But aren't we currently pretty close to full blocks? If block increase is perhaps a year away how can we expect a price surge (which will definitely be accompanied by more transactions) any time soon?
The thing to remember is that just about everyone in Bitcoin (besides maybe Blockstream employees) wants it to scale, and if it started failing enough, pretty much everyone would be on board with what they consider to be riskier and riskier measures (such as just increasing the blocksize cap).
Forget Adam Back and Gregory Maxwell for a second. The typical small blockist would still support bigger blocks as a last resort if their preferred scaling solution doesn't work in time. No one wants to go down with the ship on principle, however much they may front. That's the nice thing about Bitcoin being driven by investors with big money on the line. Practicality always wins the day, though it can take a crisis to get everyone out of their illusions.
During those times, we are more vulnerable than usual; however, overcoming the crisis means a bigger boom than usual - and "usual" in Bitcoin has been mindbogglingly explosive
historically.
[doublepost=1464488465][/doublepost]Let's note that once again the price stability indicator has proven its worth. Purple/blue trends of especially tight stability have preceded every huge rise*, with only one false positive. Or if you take only the bigger stability spikes (periods when the price was extremely stable), a major rally has
always followed, with only one big rally not being anticipated (Fall 2013, which some argue that rally was a fake one by the Willy Bot).
Of course it should also not escape notice that the recent stability spike is the mother of them all.
*Not sure about prior to 2012, since /u/azop hasn't included the data.
