Nobody cares about merchant adoption anymore. That's all priced in. The general public is now thinking, "so why exactly do I need to buy bitcoin?" These are the same people who don't mind that the NSA is spying on them, because "as long as you're not doing anything bad you have nothing to worry about."
They've been watching the price tank all year, so there's no compelling reason for them to invest. Now, all we have is "old money" trading hands. Things are looking bad, guys.
Agreed.
Unlike previous years the public doesn't want to invest anymore because they think Bitcoin will go up.
All they see is previous buyers losing money.
What we have here is:
No new buyers.
No amount of good news will make the price go up.
Any slightly bad news will cause a crash.
No increased user adoption.
Lots of people getting out.
This was gonna be the year of Bitcoin. It simply failed.
It won't magically go up again. There is no reason why it would.