BTC will only take off once there is a killer use for it. Either mobile payments or electronic payment on the Internet. Before that, it will remain somewhat of a curiosity.
There several already: drugs, and asset protection (tax evading included). More than enough to back our funny money and then some.
I am instead worried by the attention of the "authorities" (witnessed by the ECB paper): if they are able to cap the world price of gold and silver for decades, just figure what they could pull out to kill BTC.
I suspect that even the weird Nefario's sudden paranoia may be related to it ("they" are probably beaming some mind control ray straight into his skull 24/7 from the black copters).
It's not like they will securitize (is that the right word for putting a paper layer on something?) bitcoin and sucessfully suppress the price by naked-shorting the crap out of that bitcoin paper. In addition to that: there would be no "gold price" if gold was used as money throughout. Demonetizing gold and silver is a lot easier than demonetizing bitcoin, because bitcoin has lower transaction cost and risk than paper. It worked well with the metals because people preferred paper receipts because they are easier to carry around and more divisible (read: transaction cost is lower). It's interesting in this regard to read something about "imposing minimum reserve requirements on virtual currency schemes" in the ECB paper. Sorry, went off on a tangent here.
I agree these are powerful people bitcoin is up against and I also agree they will try to hit bitcoin hard at some point (not within the timeframe I suggested in OP, 1-3 months) - probably in many different ways. I said specifically "hit bitcoin" and not "hit us", because they can threaten all the Nefarios they want, there will still be the dread pirate roberts.
The most effective weapon they could use would kill themselves, too, btw: rollout of a sound money standard
