At the above linked blogs I wrote, pay attention to the following quote:
The other aspect of decentralization is how to onboard the masses into a decentralized unit-of-account. Bitcoin is obviously going to own the role as the on/off ramp between crypto-currency and centralized fiat to serve the investors, i.e. the reserve crypto-currency (which will likely continue to bolster the price of Bitcoin), but as a mass adoption on-ramp that is a choke point.
Bitcoin is becoming a reserve currency and conduit for everything in the ecosystem of blockchains and crypto-currrency.
Bitcoin doesn't actually have to scale to mass volume and instant transactions itself. The altcoins and payment channels will do that. Bitcoin is the conduit for everything...
The
reason for the price rise now.
Edit: Centralized scaling (which is an oxymoron) of Bitcoin can provide some limited amount of scaling.
It won't scale out to Visa scale, but it will serve the function of BTC to become the reserve currency of crypto ecosystems.