It strikes me as being exactly the sort of thing you saw in industrial economies on strict gold standards before central banks. When you have an expanding pool of goods and services (either via industrial expansion, or the market for a type of money increasing) being chased by a money supply that is growing significantly slower, money deflates rapidly, and some people decide to hold onto their money rather than spend it as they think it will increase in value. This effectively shrinks the money pool, making the effect even stronger. Then the speculators come in, and it gets hairy and unpredictable. Eventually the money value collapses, and it starts being used for currency again.
You should EXPECT massive booms and crashes as a new currency with a fixed rate of expansion grows in use (or in speculation-attractiveness) faster than its supply does.
The bitcoins that I had set aside for a Cryonics contest two years ago (and were unredeemed) are suddenly worth a lot more.
Details: I had added 10 bitcoins to get things started, and there were 4.75 worth of additional donations. These were partially lost when the hosted online wallet that I was using (MyBitcoin) was hacked, but 49% was recovered. As of today, after refunding part of the donated money, it is now worth 5.2675. I will be adding from my personal store to bring it up to an even 5.5. At $140 per coin, the new total is $770.
I've decided to follow the buy-and-hold strategy for at least another year, since it worked so well. I don't have exact details on what I'll do with it, but it will not be converted or spent for at least one year, and will eventually be used for promoting cryonics in some way.
Some things I have in mind if it gets big include:
Contributions can be made to:
1Jdn36JUwvJdr3Qiie4aAseFdcoTsND9Qo
(Updated, since the previous address was attached to my personal wallet on an outdated client, which was causing money to be moved out of it by accident. The above is a brainwallet with a reasonably secure passphrase, generated using Blockchain.info.)