Let's say you were the 2nd person to mine bitcoins besides Satoshi himself. Every time someone else mined bitcoins besides you and Satoshi you bought them. The going rate back in 2009 to January 2010 was $1 for 1400 so let's say you bought every bitcoin besides your own mined and Satoshi's from January 3rd 2009 ( the first mined bitcoin by Satoshi ) to February 2010 and then kept buying for the few months every time someone mined bitcoins you asked if you could buy them. Then when Laszlo did the pizza deal, you would've bought him a lot of pizzas, then when SmokeTooMuch tried to sell 10,000 for $50 and another guy tried to sell 22,000 bitcoins for like $70-$80 you would've bought that... basically every time it came available. You'd probably have about $500-$1000 into bitcoin by now... and you'd own like 5 million bitcoins... no one else would bother to mine them then, you'd own all the rest of the bitcoins besides Satoshi's who disappears in 2010 and then you disappear in 2011 with your 5 million, no one remembers what bitcoin is and you'd have a net worth of 0! yay
Yeah, i've thought this too. I mean people would mine them, for sure, they mine anything, but being a whale at the start in alternative history would have changed the playfield and the players so much, that bitcoin wouldn't have same changes. people wouldn't get to buy them as cheap as they did. Wrong people might be interested and right people look away as they would see it centered to one big whale, who has potential to crash the markets any time he/she wants.
Even a small change in history could have taken away someone's share away, who has been essential to success of bitcoin. And even if someone entered early, they most likely had been sold everything long time ago, no one could have even dreamed we got here, except some crazy people who eat glue or something, so you wouldn't listen to them anyway.