I've only known about Bitcoins for two whole entire weeks.
Though watching the difficulty jump up 50% while knowing thousands of other Bitcoin-minded folks were coming online for the first time suggests to me that I've probably missed the party boat, though it's not yet over by a long shot. All of this happened while I was in the middle of rebuilding a new system, so if I could get a bit of a discount on my hardware, why not? But I'm not going to be flying to a mansion in my own helicopter at this point, that boat sailed a long time ago, nevermind the party boat following it.
I tried my hand at speculating but after the dangerous wobbles of the past week I just pulled out at no loss and am just watching the market. If it crashes, I'll probably pick up a bunch of BTC at that point, but until then I'll just quietly mine as many BTC as I can. Almost up to 5 now from pooled mining. It's all terribly exciting.
Bitcoins are an online currency which is still in it's infancy but I honestly believe it'll endure despite the hacking and theft issues. These coins need to be stamped in such a way that when they are surrendered they can only be done so by the coin's actual owner, who would supply an authentication key generated at the time of transfer. It'll be interesting to see where this all ends up!