With how bearish the market has been lately, it's probable people are holding more Bitcoin than what they're spending. I think the main reason why Bitcoin transactions are declining on Bitpay it's because of its processing fees. Merchants are considering other options in order to get more bang for their buck. With KYC requirements, you can bet most merchants and customers will be looking elsewhere. What really tells us if Bitcoin's payments are declining, is the network activity. So far, the blockchain is quite active compared to other cryptocurrencies on the market.

Slowly but surely, adoption is growing for Bitcoin's Lightning Network. It shouldn't be long before the whole world adopts Bitcoin for true financial revolution. As long as the main blockchain network remains decentralized, nothing else matters. Just my opinion

I think people are willing to spend their bitcoins more if the bitcoin price is high because this can make the value of the item less or they are only going to pay less btc compare to when the price of btc is down, I hope you know what I mean and I do not think its a valid excuse to increase your service fee just because your popular but it should have lessen because the income that they will get thru fees are still high. They should change this policy now because there are now platforms that offers the same service as them and soon bitpay users are going to migrate on those platforms because the rates are much better. I bet bitpay do not want that to happen

That could be the case but that can also be a possibility that this is a sign for bitcoin. I mean bitcoin doesn't improve that much in terms of use case for the past years unlike other cryptocurrencies that are actively trying to create more uses for their crypto. Also, bitcoin is premium that it's not really a good idea to spend it because you're more likely to benefit from it when you are hodling it.