I think you'd be surprised how few coins a lot of people who've been here for a long time have. two coins would make you the envy of a bunch of them.

as for why it's so quiet, that's the norm pretty much. pumps and falls are followed by long periods of nothing. let's see how long this one goes on for but I think this phase has the possibility of going scary quite quickly.

that's not the impression I get about holders. i'm sure there are some big swinging dicks and they're clever enough to keep quiet but there are polls on here quite often and thw answers are either a surprisingly large amount or a surprisingly pitiful amount and not much in the middle.

i'm going for scary down because maybe bitfinex going more wrong might scare the traders. let's see. if you're here for the long haul none of that matters anyway.

It's never too late (yet) to discover Bitcoin. Those of us who paid dollars instead of pennies may feel we missed the boat but those who paid triple digits think of us as early adopters. The day will come when anyone who paid less than $1000 will be considered an early adopter.

Buying bitcoins with spare money is the only way to go. Never spend money on a speculative asset unless you can afford to lose it.

As for trying to get your friends into it, that's a losing proposition. Better to make them aware of it and if they don't participate, rub their noses in it later. If you promote them and they buy high and lose money short-term, they'll use you as a scapegoat for their own failure.

Congratulations for deciding on the long haul.

Regarding your friends, and telling them about bitcoin,   I agree with Jimbo's suggestion - merely to inform them about bitcoin  in whatever way that they are interested, and if they are not interested don't push it.

Actually, I would not get into too many details regarding your own holdings and the extent to which you are profitable - unless those kinds of details become more relevant to their attempting to decide what to do.

They have to decide what to do based on current price and not past price performance, and even you have the potential to lose everything that you invested and all of your current level of gains.

I employed a similar strategy for more than 2.5 years, at least to the extent that I bought with extra money that I had, and I never used money that I needed for my living expenses and I had other investments too (for retirement planning, etc). 

So, if you continue to buy with extra available money, over time you will acquire a large holdings in bitcoin and at some point, you will feel that your holdings in bitcoin is sufficiently balanced with your other financial holdings - even though periodically, since bitcoin's price has had a tendency to be very volatile (which is likely to continue for some time into the future) you may need to reassess the values of your various financial holdings and consider whether you want to reallocate in such a way that remains comfortable to your total situation (accounting for at least your view of bitcoin, risk tolerance, financial diversification, cash flow and timeline).