Maybe it's just me, but I don't see bitcoin being destined for coffees and pizzas. Transactions like that are, in a manner, as plain as a pikestaff. You don't care about censorship-resistance when buying a pizza. You don't care if third parties know which toppings in that pizza you prefer. You're never going to buy a pizza overseas. You just want the transaction to complete the soonest, and pay the least in commissions.
Bitcoin is the good money from
Gresham's law. As long as there's "bad money", it will not circulate much in the economy. Unless fiat currencies collapse completely, and both EU and US become poor, merchants will pretty much go in the fiat-way when stuff like censorship-resistance, privacy and being permissionless are not prioritized. And even in that chaotic scenario, there will be banks afterwards, in just another form.
TIL about Gresham's law (thanks for the reference). Also, I agree with you. if nothing is done to improve the technology of Bitcoin - that is, increasing the tx finality speed and significantly bringing down the costs per transaction, then we won't see Bitcoin gaining traction for that kind of activity. One of the most popular ideologies in computer science is that:
Given two services
- service_A with completion of < secs, and $0.00002
- service_B with a completion of >= 3mins and $4 tx cost.
People would only flock to service_A. That's why we have had an influx of other 'layer one' blockchains in the past - all trying to be better than bitcoin forgetting that the blockchain trilemma is still unsolved.
Unless fiat currencies collapse completely, and both EU and US become poor, merchants will pretty much go in the fiat-way when stuff like censorship-resistance, privacy and being permissionless are not prioritized. And even in that chaotic scenario, there will be banks afterwards, in just another form. People without technical expertise will be required to forfeit their custody, unless some second layer can reach them with near zero disadvantages (I highly doubt about that).
Most people don't care as long as long as all transactions they conduct are completed in near-instant times.