This is exactly why a blockchain such as BitShares and its market pegged assets such as BitUSD will prevail in the merchant space. No merchant wants to hold on to such a volatile asset especially when they can not spend it up stream.
That works until said asset becomes more volatile and inflationary than bitcoin, and it doesn't take into account the fact that the bitcoin blockchain can be used to do the exact same thing as bitshares.
How can this be done with BTC? From my reading, BTS can be volatile and is ever so slightly inflationary to pay delegates however each BitUSD for example is backed by 3x BTS as collateral. How can this market functionality be added to BTC, especially with PoW 10 min confirmations?
Hindsight is good and all but at that point in time ESPN or anybody else for that matter was thinking about "bitcoin might drop 10% in a couple of weeks". The main reason is that ESPN doesn't trust Bitcoin so they sold it all in 1 go. Clearly Bitcoin has a lot of work to do on it's image and on the education department 
( that is for the community to do). 
Bright futures in the Bitcoin world are really important. We need more start-ups in the crypto world!