If you follow what real core developers are saying like Van der Laan (don’t listen to Gavin “Wright is Satoshi” Andresen), it will take many years, likely decades, for bitcoin to scale to anywhere near a major payment network.
In order for bitcoin to compete with just the ACH Network it would need to move $43 trillion and 25 billion electronic financial transactions each year. That’s roughly 125 times more transactions than bitcoin is currently doing very poorly. There is a backlog in the mempool so it can’t even keep up with what it’s currently doing.
If you look at the transactions processed by the major credit brands (Visa, MC, Discover, etc.), it appears to be around 100 billion transactions. That’s 500 times more than bitcoin is currently processing poorly. Now we’re up to 625 times increase in transaction volume for bitcoin.
Pure EFT transactions (debit card) is around 50 billion per year. That adds another 250 times more transactions worldwide than bitcoin is currently doing poorly. We are now at 875 x current number of transactions that bitcoin is now doing horribly at keeping up.
It’s safe to say that at minimum it will take many decades before bitcoin can be made to effectively scale enough to just replace the ACH Network. It could possibly take the entire lifetime of the youngest bitcoiner on this forum before to could scale enough to take over all major worldwide financial transactions. If it could be made to handle that kind of volume, bitcoin would need to change from its current 5 or less transactions a second to 56,000 transactions a second and the blockchain would fill up the New York public library.
Yes this is like trying to play Farcry 5 on a DX2-66MHz ... there is evolution everywhere. Lightning will take care of Microtransactions and the Blocksize was never intended to be 1MB. Satoshi implemented it and left a paper how to lift this. Why it was not done yet on mainnet is what? Politics? Strategy? The future miners will bring more cpu capacity to the network while saving energy - Internetspeed doubles and SDD cost nothing. So there is no reason to be worried about "decades". When DX2-66Mhz and then DX4-100 came out nobody was aware that computer speed will double each year ... so let us wait and see ..
Changes to even national systems take decades to slowly take hold and transform the finance systems of a country.
Western Union, in 1914, began issuing purchase cards to select customers. Then, in the 20’s a number of oil companies began issuing out proprietary cards that were designed to create customer loyalty. These cards were accepted at the merchant that issued them and only in certain locations. Gas stations started issuing cards that could be used to make fuel purchases; some gas stations even started accepting competitor’s cards.
Department stores were next to jump on the credit card bandwagon. Department store cards were originally a marketing device, designed to increase the number of customers the store had. It turned out that customers really appreciated the “buy now pay later” aspect of the cards; the stores liked that there were limits to the repayment period. Department store credit cards gave rise to what’s today known as credit history as good customers that paid on time gained a reputation.
The 1930’s and 40’s saw the rise of revolving credit. This began when stores started to let customers pay debt off over months, getting rid of repayment periods by requiring that all debt be completely paid before any new purchases could be made. Customers could now actually carry a balanc eon their cards that wasn’t due within a specific period of time. This is also when credit card companies really began to make money from interest and fees associated with cards.
In 1946 the first bank card was introduced by a banker named John Biggins: this card was called the Charg-It. When a customer used their Charg-It card for a purchase the bill was forwarded to Biggins bank. Next, the bank reimbursed the store. Transactions could only occur locally and cardholders were required to have an account at Biggins bank. The first bank credit card came five years later, showing up in New York’s Franklin National Bank.
It took roughly 80 years for credit card systems to become what they are today. Not just because of technological advances but because users need time to accept the new systems and integrate them into their lives. Bitcoin is totally foreign to today’s banking citizens. It will be necessary for overlays to be built on top of the bitcoin network (like BitPay) to increase adoption. It will also be necessary to have professional developers (not the ragtag group of volunteers and corporate shills we have as devs now) to begin working on blocksize increases and chain pruning.
The short and sweet answer: it’s gonna take a long fucking time dude. You aren’t going to be around to see the end of it.
