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It’s the weekend, and if you frequent these parts, you’ll know it means it’s time to take a quite look the past week’s poll.
Over the past week we asked: when did you become interested in bitcoin? There were two choices: In the past year and over a year ago.
The results — at least to me — were a bit surprising. Surprisingly close, that is. The response this week wasn’t nearly what I hoped in terms of voters (compared to last week), but here it is nonetheless.
In total, there were 136 votes.
About 53 percent of voters (72 individuals) said they became interested in this digital currency over a year ago. The other 47 percent (64 individuals) said they have taken an interest in the past year.
Rising interest
Up until April of 2013, interest in bitcoin wasn’t nearly what it is today. The conversation about this digital currency was mostly limited to social media and web forums.
But it took a major price spike that month into three-digit territory and another massive spike later in November into the four-digit territory to capture the attention of many.
Coupled with other major news items in the sector (looking at you, Mt. Gox), and it’s almost difficult to not find the mainstream media discussing bitcoin — either online or on the television.
What you see above is a chart from Blockchain.info — the web’s most popular bitcoin-related website (click to enlarge). Specifically, the chart measures the amount of web wallet users of the Blockchain service.
The rise of users at the end of November is clearly visible.
So where do we go from here?
As more and more people continue to talk about bitcoin (particularly in the media), there will be scores of newcomers joining the train, doing what they can to learn more.
There are exciting times.
Here’s this week’s poll, which is about as simple as it gets:
[poll id=”14″]
Matas Zanevičius 
Pat Jack 
I’d say you can use both XBT and BTC. If you are refering to bitcoin as a currency unit in some trading context use XBT otherwise use BTC as a more general term for technology or protocol or money or network…
Brand, brand, brand and more brand. Brand destruction is not an option. BTC
“BTC” cannot be used on traditional currency systems therefore it has to be “XBT”. Though as Matas states, using “BTC” in an informal situation is perfectly acceptable.