The difficulty increases every 2160 blocks solved, it currently is about 10 days .
Bitcoin will steadily increase in value as it becomes recognised and used .
Bitcoin could possibly drop to zero if a major flaw is uncovered .
In the long term prices are set to rise but the risk is that the this is still experimental and has the potential to drop to zero in an instant ,as adoption grows this gets less experimental and gains trust then there is also a potential of a similar price rise that has been seen over the initial four years ,example :-
year 2009 --value $0
year 2013 --value $140 ish .
year 2017 --value $280 ish .
The next country to do a Cyprus could could skyrocket bitcoin to $1000 very quickly .
If a major foodstore adopted bitcoin bitcoin value could skyrocket .
The bitcoin market cap is currently 1% of overall fiat .
Every percentage increase of cap will raise the value of bitcoin and reflect a growing trust and adoption.
I feel personally that miners selling there bitcoins could be stifling price .
With the current massive increases in difficulty you need an every increasing mining hashrate to produce bitcoin .
just adding to your very nice analysis - porn industry is starting to look into bitcoin a lot so this could make it very very interesting
