Have been human habit, when hearing about new kinds of investment as faster get profit they will try and leave what their business have build for long time, its the same with your friend by selling property and start investing in bitcoin although in lack knowledge of bitcoin.
I don't think they're trying bitcoin, once they've determined to sell their assets to invest in bitcoin they're serious about it. But they quickly fail because their naivety and greedy instincts make them think that making money from bitcoin is easy and requires no knowledge. This not only happens to you of the OP but a lot of newbies have these misconceptions as well. They just look at other people's success and think it's easy to achieve, but they don't know those who have successfully invested in bitcoin, they sacrificed a lot to get there.