I can't even begin to imagine what is meant by the above statement....
I thought Bitcoin could already be transfered nearly instantly with nearly no fee....
Why would you want to have a mess of micro-transactions in a short period of time instead of just one -- at the end, for all of your winnings in that round of the game?
For stock trading, I don't think the transactions would be so tiny... but I suppose they would need to be fast.
Now you've gone so far over my head that I don't even know how to ask for clarification of that statement!
How far into the future are we looking at here?
What I don't understand is this: Suppose I have a bitcoin payment method that I want to use in buying something on a website or in a store where bitcoin is accepted. You seem to be saying that the "approval" of the sale would be greatly delayed due to this "backlog" of transactions, and the merchant would have to withhold delivery of the product/service until the payment was confirmed -- unlike using a credit card, where approval is nearly instantaneous. Silly me thought it was easier, faster and cheaper to pay with bitcoin. But you seem to be saying that's incorrect; that it takes much longer and costs more than using a credit card.
Bitcoin as is only allows a block to be found on average every 10 minutes. So, the actual settlement is very rarely "fast" it generally takes a block or two to get officially and forever into a block. Online merchants can see your "intent" to send a transaction that is setting in the memory pool, and they typically will inform you that they see that and call it paid, but it's not actually settled until it's in a block. Now if you include an adequate fee it'll eventually get into a block and it doesn't make any difference to an online merchant like newegg if that takes 30 minutes to happen, as they aren't going to ship that fast anyway. But it's not instant.
Now there are proposals and "testing" of add on layers that allow you to send your bitcoins to a secondary network and once in that secondary network which is tied to the regular network would allow trully near instant transactions as in like milliseconds possibly. That network can do tons of transactions, it's not a "permanent" network like bitcoin in that all the bitcoin on the "lightning" network eventually settle back to the level 1 network you are currently using. Essentially it just allows a Very fast way of making a transaction, and allows for a huge number of transactions at little cost. The reasoning for a level 2 network to allow that is because the level 1 bitcoin network records every transaction forever, and for many transactions you don't really need that level of detail, like buying a cup of coffee, or paying .00001 in a video game. The thing is all the bitcoins sent to the lightning network eventually settle back as one lump transaction into the level 1 normal blockchain.
The problem currently is that the level 1 bitcoin which is what is bitcoin today only allows 1MB worth of bitcoin transactions every 10 minutes, and those blocks are getting very full more frequently, so eventually what will happen if more capacity isn't added is there will be longer delays waiting for the first confirmation, and fees will rise. There are plans to increase the blocksize and / or transaction capacity in a couple of ways that should eventually get integrated, however, it is taking them a long time to do it.
Worse case scenario is probably long delays in confirm times, and a less inviting experience, until capacity is increased.
Also to add your credit card doesn't "actually" settle instantly, the bank just approves your transaction, but no funds are actually bank to bank transferred at that instant, they do that in bulk at intervals. Same with ordering on newegg with bitcoin, it's essentially a done deal "instantly" UNLESS something goes crazy and your transaction is not included in a block, and that would really only happen if you fee was to low. Most wallets handle calculating a fee for you, but there is no guarantee it will be adequate 100%, so it's possible you could send a transaction and it just doesn't ever actually get transferred, eventually that "intention" to make a transaction should timeout and your bitcoins would be returned. Again, that's Very very rare, and even more so if you have an adequate fee, however "full" blocks and increased demand on the transaction space as is currently happening will invariably cause that to happen more often, until transaction capacity is increased.
