Is it just my impression or is interest in Bitcoin going down rapidly?
Did you possibly conclude this due to the recent decrease? It's reasonable for people to be discouraged to continue when they see their asset losing 30% of its market value. Allow me to tell you to see things objectively and not in terms of trends.
One of the top recent threads is "Btc is boring".
And has some decent responses.
If people want to have a profit, then bitcoin may not be what they should be looking for. It is nowhere stated that you'll get rich, the only thing said is that it's a currency. Investors and traders obviously want to confuse and manipulate, but that happens with every asset they have interested in.
The price isn't stable, it still makes some huge changes (for a currency), but it's definitely more stable in terms of time due to the reason you mention in your second example. It's also a lot more stable than some other shitcoins.