But there's a lot of data to suggest the pin which burst that speculative bubble was the fact that once the 1Mb limit was hit
There were periods when blocks were full throughout the whole year, not just at the peak of the bubble.
The charts only show that the fees follow the price, which is logical because higher price -> more people sending coins to exchanges to sell.
the fees just went fucking crazy and people were like "fuck this, I'm out".
Why would people dump Bitcoin just because the fees are high? Most of the complaining came from bounty hunters and microinvestors who usually deal with double digit amounts. These people don't have any big influence on the market. People who held multiple coins didn't mind paying a $30 fee to cash out their 10000% profits.
If the 1Mb limit was not there, the bubble could have gone a lot higher. 30k, 50k, maybe even 100k.
Going from $200 to $20k is already a miracle, higher numbers were just impossible with all the selling pressure that we had.