I keep coming back to that breakout because it is pretty much the only major event since last October for which I do not know of a cause that would justify the traders's sudden change of mood. (There was one other surge this year, Mar/03 IIRC, I never found a convincing explanantion for.)
This is the problem in your assessment. Traders do not drive the market, they
ride it. Traders put the spikiness into the charts, but the real-world ecosystem fundamentals drive the long-term trend. The breakout in October was from fundamentals and is the reason for all the major moves.
Fiat is dead long-term. That is where technology is pointed and, despite everything that has happened in the world in the last few hundred years, technology has always gone forwards. This includes the replacement of CB money with cryptocurrency. There is still some debate as to which crypto will be dominant, and you might prefer
SweetnessAndLightFaircoin to prevail, but that unless one appears which is so good that it overcomes first-mover momentum: then Bitcoin is No.1 and will remain so.
Gavin has written a brilliant piece describing how Bitcoin can soon scale up to VISA-like size. The writing is on the wall for the legacy systems. The mega-trend remains UP.
https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2