What even needs to happen to trigger this (another nation taking this up)
It is hard to predict but I am confident that it will rise to over $1000 by the end of the year. Increasing adoption will drive the price up.
Will this negatively/positively affect bitcoin?
I don't think there will be much of an effect on bitcoin prices, but it will kill the alt coin mining industry. Some alt coin owners may dump there coins and buy bitcoins.
the price of BTC)
Difficulty has no direct affect on price. There may be some minor indirect effects such as miners losing interest when the difficulty rises and selling their bitcoins.