Supply of fresh btc to the market will be lowered, miners, who pay electricity will try to compensate their lowered income by raising the price, speculators and outsiders will think this price bump is the sign they were waiting to buy before another 30$ peak so people will buy and hold to their btc as everybody who has btc will be hoping btc will rise more. Expectations may cause short term jumps, total market is shallow (30-40 million ?) .
Or, miners running a loss will leave, and difficulty will adjust as such
At a guess for this time next year, I'd say $7-10, assuming there's not another huge disaster like the mtgox hack.
At the end of the day, bitcoin has some very popular uses (money laundering, contraband, tax evasion, sending money overseas for no fee, sales without risking chargebacks) and I think services like bit-pay have a very promising future.
What we need to do is make it easier for merchants to accept bitcoin payments and get paid in the currency of their choice. Bit-pay is good, but it's still US-only (or was the last time I looked).
