"Bitcoin may be doomed to failure as the blockchain struggles to scale up; Professor Ross Anderson from the University of Cambridge explains."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2XHyzPA9ZcI think this Professor Anderson an "expert in the financial word and technology"
needs some more information as it seems he is not up to date.
Also read through the comment section when you have some time left.
Maybe write yourself a few lines as some clarrifications seem to be needed due to missunderstanding or lack of informations.
Thanks guys.
Firstly its just an opinion. If bitcoin can not scale it will indeed not become the global currency. Well, maybe it does not need to be the global currency to be successful. Maybe it can scale. The "bitcoin will not be used to pay your coffee" is not an uncommon opinion.
I dont recommend anyone wasting their time in the youtube comment section. If someone is interested in bitcoin they will find other means to get good information anyway.
In that case we are going to need another international currency to pay for our coffee when we're abroad. Well it's not exactly like we are going to "need" it, but it would solve many travelling problems related to currency exchange. Bitcoin doesn't have to do it, but an alt will have to, may it have to not be as decentralized as bitcoin is to accomplish it. It might even have to be fully transparent and used only for small transactions abroad but it will be needed if bitcoin wants to remain a decentralized computerized version of gold.
...or you could do the majority of your coffee trades "off-chain" (e.g. via payment channels) and only do the final account reconcilement with a single "on-chain" transaction. This would require some trust in the coffee selling company, but so does drinking the coffee and you can limit the amount you want to trust them with to something you would reasonably spend on coffee anyway.
There are many possible solutions. I dont know if bitcoin will implement them or which, but IMHO SegWit is a step in the right direction no matter what the goal is. It allows implementing new types of addresses (and transactions) in newer versions without breaking old clients. This could also introduce new signature algorithms e.g. resistant to quantum computer attacks.
Bitcoin is still nowhere near where it can be in the future and it will need time to grow.