Has holding actually paid off for anyone yet?
Yes, not me, but some people got wealthy by holding (or rediscovering) a large number of BTC.
The lowest price BTC sold for in the early days was less than $0.004 (yes, ~1/3 of a penny each), there is still a thread about that here somewhere. Quite a few people were able to buy for ~5 cents and/or mine large amounts easily. Now....
Actually holding on until those same coins are worth millions isn't easy. Plenty of people thought $1 was really high, sold, and were shocked to see it go up to ~$32 in about 2 months. Then Gox melted down (twice) and everything got dark and Bearish for many months....