Until the day comes that you can ACTUALLY spend your BTC (I know there are places you can, but in all reality it's still very much a novelty currency today) and prices stop fluctuating wildly from month to month I am staying away from the entire Bitcoin craze.
This is kind of like saying you won't invest in Facebook or Google or Apple until their price stabilizes. Either it's worth it to you or it's not. Stability is overrated in a world where pricing updates can be automated. If you're concerned about exchange rate risk, what you do is keep your funds in a more stable asset (like USD) but ready to be converted. Put a small amount of USD in an exchange and you'll be able to buy when you want to without this exchange rate risk.
At least facebook and google and apple have liquidity. All bitcoin has in that regard is a bot on mtgox that makes large fake bids and then moves them 50 cents cheaper if the market actually reaches that price.
There is one merchant that I know of that is offering thousands of electronic products at amazon cheaper prices.
Also, this is a chicken and egg problem. Merchant won't accept bitcoin because consumers don't use it, but consumers won't demand bitcoin because merchants aren't accepting it. Obviously something have to happens to break the mold. If you want to make a "novelty" currency useful, you have to start using it, but no "novelty" currency is guaranteeing to succeed. However, with bitcoin, the situation is changing. More merchants are accepting bitcoin everyday.
