You're neither late in Bitcoin. Just because you didn't receive 10000 BTC for giving away two pizzas doesn't mean that you're late.
When people talk about getting in late when it comes to bitcoin, they usually talk about a lost opportunity to become millionaires or billionaires once those coins are converted back to fiat. They feel sorry that they didn't learn about bitcoin early enough to turn a $100 investment into several million dollars. That's impossible with today's prices.
But why does that have to be your only goal? I mean, sure, getting rich and not having to care about money for the rest of your life is great, but you can also appreciate the fact that even gains of 10% or 20% are much higher than the interest you would earn from a time deposit in traditional banks. And if you believe in a world where bitcoin will achieve a much greater adoption rate that wont require you to exchange it for fiat, hold on to it and wait.
I would take a safe 10-20% gain over a super risky potential 1000x any day. I don't understand why everyone's so obsessed with
'getting rich quick'. In fact, if you pursue that, you'll statistically
get poor quick. Because it's a gamble.
Just like it was a gamble to buy 1,000BTC for 1,000$ over 10 years ago - nobody knew if the code was correct, if the concept would establish, if people would even be interested.
Today, with the myriad of shitcoins, which all have their own goal and thing that they're trying to fix, the reality is that you're playing a game of luck and hope that the coins you chose will 'moon' to then dump them for fiat or BTC. Trying to
'find a coin that goes 100x' gets really close to gambling I must say. Even coins with objectively good ideas and good intentions aren't guaranteed to increase in value and might still be a bad investment.