I used to buy a coffee from time to time with bitcoin.
But I can't use bitcoin buying a coffee now, because the fee is so high, if I keep 0.0001 fee like before, it would take days for the transaction to get confirmed, I've got a transaction which took 11 days to get the 1st confirmation last month.
It's not cost-effective any more to buy (I mean both online and buying face to face) thing via bitcoin. And this is why I quit buy coffee with bitcoin.
That is so true.
However this presents an opportunity for all the altcoins to make a better solution than bitcoin with the micropayments.
I think bitcoin is originally designed for overseas payments more than face to face payments. For face to face payments, you've still got fiat currency, but you cannot send fiat overseas without incurring a heck of a fee.
Hopefully the fees will come down in due time, right now the fee is so high, combined with the high price of bitcoin, making it unacceptable.
that is true but current available altcoins are not capable of doing that because for everything that they have different than bitcoin there are 10 more downsides to it.
for example an altcoin that has a faster confirmation time (aka faster blocks generation) has lots more orphan blocks. in other words if you use bitcoin, 1 confirmation is a 99% sure thing and 3 is the suggested one for 100% sure thing for large amounts.
with that altcoin these numbers are 60 confirmation to be sure of no double spend,...