Bitcoin has an identity crisis; it's the post fiat currency which is entirely dependent on fiat currency. It seems people are beginning to realise that their digital magic beans aren't going to usher in the brave new world they had hoped for.
Thinking realistically, I'm not sure what you expect.
This is one of many "chicken-and-egg" problems that BTC faces, and we've seen progress with respect to virtually all of them. Other chicken-and-egg problems included the very first documented transaction (i.e. two pizzas for 10,000 BTC). merchant adoption prior to a solid user base, etc. The chicken-and-egg problem you're describing is how to establish consensus of value of a distributed currency, and for that we need something to compare its value to (e.g. fiat currency).
You state, "It seems people are beginning to realize that their digital magic beans aren't going to usher in the blah blah blah." I would say, "It seems some people haven't seriously considered the logistics of building a market around a new type of currency."
I think that if humanity had the wisdom to figure out how to build an economy for a decentralized currency without pegging it to fiat, we would have the wisdom to construct a functioning economy in the total absence of money, and we wouldn't need BTC. The general idea behind BTC is to create a currency that essentially forces people to be fair and play nice. Or, phrased another way, the idea is create a currency that prevents corruption and manipulation and/or makes such attempts transparent.
Not doing so well on the preventing corruption front is it.
I disagree. The corrupt will always explore the boundaries of principle to find any holes in the fence, but if there are fewer holes then the corrupt have no choice but to play by the rules.
For example, I don't see anyone inflating BTC all willy-nilly. Do you?
Yup
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CVE-2010-5139