There's this - the transaction time required - those times are in minutes, so 300 minutes is 5 hours of course. Even the fastest (highest cost per transaction) has a range of 0-30 min. That seems a bit excessive for practical everyday use?
I'm sure no one remembers what I said earlier on this thread, so I will repeat it again. I think there is definitely a future for crypto currencies. I believe that Bitcoin is version 1.0.0, and has made major strides in acceptance and mainstreaming. Based upon it's (many) technical limitations (amongst them the *huge* energy cost of production), I do not think it will obtain widespread adoption and will, one day in the future, eventually die out.
Although I have not personally researched the current 1,000 or more crypto coins available for a perfect solution, I do believe that there is, or will be something that comes along that fixes many of these problems. For example, you do not need to have a hash / mining algorithm that requires a lot of energy / processing power if you have a time-based limiter on the mining process. Also, the speed of the blockchain is slow compared to conventional methods of payment (credit cards or PayPal, for example, which are routed through a central clearinghouse). I think it will be difficult for cryptos to take off in widespread use until some of these issues are solved?
-Wayne
