Quote from: reed07 on January 14, 2014, 04:38:19 PM

I was looking for arguments for the future of altcoins (specifically LTC but also others). Advocates of LTC usually site LTC's value proposition as being higher due to it having 4x the block rate and an ASIC-resistant hashing algorithm. Many BTC advocates say that these changes are not substantial enough.
Addressing the fact that altcoins can have faster block rates--are cryptocurrencies meant/intended to be used directly for quick transactions (such as transactions a person would make with a credit card)? Do you think that third-party 'handlers' will arise to speed up transactions to credit card-like speeds by immediately insuring a transaction and then waiting for several blocks of authentication behind the scenes and holding the sender/payer responsible so that the seller of goods doesn't have to? Such third-party providers would make the block times nearly irrelevant and make direct transactions synonymous with bank wire transfers and not very common for people to do directly. Thoughts?

The speed of a transaction or the alleged 'slowness' of BTC isn't really a problem. You only really need to wait for one confirmation regardless. Once you've sent the money the majority of the time it's as good as received.