I was thinking more of long term stability.

In the short term we can indeed create demand through adding more users, but the worldwide pool of crunchers is limited, especially altruistic crunchers. The question in the short term is, "Can we take on more users faster than we create the initial GRC that they require?

If yes, value will go up.
If no, value will go down.

Your third point is along the lines of my thinking and yes, Project rain could be a tool that is used. For a commercial entity however I would think an "x GRC per y Project Credit" rain would be more popular as that way they can reward those that do more work with more rewards.

If we keep the base minting the same, a commercial project could set-up and promise an x GRC per credit rain per month for all crunchers as an incentive.

As a side affect any "Gridcoin" devs could earn a side income through either assisting, consulting or hosting Boinc projects. Hey, we could have a Gridcoin project that hosts the commercial applications.