I speculate that the monetary inflation rate of the US dollar will outpace that of bitcoin, next year.
I define the monetary inflation rate as the percentage of newly created money compared of existing money. I'm speculating that QE3 will be announced by the fed, and will be in the range of $1,100B. Given that the US monetary base is under $2,800B (
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE ). This would make the monetary inflation of the USD just under 40%.
Meanwhile, we know that the monetary inflation of bitcoin will be close to 12.5%, so if QE3 is the magnitude I expect there will be a significant difference in monetary inflation rates.
If this turns out to be the case, then BTC will in fact be a better store of wealth compared to the dollar. It would actually make sense to buy BTC just to hold. In the past buy and hold would be a strategy that you would use only if you thought that the BTC economy would grow. In the future, even if the BTC economy stays the same size a buy and hold strategy would make sense. 2013 should be an interesting year indeed.
Of course BTC is relatively new, there could still be a major flaw in the ability to scale. 2013 still should be an interesting year for bitcoin.