Hi Hive account@moaphotography,
well I guess you gave yourself the answer already as to why people like to HODL - it is because of the volatile nature of cryptocurrency as a whole and the aspiration of long term price increase as in your BTC example that drives people to HODLing.

Many people like to buy and HODL which is really not driving adoption or replacing fiat.

I am not sure if holding a currency (be it crypto) does have an either negative or positive impact on its adoption at all as the potential to be spent by those who have the currency is THERE, which would rather make a case for adoption. The whole issue about adoption, however, IS definitely one that has to be solved in the future if crypto was to stay. But I'm bullish on this one considering these recent developments with paypal (coindesk article) and Goldman Sachs backed Circle acquiring Poloniex (bitcoinist article).

Using your standard paypal account for all of your crypto purchases and transactions - wow, that would blow the market. And Goldman Sachs, one of the largest banks direly trying to get into crypto fulfilling all legal requirements for a massive crypto exchange taking the SEC into the boat - if these are not paving the way for adoption then I also don't know... :)