Merchants must save in Bitcoin. Many people will grow their own food in their back yards before they spend the hardest money they have. The adoption curve has to complete before spending bitcoin becomes a desirable outcome. I have given people bitcoin with the hope that it motivates them to study it. If they just sell it for fiat currency after I spent months trying to explain it's value to them it feels like a slap in the face.
Merchants are even scarier because you don't know if they just sell it for cash immediatly/automatically. Then the recipient of your spend is unknown to you. It might be coinbase getting your bitcoin on some back end api.
There are good ways people manage to spend and earn in feasable circular ways, it's just not going to be the next big thing for another cycle or two.
More hodlers would have to survive a cycle or two for spending to increase.
Think of each cycle as generations reproducing.
The first meaningful cycle of adoption (population boom) was the 2016 cycle. We need more cycles to have more bitcoiners who did not fall in the bear market battle.
We are already in a much better place than we were two years ago with regards to merchant adoption, I'm just stingy, would rather give bitcoin away to teach an individual before I spend it.
If merchants can mine fiat, they can save in bitcoin.
It's the Saylor way. And he's smiling.