My opinion is the exchange rate, this year, got gutted because the Federal Reserve tapered QE3 so it brought the inflation rate (M1) of the USD well under the inflation rate of bitcoin.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17Jjhd_nnfRJ9EyYuOM1ACPMwRod3hhPqRk4YQp7FIZE/pubhtml#The rate of adoption and the conversion of USD in BTC (direct or indirect) is not enough to offset the newly created BTCs and keep up the price.
In fact, the price went down from last year continuously, remarking a "slow" dilution of the price, not a sudden repricing.
Now, I suppose, we have reached a point where there is a dynamic equilibrium between new coins created and the demand of coins.
The bad part is the people that bought at higher prices are, mainly, holding.
The good part is people buying now, can spend without problem and hold without risking too much depreciation.
If the depreciation possible is less than the advantages given by using Bitcoin, people can and will start again to convert $/goods/service in BTC.
This will put pressure to the buy side and will, initially, push prices up slowly.
IMO, we will see the "usual" stealth rally of the price, where it will climb, "slowly" back to 400-500-600-700 by april 2015 and then people will start stampeding in again.
This if nothing wrong happen in the economy.
Currently, compared to the last year, MB is near 3% and M1 increased 9% where BTC increased 12%. It is a large gap and the exchange rate suffered because of it.
The good part is the Fed can not keep the MB and M1 there more than a few months without collapsing the economy and the stock market, allowing the interest rates raise.
They will return to increase the MB 30-40% yoy and the M1 of 10-15% yoy sometime in the next six months. Then the exchange rate of BTC will start to climb again like a rocket.
We must keep in mind, the current inflation rate in BTC is slowly decreasing but will halve in July 2016 from 9 to 4.5%. And this will put the inflation rate of BTC in a territory where no fiat Central Bank will be able to crawl without collapsing the economy in a domino of bankruptcies, high interest rates and so on.
That moment (and the weeks/months before I suppose) are the time BTC will definitely reverse its position against the USD, the € and other big currencies. At that time BTC will have the upper hand.
After July 2016 BTC will start to increase in value compared to every major fiat currency, because it will inflate less, and will become a better store of value than them. So people will start to migrate their saving in currency in BTC, like the argentinians now save in USD, €, gold, etc.
