There is a discussion on a similar topic for Mastercoin which is based on Bitcoin protocol at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324830.0. Sounds like an interesting idea for merchants.

These are very early days for Bitcoin. There will be more bad news and crashes. As long as people are only speculating on its value this is bound to happen. I guess these are growing pains of Bitcoin.

I doubled my investment in FTC already. But I don't know how long it'll last. Not investing a significant amount for a long term.

Hey guys, new here, not to Bitcoin. I've know about them since early 2010. Stupid of me to not invest back then. I guess 2013 is still early when it comes to Bitcoins. Almost nobody I know has even heard about them. So it's nice to find some early adopters from India.
I'm not much of an economist but the concept of decentralized cryptocurrency has the potential to change the world as much as Internet did.

Right not the demand is being fueled by hype. I don't know if hype will take it to $10,000. But as more people start using BitCoins for buying and selling stuff, the value would definitely exceed $10,000. Right now the BitCoin market cap is much lower than yearly revenue for the big retailers. They are not going to start accepting it for a while. The onus is on the smaller, or new players to accept BitCoins in exchange for their services and push for its adoption. But changes like that can take years to happen.

Lots of pumping for FTC, TRC and PPC on BTC-E. Not sure if any of those are worth it. But the prices of all the altcoins is likely to rise in the short term because of the hype around BTC.
Probably any other altcoin which can reduce our reliance on a central authority will have some future. NMC is the only one that comes to mind right now. Could replace DNS, SSL. Not big on any of the other bitclones.