C'mon.  Once we had to explain how a mouse worked and once we had to explain what google was.  But if it's useful people pick it up.  PayPal was scary and different when it started and is now a "safe" solution for most people to send money online.  It'll take time but it will get there.

One thing people seem to be missing is that as bitcoin expands as a common currency those blocks the miners are creating will pay off with more and more transaction fees.  The whole idea of weaning off block bounties is so that those btc are replaced by the fees charged for using the service.

We could slow down or speed up production to make the USD rate fluctuate but the only real way to make it sustainable is to expand its use to the point where enough people use it in enough transactions that we can actually afford the infrastructure to provide it without the bounty.

The ONLY way to make bitcoin viable is to make it more available, useful and just plain common.  Staging mining strikes or whatever won't do jack but make it more difficult to encourage adoption.

As far as bad press about hacks.  It's amazing.  It's huge news when a start-up btc exchange or business scams people but it happens every day, all over the world with whatever currency people are holding.  Some guy got screwed in the peso market today.  Some huckster swindled someone out of their life savings in Florida.  Some goat herder got royally screwed on a cheese deal.

Yes, it's bad press and yes it shows we all need to pay attention to security but I'm delighted because it means bitcoins are worth something, just like a peso or your life savings or a chunk of goats cheese...