No expert here, but I believe the original rant that spawned the #hodl meme was  declaring that the speaker was going to hold, rather than speculatively trade his bitcoin back and forth. Because he felt trading fiat => btc => fiat was rigged in various ways.

Holding rather than speculating does favour stability in exchange rates, which is favourable to bitcoin-as-medium-of-exchange.

But you are also correct to say it may be discouraging to merchants, its not exactly a vote of confidence in the (very low) velocity of bitcoin-as-medium-of-exchange. 

 See, THAT makes sense to me. I agree that trading back and forth is just a joke. People who treat cryptocurrency (whether Bitcoin or others) as an investment are the ones making a total mockery out of what is otherwise awesome tech. 

 Not an expert either. The value of cash is always trending down, best to spend it immediately on bills, costs eyc, Bitcoin trends up, so it's a better store of value.
As far as spending, if you're going to buy, spend or pay bills anyway convert to Bitcoin and pay that way, Strike will let you pay from cash to Bitcoin. And small payments are easy with lightning. 

 Good advice. There's also Cake Pay if you use Cake Wallet, which allows you to buy digital gift cards from a lot of US vendors using Bitcoin, which is a pretty decent workaround. I just feel like we'll have a much better chance at getting more merchants on board with direct Bitcoin/Lightning payments if we (as a community) stopped treating BTC as if we're a bunch of dragons with our shiny gold. 

 Easy, you need a certain amount in your wallet  before you feel good to spend a part.  

 I definitely get that, but there are a lot of folks who continually talk about stacking, as if they never spend. Eventually, it just becomes a collection of cryptographic data. 

 I agree with you, if we aren't going to use Bitcoin, then it's not really a revolution, or only a partial revolution. We need to use Bitcoin to leverage the ideals of agorism, creating our own counter-economic structure to rival the centralised economy that we see today.
 

 Exactly. It's not like I'm even encouraging people to spend a lot or spend often but you can't exactly hold a currency forever unless you have money to burn or just want to "feel" wealthy. 

 Merchant adoption will not come when they decide they want bitcoin.

It will come when they decide they don't want fiat. 

 Sure, but most people assume fiat is the only real option outside of trading, and that's not exactly feasible for every sort of business. Bitcoin has to be there when people start to see the flaws of fiat.

And honestly, between KYC and the general technical know-how you need to understand it, it makes things difficult even then. 

 To your first point I think most people only ever look for a different option when they are desperate. As long as the current world functions even somewhat people will not look for alternatives.

To your second poiny I agree that we could be creating a KYC hell but I don't think the technical know how will be a problem. It might not be the future I would like to see but I think most people just keep using whoever they currently bank with but they start offering accounts in bitcoin. That or some other simple solution where custody is exchanged for convenience. 

 True, but there are also a lot of people who tend to fall back on a very ignorant "if I ignore it, it won't happen" mentality. For those people, presenting Bitcoin as the solution to fiat won't really do much.

As for the know-how, I'm a tech geek myself and I tend to get easily confused on matters pertaining to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, even the less desirable options out there. I definitely don't ever see a lot of the elderly population using it and, well, younger generations lack attention spans thanks to TikTok and the like that I'm not sure it'd work great with them either. 

 It depends how bad it gets. If the world stays like it is now I struggle to see how we get to mass adoption. However if our current trends continue and we head to hyperinflation then it will be a different story. Hyperinflation is not one of those things you can just ignore. Do not underestimate how desperately people will search for solutions once their money loses value faster than they can spend it and they have hungry kids at home.

As for the difficulty managing money is an essential part of life. Anyone who can manage a modern bank account of today can manage a bitcoin app. Setting up a Wallet of Satoshi account for grandma is far easier than setting up a new Fiat bank account. If we did not have the world of fiat banking and you had to describe it to someone they would say it was far too conplicated for people to use yet here we are managing just fine to use it. 

 My concern is that, as things get worse for the fiat system, governments come down HARD on Bitcoin. If they don't outright ban it, they'll regulate it to oblivion, meaning those normies and even tech geeks like myself will be utterly incapable of buying it unless we have good friends willing to take the risk for us. 

 It is possible.
It is already very hard to buy in Australia. 
Most banks outright decline any transfers to a crypto exchange and the few that remain strictly limit how much fiat you can send with no way to increase those limits ($10k AUD per month)
It feels like they want to push people into the approved and controlled outlets for buying such as the ETFs.
A perfect bitcoin utopia by no means seems a guarantee. 

 Thanks, I agree. I love the idea of Bitcoin, but I'm also concerned that when it becomes big enough to actually make the impact that maxis hope for, governments will crack down hard and make it borderline impossible to use without overtly becoming a criminal (which not everyone is truly able to afford, even if the law is morally wrong in that case). 

 A key factor is the % of one’s wealth which is in Bitcoin. If the % is low, it makes sense (from a bullish on Bitcoin perspective) to spend out of fiat first. If and when the % nears 100% then spending one’s Bitcoin will become more of a necessity (assuming one doesn’t use the Bitcoin as collateral for a fiat loan).

Both the right ideas, the timing and the major flows of capital need to intersect for a paradigm shift to occur. 

 I guess I can grasp that. I just don't see a reason to never use Bitcoin even when you still have fiat in your possession. If I were able to obtain Bitcoin (tried and just can't figure out a viable means for me), I'd obviously save and stack as I can but I'd also try to use that Bitcoin for transactions if it's a possibility.