Bitcoin also appealed to the growing number of people who were/are tech savvy, who have the upgrade bug and who saw bitcoin mining as a fun, challenging (and profitable) pasttime. However this is obviously something that could not continue as more people raised the bar until we inevitably saw dedicated hardware (ASIC's) come in at a very high price.
This doesn't make any sense. Mining would not be profitable if there are no buyers buying the mined coins. The early users made money mainly due to drugs and speculators that came later, but mainstream general public showed very little interest in fake currencies. As someone said, total number of active unique bitcoin users after years of publicity in mainstream media is still less than 250K. That's pretty pathetic really.
I'm pretty sure that most people in the world still haven't heard of Bitcoin, don't know what it is, how to access it or what you can do with it.
