...
I'm with you on being bearish on Bitcoin. Even though it might go up in the next year or two, I can't stand using it. I transferred some BTC from Polo to Circle pay today and it took over 2.5 hours for it to show up in my Circle account. There is no way that will be adopted mainstream if that continues to be the case. We want instant gratification, and results.
With that said, how quickly does XMR transactions settle? I'm bullish on it from a trading perspective but don't have good technical comprehension of the specs.
Monero has average 2 min blocks vs Bitcoin 10 min blocks so Monero does give a finer grains as to the number of confirmations to accept. "Settle" is in the eye of the recipient as to how many confirmations they accept. I have seen 15 for Monero so around 30 min, The issue with Bitcoin is that network is overloaded so it can take a while to get the first confirmation. My understanding is that Circle requires 4 confirmations for Bitcoin so in theory around 40 min; however since the network is overloaded it can take 2 hours to get the first confirmation ( I have heard of people waiting a day) hence the 2.5 hour wait time.
The key technical difference here is that Monero can scale the blocksize to meet transaction demand while Bitcoin with its fixed 1 MB blocksize cannot.
Edit: Bitcoin currently has over 110,000 unconfirmed transactions.
https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions. It is hardly surprising that people have to wait a while for the first confirmation.