I ask myself the question, if Bitcoins were a private project fueled by investment capital beholden to one voice - how would it be run?

Since we are all owners (in one way or another) in this project and some of us have short-term goals, some longer. Obviously the goals and how you reach them will be dramatically different between those two groups, so this is certainly a grand experiment indeed.

In some ways, I hope that my level of sentiment appeals to all parties. One for the speculators who are hoping for an easy/predictable market bottom - the second for miners looking for profits as a reason to continually increase the hash rate, and last the people who are really stuck with indecision right now - merchants. Right now, the first group is substituting in part for the third. Most of those hoping that the real third will eventually get on board (or that enough others at least feel the same way for the short view).

The irony is that the first two depend on the last. Bitcoin has the potential to be a disruptive technology - but to qualify for this - it needs to disrupt the current digital transaction systems (paypal, visa, mc, etc). That is the true competition and market niche that BTC must capture if the first two groups mentioned have any hope of survival in the long term. Otherwise as a new market, it simply doesn't qualify.