Right now there's a lot of wait-and-see.
I don't think Bitcoin will rise much higher than it has - at least not sustainably - until mainstream investment places and fund managers are satisfied that Bitcoin is able to scale to at least thousands of tx per second.
Meaning, we not only need to make the block sizes bigger, but we also need to develop new technology. Side Chains, Fractalized blocks, or ... whatever. But right now it's not taken very seriously because, five transactions a second? And with a 20Mbyte block it'll go up to maybe a hundred? Don't make an investor (or a broker) laugh, that's not even a good attempt at a payment system that could get off the ground in a serious way. And so it gets dismissed.
Bitcoin could go above its current value, and stay there, only if the scalability issue gets addressed in a credible way.
The possibility that Bitcoin could take over all of the business of Visa/MasterCard is laughable. It took BankAmericard nearly 60 years to grow that kind of worldwide user base. PayPal, on the other hand, could be replaced with a superior system within 20 years or so. It would only take 100tps to replace all of the volume of PayPal. I doubt investors are laughing at PayPal. Blocksize will not need to be increased by much to handle PayPal sized transaction volume.
There are problems here that tps increases can't solve even with no cap and the highest grade nodes in every third house around the globe. As I mentioned above, Bitcoin needs to be a
superior system in the minds of the current users of PayPal/Visa to steal away their customers. Where are the proposals for fraud protection, auto rental collision damage insurance, travel rewards, flyer miles, roadside assistance, cash back rewards, signature rewards, merchant discounts, etc. Bitcoin
ease of use is about as different from Visa as a horse drawn carriage is to the automobile. Ease of use needs drastic improvements before Visa will need to start fretting. To think we can increase the tps rate and magically say, "ok, we're equal to Visa now just drop that plastic and come on over and use Bitcoin" is a child like mentality.
We need service companies. What is important is:
1) The market should require that the money they produce (the money extensions) should have the name bitcoin, not bitcoin backed pesos and the like. That is to avoid a devaluation. (Hey, now I get only a half bitcoin for my Instapay bitcoin, wtf!! That is a big red cloth to customers).
2) The market should require that they are readily redeamable. You might lose trust in them, or want another supplier. For this we need the maximum transaction per second number that the blockchain could possibly provide.
3) The market should require that they are fully backed. Could be cryptgraphic proof of reserve, but i fear that could be a lie.
Anyway, if a service company disappoint, there will be no way to save them by abusing the money system. If the public wants to save such company, it will have to be through taxation or loaning (with a nonfucked interest rate, good luck with that). I think the market will go for private insurance.
Isn't that a bit the same as saying "it is laughable to argue that Amazon in a few years could be big... it took Barnes and Noble 80 years to be a big player...".
...
) then regulation is absolutely needed 
