The main thing to gauge in sentiment. At the end of the day a large chunk of the money coming into BTC is for investment purposes. At the moment BTC is one of the worst performing investment assets of this year and subsequently large amounts of investment money has dried up. This trend will continue until the market naturally sets a price, that is when they hit a natural buy wall. Only way to gauge (not predict) is on market sentiment. When you start hear small rumblings of BTC held price for a few months or something alike, that's probably an indication that people have noticed.
I do quickly want to state that I am fully aware their is some market manipulation in BTC. I am also aware that their is also a fair chunk of money coming into BTC is not coming in for investment purposes.
This is interesting point too:
If your adoption means increasing number of merchants who accept bitcoins and immediately dump them for fiat using Bitpay service then it doesn't increase price.
Real price increase can only happen with increased demand for BTC. Good news can't guarantee this demand. Getting bitcoins as part of your monthly salary can.
Agreed. Increasing use of BTC will probably not increase the price as much as some people think. Obviously large increases in demand will increase value but generally a lack of movement in a desired asset increases price and quick hand-changes suppresses price (same as scarce items to non-scarce). If people were to adapt it for currency purposes as opposed to investment purposes than you can probably expect a lot lower price with the former vs the latter.
