Heard of it these years, but was without real money to invest in.
Exactly. I heard about it back in 2013 when it started seeing mainstream and merchant adoption. But I was just out of college, working a shitty job that could barely pay my rent. I've still never had much money to put in, but I've been buying and holding for a while. I also got lucky on a few altcoin holds, where I invested minimally but made > 1000x gains. Alts are definitely a way to make more bitcoins, but you have to be careful to do research and not get stuck holding bags of potentially useless coins.