It has nothing to do with the protocol itself though, ultimately the exchange rate is not a good indicator of the health of the system. It is true there are ways to manipulate it now simply because it so young. Hackers put the exchanges through the ringer to drop the price, then buy, let it grow and cash out, then do it again. If MTGox didn't carry 80% of transaction traffic this would be much harder to do. But that 80% is why they keep attacking it and not others so much. The network will only grow more resilient with time, not less.
http://www.blockchain.infoLook at the charts, despite the fluctuations overall use is increasing.
Bitcoin is also linked to fiat, so it will fluctuate when things occur in the real world. Cyprus was one example of this happening, when Bitcoin suddenly found itself with a lot of new users, added boost from the media and speculators, demand was so great it actually knocked MTGox offline. Bitcoin only stuttered because the network couldn't handle the sudden and large volume, not a selloff due to loss of confidence in the currency, though many did pull out as indicated by the severe 50% drop in market cap.
This is just the first true stress test, and now we know of a weakness that needs to be fixed to move forward, which is exchanges need to be more diversified. Remember that the original core group 3 years ago began this as a hobbyist experiment for cryptography and tech geeks, but now we all need to grow up with Bitcoin as it ventures to garage project to real business, and the powerful infrastructure needed to go along with it for system security and redundancy. I imagine MTGox is not a professional IT operation, since it obviously has no redundancy built in to mitigate problems if something goes wrong.
Bitcoin is treading toward mainstream, I think this the beginning and the first showing to the pubic of Bitcoin's fluid power. Even as a curiosity the public wants to know more about this now that it is in the eyes of the media.
I look forward to the exchange jumping to $500 next push.
