What do you think vendors who accept cryptocurrency as payment (for non crypto services - just your everyday coffee shops & retailers) do with the digital assets - HODL VS SELL? Its easy for traders and independent investors to hodl and stay put during the volatile times. But businesses have monthly expenses to upkeep id imagine it is very hard for them to stay operationally stable if their main source of revenue came from a highly volatile asset; 10 cups of coffee are worth 50$; the coffee is paid for in BTC, two days later the same BTC is only worth 30$ and they just lost 20$ on the sale, i could see this being very problematic in the efforts to increase the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin Payment is still not a develop mode of payment. In stores payment is almost zero due to long confirmation time, we can basically see such payments in internet services via CoinPayments, etc gateways. This indicates that only those businesses accept Bitcoin payments who have basic understanding of Bitcoin, so in my opinion they only favor Bitcoin payments because they like to generate passive income from reserves. So YES, they usually HODL.
Secondly, it can also depends upon the time and circumstances in which they receive payment. If they received in bullish market and made profit from HODLing, they might hodl their future receipts too. Whereas if they faced loss from past HODLing, they may instantly sell Bitcoin received as receipts.
