A lot of the people in Bitcoin are just treating it as an investment, but there are a lot of people, myself included, who have actually spent some coins on businesses that take Bitcoin. I honestly think the recent value drop has more to do with the fact that markets just change than anything. There's certainly been enough unrest in pretty much every other market the last couple years -- to expect that Bitcoin wouldn't experience some of the same is unrealistic.

Anything that makes investors flock to "safe bets" like government-issued bonds is going to hit Bitcoin to some extent because right now we simply have the fiat value set primarily by traders and speculators, and there is currently no real reason to buy bitcoins for the purpose of spending them. If that were to change the whole definition of the exchanges' markets could change as well.