I think the crash is whats needed for now. I love bitcoin and what it's about, but I do think it's far from ready for the general public. I think we need to loose some of these greedy fookers and in it for a quick buck dudes so the price can stabilize and the community can take bitcoin to the next level. And by the next level i mean secure wallets, full safe & secure banking system, merchant services etc.
Why can't this be done now? Why does the market need to crash so low that all interest is lost? BTC has been around for a while now, but the first time it starts to gain any interest everything goes to hell in a handbasket. With the bubble and the long slow steady decline, all interest will be lost, and you will be lucky to get any back. BTC is already a joke, hoping for a severe crash to get rid of any and all interest for good is pretty boneheaded.
This is very true; greed is the best motivator to get talent and brains involved in a project like this. The increased interest and prices
should've brought in people who would make secure wallets, exchanges, POS/merchant systems, etc., and ostensibly it did, but as it turns out they were mostly frauds (or incompetent at best) out to make a quick buck off of our naïveté. I'm hoping for the best too, but the crash definitely wasn't a good thing.