If you think we will be good stewards and our plans are likely to build demand, then you will tend to expect the price to go up.
Somehow it seems to me, based on your business model, that you rather prefer the price to remain stable. The adoption is quite slow and as I understand mostly supported by distribution of XRP.
Stable is definitely better than volatile, even with some net increase. But a higher price helps us in several important ways:
1) A higher price means we can sell XRP for more money and thus increase our funding.
2) A higher price will be perceived as success. Perceived success helps drive adoption.
3) You can't use XRP to bridge a $1 million transaction today because you'd take huge losses from moving the price. We want XRP to bridge large transactions.
Of course, any kind of manipulation or hype to raise the price in the short term wouldn't help us. The inevitable subsequent crash would both increase the price of holding XRP making it harder to use it as an intermediate asset and it would be perceived as an indication that price growth doesn't reflect a genuine perception of success. Also, if you are worried that the price will drop, that will mean that you can't rely on XRP to bridge large transactions in the future because it might not have enough value and liquidity, so you won't build systems that rely on it (or perhaps even ones that benefit from it).
One of the ways you build consensus and volume is to get early adopters on board. Early adopters have to make investments in technology and infrastructure and take business risks that won't pay off if you fail. It helps a lot if people believe that your success is inevitable.