In retrospect it seems obvious, but back then, the most optimistic talked prices around 4$ (we got to 7$ in what, two months?) . Anyone posting suggestions of 100-200$ was just like the guys now, talking about 10,000$ in 2015.
Its easier to go from $10 to $100 then from $100 to $1000.
It needs much more volume.
Not really. At the point in time we were $10, we were 2/3 from the ATH, and practically everybody in the world had written off Bitcoin as a 'dead' currency. Now, we are less than 1/2 from our current ATH, and everybody has seen BTC come back, and BTC has been featured on many news stories, and the BTC economy is a thing, so its much easier to gain traction.
If you ask a random person (ok, I live in silicon valley, so maybe this isn't a representative example, but still) about Bitcoin, they'll at least know that its a digital currency. They might not know what that means exactly, but its a gigantic step forward.
The fact that everybody knows about bitcoin now yet the volume remains pathetically low is a bad sign... Indicates both that the capitulation is yet to come and we may not recover from this one.