[Zarath]

A vast majority of transactions don't need to wait for a full confirmation, simply existing in the mempool is enough. Just like my electric bill doesn't need to wait for the ACH transfer to complete before it's considered paid.

[xur17]

And I'd argue that credit card transactions don't settle for somewhere ~90 days (if even then).

[joshstrange]

But that's because a company is extending credit to you, the customer, that money is being deposited next day or a few days at most into the merchant account. Without someone willing to be left holding the bag (credit card company) it's a bit of apples and oranges I think.

[dangwu]

The blockchain has no support for this kind of feature. That's rather antithetical to Bitcoin. How do you propose to achieve this without a central bank figure?

[xur17]

The "blockchain" doesn't need to support this - the GP's point is that transactions don't need to irrevocably settle for all transaction types. If you're spending $5 to buy coffee, the chance that you are going to defraud the store is low, and there are a number of less complex ways you could accomplish this anyways (just take the item off the shelf, and leave without paying).

And I'll note that there are other ways to accept bitcoin payments without high fees or long wait times (lightning).