True, early adopters had been selling and buying Bitcoin. There are lots of early adopters that sold out all their bitcoin since they thought that it is high enough to let go of 1 Bitcoin per 20 cents. Those who holds bitcoin and believe it should really benefit from the time of waiting, promoting and pushing bitcoin to every banner ads in the internet. We cannot expect late comers to have the same profit as early adopters.
Right, not all early adopters have benefit from the huge increase in the price of bitcoin. Considering the needs in order to live, some of them might have spent their bitcoin already in exchange for fiat and some of them might have sold their bitcoin losing hope that the price will never be as high today. Early adopters might have been calculating and thinking whether investing their time, money and effort in earning bitcoin. If others will say that it is unfair that early adopters should benefit more then there must be something what we call "envy" growing inside them.
Not just on prices but early adopters were able to get their coin at a lower investment unlike late comers who needs to shell out larger amount of money just for a single coin. And most of the whales now a days are the early adopters and they are earning huge amount of money every time there is a change on coins prices.