My guess is that a LOT of the Bitcoin owners today are early adopters that own very little BTC as a novelty and/or with the idea that "Hey, who knows. Maybe my 4 BTC will be worth $1000s in a few years".

This makes for a super volatile market. Especially coupled with the new Mining ASIC rigs coming to market, small volume trading etc.

I would suspect that it will take a LONG time before we see if/how the 'currency' will actually stabilize.

One must remember, less than 5 years ago, BTC were selling for $0.001! Today it topped out at around $50.