I keep reading about how some early adopters made 10K+ BTC and I would like to understand how exactly. I have been doing research on this forum and elsewhere about how much they made and how exactly they did it, but so far it has all been inconclusive. By very early adopters I mean those who got into Bitcoin between Feb 1st 2009 and July 1st 2009.

With that said, what would it have taken to mine some 10,000 to 100,000 BTC in that particular time period, in terms of time and processing power spent?

And if instead of mining them myself I decided to buy them from another person (I know there were no exchanges yet, but let's say I started looking for someone to perform a p2p transaction of 10k-100k), how much would I have spent? Or, to put things in another way, how many BTC could $20 have bought in early to mid 2009?

Lastly, how much time and effort did it take users like SmokeTooMuch and laszlo to break through their first 10,000 BTC? How were things back then?

In the first half of 2009, was it really that simple making more than 10,000 BTC? What kind of computer and how much time did that take?

I would like some data, numbers and facts, please.

Thank you.