Lately, I have not been hearing much about Bitcoin, other than media mentioning that the value is decreasing. In addition, the transaction volume processed by payment gateways is also decreasing. I feel that adoption has come close to a standstill. What is your opinion about this?
That was true during the last longer-term bear market as well. It wasn't until 2017 that Bitcoin started regularly making headlines again. Before that, the media hype was pretty dead.
I remember seeing some chart from Bitpay that showed that consumer spending spiked a lot when price rose in 2017. Consumer spending might follow a similar pattern -- transaction volume might rise during bull markets and fall during bear markets.