Most of that spike happened because of the media coverage and everyone finding out how much profit there was. Then you had just a huge influx of people dog piling in thinking they'd make a ton of money. Now that the difficulty is up to the point where it's making people second guess whether to stay in the game or buy more hardware, I'd say from here on will be a good indication of whether or not bitcoins will thrive.
They will thrive dude. Everyone needs a change of system, even parts of the established banking system are looking at this now.
Many of us have sensed that the system we live in is corrupt but it's been difficult to do anything about it. The core problem is taxation.
Taxation is theft and as every transaction is taxed, we loose money in each and every transaction.
You cannot and should not build a distribution system of stolen goods. Unfortunately that's what the politicians have been trying to do for so long. Distributing stolen goods (money taken from the people through taxation) only benefits parts of society and only temporarily. The net effect is always negative since the cash were stolen in the first place.
We need to replace this system, which essentially builds on theft and has its roots in feudalism and tyranny with something new. BTC is that very new, shiny thing that will rock our world.