Greater demand?? so why aren't we at $1000 per coin? Or even $10,000 if there is such great demand? All the major retailers are converting their bitcoin to usd immediately through BitPay and the likes. Even governments are considering only accepting Bitcoin through third party payment processors.
I don't know how you can arrive at this conclusion? It flies in the face of basic math and the history anyone can see. I began using bitcoin when they were $0.70 or so. Since then they have gone up thousands and thousands of % points and have been adopted by millions. Clearly and mathematically provably..., greater demand leads to higher prices.
Why are we at $250.00?
Because that is about the logical price based on adoption. The $1000 bitcoin was based on speculators guess about future prices. It is quite normal for speculation to shoot the price up to silly heights then fall back to reality. So the reason why it's not higher is because that higher price is not justified. $250 is what the market says is the right balance between supply and demand. It's not an opinion, the market is the result of actual action.
As far as retailers not holding their coins. Well, that would be irresponsible, stupid, and possibly illegal for some publicly traded businesses. They have a fiduciary responsibility to not act foolishly with investor money. The way to mitigate this is by using a payment processor. It may keep the price suppressed a bit, but they are not interested in our ideas about price.
I have owned several companies and the best advice I ever received is that, no matter what your business is your job is to make money. Everything else is noise. If your main focus is something other than making money you will not be in business long.