look the problem is adoption... at most there are what... 100,000 of us.. total (as it stands now).
If the adoption rate increases than the prices increase.... the problem is 99.9999% of the population don't know what a bitcoin is.. and the .00001% of the population that does is hording them.... in other words it's changing hands ONLY within that 100,000 people.... you need to widen the market to get this to work.. it needs to reach 100,000,000 people....
You're trying to go international with a population of Allentown, PA.
you need easier to use clients, mobile access, central wallets, debit cards that work with it, you need to adopt this currency to a quasi tangible one... merchants need to be able to log bitcoins in their quickbooks as a cash deposit... the IRS wants to tax them the same way they tax dollar transfers...
I think your getting the point... the problem is out of the 100,000 people using them.. only hundred or two of them are actually building tools to make it more used.
this will take years to develop ....
Good stuff. My own guess about recent price stability is that some early adopter(s) decided not only to sell above 17, but to buy below it, thus stabilizing the price. If so, it's a personal sacrifice for them, but a boon to the bitcoin economy, which will lose the speculators, but gain merchants. Ultimately, this is good for the speculators too, but it will be awhile before they can cash out.