Fantastic conversation!

You're absolutely correct about being pragmatic and meeting people where there at. However, long term, to get people to want to spend bitcoin, we have to move beyond building bridges to fiat payment rails.

Bitcoin has already demonstrated that it's a superior money for savings. Bitcoin can also be a superior money for payments - but not while relying on an underlying inferior fiat foundation. Until the payment rails are in place to use Bitcoin as the superior money for payments that it is, we shouldn't be expecting people to want to spend bitcoin.