware of it long ago is the absolute certainty that I would have simply lost the paper wallet, had a hard-drive failure, etc, etc. There is just no way I would have held onto my keys for the 7 years that I was aware of it. I imagine that the breakage here for early investors is probably pretty high. I never did cash out on my dogecoin...

It’s not impossible to make copies of and secure private keys if you have a plan. (But even if you had bought some and preserved it, would you have had the tenacity/foresight to hold onto the BTC for 7+ years?)

> It’s not impossible to make copies of and secure private keys if you have a plan

I was 100% discussing my scenario. I would absolutely not have enacted a careful plan with multiple fall-backs. Which is it's own kind of self-indictment tbh, but one that I am at peace with. :D

Also, this holds for 99.99% of the populous. Even hardware wallets aren't a great solution and there you're paying a hundred dollars or so just to get one.

Shovels in a gold rush.