Just because merchants are starting to accept bitcoin doesn't mean the price will go up or the bitcoin adoption will increase.
This year is a year of venture capital money flowing in like crazy, just look at the facts. There are graphs that show this. 2015 is the year with the biggest pump in VC money so far.
Actual BTC price will be stable. This is the last year for us peasants to get as much BTC as possible while its affordable to buy entire units of BTC.
I think the same was sort of true in 2014 but did not lead to the rise in the price of bitcoin then. I would hope for a stable price than a pump.
The same was not quite true over the whole of 2014. 2014 saw lots of good news, but in terms of VC capital, 2015 looks to be off to a far stronger start.
http://www.coindesk.com/venture-capital-funding-bitcoin-startups-triples-2014/2014, at $314 million, more than tripled what 2013 did.
In 2015, we've already seen close to $200 million, and that was before the end of the first quarter. The rate of money coming in this year is quite a bit faster. There was a lot of positive news, but most of it was news suggesting things to come (and we still haven't seen them yet, but they're on the horizon) it wasn't enough to stem the tide of a necessary correction.
Also keep in mind 2014's price action was largely a downtrend as part of a correction from the crazy bubble that pushed BTC from $100 -> $1100. The price was influenced very heavily by speculation, and it still is.
As you said, at a certain point we'll find a stable price, and then all of that news from 2014/early 2015, and VC money along with Wall Street stepping in will be quite ready for the next phase of the market. Once there's little profit to be made from dumping and shorting, there's only one direction to go.