When did you first begin taking Bitcoin seriously?

[tkbx]

The first time I heard about Bitcoin was when Lulzsec was accepting donations in it. Hearing only that it was an "online currency", my first thought was that it was some kind of online game currency that people took to seriously (like farmville cash, etc). Later on, I heard about Wikileaks accepting it and began doing some research. From that point on, I was hooked.

What about everyone else?

[Omega0255]

The moment I realized I could make money by doing nothing. 

[glendall]

After the bitcoins I bought hit about $50 than I started to really get engrossed with bitcoin.

I was aware of bitcoin almost from the start. But although I thought the idea was amazing and was neat, I never expected it to catch on as much as it had. I never expected it to go above $20-$25. As soon as the snowball started going down the hill and it seemed like a general, positive economic movement was happening, I've tried never to doubt bitcoin ever again.

[casinocoin]

The moment I watched the price shoot from ~300-500-700-1000

[tvbcof]

I took Bitcoin seriously I noticed that it was actually working to help Wikileaks during the timeframe that both Visa and PayPal were dictating to their users what they could and could not do with what was, supposedly, their own money.

Unfortunately I got involved in another project and didn't get back to doing anything with repo I'd pulled until mid 2011.  Oh well.  We all have regrets I guess.  I have to admit that getting into it after the early 2011 run-up and part way into the decline saved me a lot of money and that was just lucky.

[Ekaros]

I haven't

[PerrythePlatypus]

Seconds after knowing it hit $100

[nhytfdsa]

November 2013, just before the boom.

Previously, when I saw mention of Bitcoin in the media, it was by people who did not know what they were talking about. The one article that turned me off to Bitcoin in the beginning stated that Bitcoin was going to take down paypal. Now I don't really see them as competitors at all, but at that time I knew that eBay would determine who was king of online payments, and they own paypal.

In November I saw a couple of articles about people who had bought Bitcoins early on and forgotten about them then discovered they were millionaires. This prompted me to research what Bitcoin was all about.

Had I not read some misinforming articles early on, I may have been retired now.

[knight22]

After reading Satoshi's whitepaper in early 2012

[justme27]

January 2013 was when things started to get interesting to me, when I read about the price going up (or rather, fiat going down)

I don't recall where I first heard about BTC, but I was sorting out some files on my old harddrives last week and I found a copy of the Bitcoin client dated early 2011... But I never actually used it back then

[ISAWHIM]

Next year...

Oh wait... That was four years ago... I say that every year...

JK

I always took it seriously. I just never "took it", seriously. Until last year.
("Acquired it", for the slow people. P.S. ISAWHIM is I SAW HIM and also IS A WHIM.)

[ph111]

  When it got added to XE.COM  

[kthejung]

Found out about bitcoins after Time's article about the "deep web" and "silk road."  Started really considering bitcoins after it was worth $800 and I read the internet article "how a total noob made $700 mining bitcoins."  I'm not gonna lie, I got into bitcoins to make money.  I ordered two Jalapeno's from BFL for $600 in October and received them in December; they only mined about $250 before difficulty skyrocketed.  I still have the miners running just for fun but opted to buy bitcoins this year instead of mining them.

[QuestionAuthority]

When I spent my first Amazon gift card that I bought from Jeremy (SpendBitcoins) it became real money for me.

[El Dude]

when it hit $120

[Luno]

there are multiple degrees of " seriously", on par with the $ was serious!

[xb0x]

When hackers had hacked into exchanges & stole bitcoins in 2011.. but started using in 2013

[darkmule]

What about everyone else?

As soon as I looked into it enough to realize it was basically an implementation of a lot of the concepts David Chaum had written about as secure digital cash, with improved safeguards, and that other people who know more about the subject were also taking it seriously.  I had read about this stuff in the early '90s and had thought it sounded interesting but seemed to be impractical.

Once it actually seemed to be working, though, my opinion changed.

[DannyHamilton]

April 16, 2013 18:00 UTC

[AngelSky]

This is an interesting question. At the very beginning, I considered Bitcoin like a "funny thing" until it went "from my computer" to my bank account and could spend it for goods.

That's why people talking about Bitcoins (press) are usually missing something: experimenting it for real. We are human, and we need to touch and feel things. Bitcoin is hard to "feel".

[Beliathon]

I remember the price was around $130 usd, and it was fall 2012 if i remember correctly? Or maybe early 2013.

[DannyHamilton]

I remember the price was around $130 usd, and it was fall 2012 if i remember correctly? Or maybe early 2013.

It would have to be (early?) 2013. 

In fall 2012 the exchange rate was less than $15 per bitcoin.

The bitcoin exchange rate never exceeded $100 per bitcoin until April 1, 2013.

It reached $130 for the first time on April 3, 2013.

One week later it was $266, then it crashed to almost $50.

[kthejung]

This is an interesting question. At the very beginning, I considered Bitcoin like a "funny thing" until it went "from my computer" to my bank account and could spend it for goods.

That's why people talking about Bitcoins (press) are usually missing something: experimenting it for real. We are human, and we need to touch and feel things. Bitcoin is hard to "feel".

Mining for coins is what creates the "physical" aspect of bitcoins for me.

[coinage]

I was charmed as soon as I read a few paragraphs about the Bitcoin project. I had a thirst for exactly this ever since DigiCash folded in the late 1990s. Efficient digital cash was ideal to achieve proof-of-concept for a project I began in 2007.

As soon as I looked into it enough to realize it was basically an implementation of a lot of the concepts David Chaum had written about as secure digital cash, with improved safeguards, and that other people who know more about the subject were also taking it seriously.  I had read about this stuff in the early '90s and had thought it sounded interesting but seemed to be impractical.

Once it actually seemed to be working, though, my opinion changed.

Thing is, Chaum's DigiCash was actually working too. There was a period of time when Mark Twain Bank (and one more?) were issuing coins in exchange for fiat. If you think about it, that was an amazing achievement: Chaum was able to get a European bank to issue fully anonymous currency tokens! (A sender could voluntarily prove they had sent funds from their software "coin purse," to combat extortion, but no one including the bank could otherwise track what was being done with the money.)

Then it collapsed. (That may have been due, I read at the time, to Chaum's excessive demands regarding licensing his technology, a problem bitcoin entirely solved through the open-source release/premine combination. Chaum seemed greedy; however he was so far ahead that his licensees probably couldn't conceive of the immense value of what he was offering them.)

[Taras]

I first heard of it on a realm of the mad God forum and downloaded it the same day.
March 31, 2013. $96 a coin.
I didn't take it seriously until my discovery of BitVegas in may. In fact i didn't even know about the $266 bubble until then.

[stonerdyke]

I always have, since first hearing about it, thought it was a pretty amazing concept.

[_Miracle]

Late (last year). I take it more seriously every day since then.