I'm going to make the call right now, and this isn't coming from some troll. But I believe bitcoin will hit sub $100, possibly sub $50 before anything further interesting develops. By all means, as a trader, I wish it hits $5000 or $10,000 in the next 3 days. But I just don't see exponential development in the near future... the long run, who knows though.
I mean, wall street thinks bitcoin is overbought, overpriced, unsustainable. The average citizen isn't crazy about bitcoin at all. You ask the average Joe if they plan on buying bitcoin in the future and you get a melancholy "no". You ask a smart ass in the streets about bitcoin and his answer is "the [expletivie] is that?" You explain it and his response is well that is "[expletive] stupid".
Institutions are already in on it. Speculators are looking to make a quick buck only. Then there are cultists, which is a super minority, and they believe in a whole bunch of unrealistic possibility. The problem with mass adoption is that why would someone go through all this trouble to buy bitcoins, only to spend it on a blu-ray player they could have just bought with their visa.
It seems like only select intelligent people truly believe in bitcoin, and intelligent people are few and far between in this world.
So by the end of this month, what will happen?
Well unless paypal/amazon/ebay start to accept bitcoin in which case price will jump or another exchange folds (or similar adverse event) like Mt Gox in which case it will dive ..nothing much will change the range bound price by the end of Sept 450-550....November is a likely time for a price rise when some substantial good news is expected re new adopters/services and sales/transaction volumes. However the truth is most people do not and cannot know where the price is going unless they are large enough to manipulate the market in the direction they want it to go. Barring that, significant increased/decreased demand will drive the price in either direction.