Why aren’t the merchants offering some sort of incentive to spend the bitcoins. What most people seem to be talking about is Gresham’s Law, “bad money drives out good”. The bitcoin, in this case, is the good money. Why use it now when it will be much more valuable in the future. If doing things by force, in this case, was available you could do the same thing that fiat money does in most countries of the world: legal tender.