My bias is to "get big fast" -- I think the only way Bitcoin thrives is for lots of people to use it and to be happy using it. If it is a tiny little niche thing then it is much easier for politicians or banks to smother it, paint it as "criminal money", etc. They probably can't kill it, but they sure could make life miserable enough to slow down adoption by a decade or three.
I completely support this strategy, and it has nothing to do with treating Bitcoin as an impatient short term speculative investment, as profit is secondary to some of the real goals and principles of this project.
Getting "Big fast" will not only protect us from more countries making bitcoin completely illegal(4-5 at the moment-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Bitcoin_by_country ), but also protect us from competing alts, protect us from competing corporate interests, and help shield more journalists/whistleblowers/political dissidents/ect from being attacked by states.
This is the exact same reason why Jacob Applebaum wants everyday users to use TOR and host their own relay and the reason why I will be selling as many legal goods on OpenBazaar when it leaves Beta. We need to protect nonviolent voluntary transactions using the network that may be considered unfavorable or illegal in certain oppressive countries around the world.