Although I understand the importance and value the wisdom of Bitcoin, I think it is has a finite life right now. Although the volatility will continue for some time. I think it will die and then re-incarnate later….I will explain…..
The central bankers and others like Western Union, have a thorn in the backside and are running around trying to pull it out. Countries and firms around the world are accepting it one minute, then rejecting it and then accepting it again. People like Max Kieser and guests talk about nothing else. And on the Mass media shows, they seem to always question it, talk about the rags to riches rise ($1 to $1200) that we all missed….. Dam it not again.
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1460ztgTzm1g10zm2g25
Or talk about the poor chap who threw his hard disk out in the trash. Only to realise that he a had a few thousand bitcoins on there that he spent ages mining. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25138627
In this circus I think that people are not taking note of what is happening in the far corner. The silent by deadly engineers are working on quantum computing among others.
With a price at roughly $1000 a piece for each bitcoin, there are swarms of these clever chaps in universities and in the shed at home looking to develop a next generation PC, a quantum PC. Not only able to think in 1-0, but think and be everywhere all at once! This $1000 a coin challenge has made it an obsession for some to produce mining hardware that has the ability to print coins. It is only a matter of time…..and they will not tell you when they are close.
When it happens the market will get flooded, and Bitcoin will die. Other implications like encryption technology will be affected, by I do not know enough about that either. (Just exercising my right to use outside logic)
The fight will go into the natural next stage of evolution. The bitcoin programmers will launch a new software program that sits on the new quantum and the battle, like the battle of good and evil, light and darkness will continue.
Gold and Silver will ultimately rule, in another one of my humble opinions…. as it has done for so long in the past.
So in conclusion the very creators of Bitcoin will destroy it. A bit like Victor Frankenstein.
You have got to watch out for these dudes in white coats, glasses who do not say much. Dangerous folk! Always on edge with regard to what they are up to next.
Vishal
VNanda 
Bitcoin is semi quantum-secure. Since bitcoin addresses are hashes of the public key, which is a hash of a public key, quantum computers can’t derive the private key (part that’s needed to spend someone’s coins) just from the bitcoin address itself. Quantum can’t undo double-hash. And as long as people use new addresses for change every time they spend poney (since spending reveals the public key of the old address, which makes it vulnerable), bitcoin will stay safe. Also, should quantum computing come dangerously close to being a problem, there won’t be a need to launch new software. Bitcoin is easily changed to support other hashing algorithms, such as ones that can’t be broken by quantum computers, and can even support multiple mining algorithms at the same time to give old mining hardware time to switch.
Worst case scenario, if everything is cracked and broken, don’t forget that bitcoin is a historic time-stamped ledger of everything that has happened. Bitcoin users can just pick a date when they knew everything was working ok (say, a day or two ago), choose that as the fixed and correct starting point, roll out new software that fixes the break, and continue from there. Sure, they will lose a day or two of transactions, and some people will have to go through their receipts to figure out who still owes them money, but it won’t be catastrophic. In fact, this has happened twice already.