Question #6:
In Satoshi's old e-mails they imply that handling as many transactions as Visa should not be a problem.
What does this imply about the development of Bitcoin?
Specifically, what is one parameter that would need to be changed and to what value to accommodate such heavy transaction flow?
I didn't really get your first question but you may be referring to the the time Satoshi limited the block size to 1mb or to when he posted this:
It can be phased in, like:
if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit
It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.
When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.
About the second question: The one parameter is the
block size, I don't really know how much it would need to be increased but I would guess to a thousand times the current 1mb block size. Because the Bitcoin network is now handling around 210k transactions per day based on blockchain.info while visa is handling around 150 million.
By the way, thanks for trying to help us while making us learn something in the same time.