Thanks for the info. It seems to me we're going to see an interesting struggle between the current 'trusted institutions' and 'trustless blockchain'. Banks and other centralized payment options like paypal have increasingly overplayed their hands with ever rising fees and ever more unfair exchangerate differences. If they want to stay on top in the midterm future, they have to find new ways of being faster and cheaper while maintaining their central 'trusted' control over new blockchain technologies. I don't think they can win that game in the long run, but they'll try for sure.

The confirmation time issue for blockchain no doubt will be solved, either by new currencies following different protocols, or by existing ones finetuning their methods. Bitcoin Cash already claims that unconfirmed transactions for small amounts are safe enough (I have no opinion other than that if someone sends me a small amount and it shows up, which is nearly instant, then it's indeed good enough for me). When buying something bigger like a washing machine or a car, I don't think a 10 minute wait with a cup of coffee is a big problem.