I agree with you there. The recent bull run was purely speculative, much like the big 2017 bull run. I would actually much prefer these bull runs not to happen, and just see a much slower but steadier and sustained price rise over several years, which would be based on growing adoption as opposed to pure speculation. These huge runs and crashes usually end in a bunch of a newbies losing a ton of money and rage-quitting bitcoin altogether.

Impossible to say. As I mentioned above, 2 merchants I use are accepting crypto directly without a payment processor, and are using some of that bitcoin to pay some of their staff's wages. I accept merchants are like this are in the minority, but they do exist, and both of these merchants only started doing this in the last year.

Yes, we have a long way to go, but I do think we are heading in the right direction.