Humans are herd animals. They evolved to accept what the herd says, not to think. Herd movement provides safety. Individual movement puts you into harms way (potentially in front of the herd). While thinking is important for humans, herd still comes first.
The good news is that Bitcoin functions just fine without one bitcoin being worth a house and without all the destructive masses on board. Perhaps not what you want to hear if you are an speculator investor though.
You're spot on about the herd instinct stuff. It is the same as what Mencius said about the common people - they're satisfied once they have satisfied their hunger. The ordinary people do not care much to find out about anything not directly related to their baser animal needs or security.
Bitcoin is only for the enlightened at this moment. Bitcoin cannot be understood without some knowledge about how the internals of the internet works. It also cannot be understood without some basic economic sense about how monetary systems works, how the gold standard may or may not work. When I phoned up my nephew, a matured grown up programmer/sofware developer with a good degree in computer science, and asked if he was using an android phone (as I wanted to buy a little bitcoin for my multiBit), he started laughing heartily at the other end - What! You buy bitcoin when it has collapsed! You tell me what you want to do. It is the stupidest idea... I myself was laughing as I had read up on how bitcoin works after all the news about how a mountain in Tokyo collapsed - Mt.Gox!
When people start to talk about "intrinsic" values or that bitcoin is a scam, you know there is no way to educate them about bitcoin. So it is better (sometimes) to just keep quite rather then to argue and drained ourselves tired emotionally. Are you goig to give them a lecture on fractional reserve banking over a beer? Most people who now cannot live without their ipads/iphones do not know a bit about the bits within a byte. The gadgets are invented and then made easy for them to use - but these thing like Facebook is still mainly an addiction - non-stop chatting. But the future of bitcoin is the "real" global money, not currency! Currency means the current multi-currency fiat money system. Money is the unit of measure of price, real price, in order that the a true free market can work.
True money itself cannot have a price! This is the true future of a good cryto-currency - it could be Bitcoin or its incarnations.
As for the price outlook of bitcoin in the future, it will still have volatility for some time - just mere common sense as there will always be some speculations to take profit. But there is a critical difference between bitcoin and stocks. Stocks is equity of a company and it may go to zero like Mt.Gox.
Bitcoin can never go to zero! So the mechanics for bitcoin and shares are very different. Don't try to use candlesticks, Elliot Waves theory or tea leaves TA on bitcoin - if they don't may you rich with stocks, less likely would they make you rich here unless the sticks and candle are pre-programmed always to point only upwards!
Bitcoin, in general, can only rise in price! The simple reason is that there are only a few ready bears willing to leave on the slightest bad news. When Mt. Gox went bankrupt, there was not a whimper in the price movement. I expect the current breed of people who bought into bitcoin are not those going in with a stop loss strategy; likely the majority of holders are many many with "small" amounts.
Also, some go in as Bitcoin is their belief and ideology; try asking them to sell bitcoin and be a bitcoin apostate - they will rather perform Seppuku than sell! So if bitcoin were to go to "zero", the private keys just got forgotten in their hard disk - which means the price movement is only upside mobile. My guess about the recent spike to 1000 USD/BTC is that it should be from the Chinese (a completely unsubstantiated guess of mine). I only hear of bitcoin only 2 weeks ago thanks to Mark Kapeles. So the Chinese were late. I believe many Chinese put their money in bitcoin rather than earn 3% interest rate in an inflationary world. So that gave bitcoin a sudden price spike which was killed by the Chinese government. The average Chinese may all be waiting; it would add volatility - but it still may be an upward potential.
