Life is more fun if you're never 100% serious.

I do think, however, that ever increasing Bitcoin prices and price volatility are disincentives to the wider adoption of Bitcoin for Network commerce.

There are a number of community-based alternative currencies in circulation right now, and their success revolves largely around the type of incentives I mentioned in my original post.

If the Bitcoin community doesn't address these challenges, then it is likely that some commercial fork of Bitcoin which eliminates things like mining will be the successful version of the digital currency ideas that Bitcoin embodies.

Kind of like Altavista and Google.  Or the Apple Lisa and Windows 7.