Extremely well-written post, OP. Thank you for your salient message.
Remember, many of the .com millionaires went on to fund stage 2 projects in the web world, and made MUCH MORE from those investments. Something to keep in mind

Yes, exactly. Put it this way, if Bitcoin succeeds in becoming a widely-accepted currency, it may or may not eventually hit 1000 dollars/Bitcoin. Some people forget how easy it is to re-denominate Bitcoins into microbitcoins, and so forth. But if Bitcoin does take off, whoever invests in the first professionally-run Bitcoin predictions market *will* become a very, very wealthy individual. Of that there is no doubt.