If you remove speculators from the picture, Bitcoin's userbase is mostly:
(a) People trying to avoid the fees associated with other forms of electronic payments, who basically rely on services that exchange Bitcoin payments for fiat currency.
(b) The services that people in category (a) rely on.
(c) People who for various reasons want a currency without any government, bank, or legal code.
You are not seeing the ludicrous claims about Bitcoin being the greatest innovation of our time from the people in categories (a) or (b). It is either the people in category (c) or else the speculators who want to promote the hype because it makes them money.
I think there is category (d)-people who see that this offers possibilities that are only now being glimpsed.
Low/no trust contracts, an inflation hedge that is instant, and spendable and transferrable like cash (hi Argentina), autonomous agents that can transact freely (reddit.com/r/bitcointip), brain wallets, the ability to transfer > 10k without paperwork, micro-payments are finally viable... Just to name what my limited mind can conjure. Not to mention the things it seems like you're dismissing as reasons to be extremely bullish--that the transfer fees of Western Union is on the order of 10% and paypal freezes funds.
(a) People trying to avoid the fees associated with other forms of electronic payments, who basically rely on services that exchange Bitcoin payments for fiat currency.
(b) The services that people in category (a) rely on.
(c) People who for various reasons want a currency without any government, bank, or legal code.
You are not seeing the ludicrous claims about Bitcoin being the greatest innovation of our time from the people in categories (a) or (b). It is either the people in category (c) or else the speculators who want to promote the hype because it makes them money.