I agree with the questions u have raised, but disagree with the way u r looking for resolution. In this poll, a person having 0.0001 BTC have the same voting power as of the guy holding 10 or 100 BTC. U could get a better representation if u used http://bitcoinocracy.com/.

This is where it all starts being flawed. That's not the average transaction size, not even close. Source.

I can't answer this as your calculations are flawed due to using a wrong average. If you re-do them, then we might be able to talk about it.

I've already told you that if you want a definite answer that you'd have to provide a definition. What exactly is P2P cash? What features does it have? How does it compare to a settlement layer? Once we have answers to those, then we might be able to come to some sort of conclusion.

Polls on this forum are basically useless (as people will just use sockies so it only ends up telling you who is more determined to win the poll rather than anything about general opinions which is why I have never voted in a single poll on this forum and never will).

i understand you dont want to talk about the centralization aspects of banks and visa. but please "pretend" we are talking about banks and visa just in the context of end user method of usage, rather than the technicals of controls behind the scenes. then it helps 'lay' people get to the basics of your debate about long term store vs daily spends

anyway

using blockstreams doomsday story of comparing bitcoin to possible Visa..(dont worry i hate it too, but relax, think of it from the end-user usage not the who controls it mindset)

visa averages each customer does 40 transactions a year.

bitcoin currently has 2.5mill users and based on the maths of ACTUAL average transactions per block(2000tx=500byte/tx)
2000tx(block)*144(day)*365(year)=105mill .. which not surprisingly also corresponds to a 40tx/user per year.. (kinda funny that)

after all not everyone will use it daily. some use it a couple times a day some use it once a month. hense the 40tx/year is a good average as proven by both bitcoin and visa

so 20million people doing 40 transactions/year to compare both visa and bitcoins current usage =  
8mb maxblocksize hard rule doing traditional transactions.
4.2mb maxblocksize hard rule doing Segwit transactions with a real data storage of 8mb (based on segwit and laudas assumption of 190% capacity)
4.2mb maxblocksize hard rule doing Segwit transactions and confidential payment codes with a real data storage of 12mb

so we went from 1000 tx in 2013(0.5mb block due to DB bug) its going to be 2mb+segwit in 2017(hoping to be sooner personally). and based on technology growth. a 4.2mb +segwit wont be a big deal by 2020

in short by summer 2017 bitcoin can handle 10million people doing similar daily transactions like they would using bitcoin or visa today
give it 4 years there wont be an issue with 20million. (ONLY if people dont stupidly use confidential payment codes extra feature by default)

I think it will end up as a settlement layer with other better faster tokens taking the currency role.

Why can't it be both? This is just software isn't it? We should be able to come up with a reasonable platform that can do both without jeopardizing security, or usability. Its just a matter of getting the right minds working on it, and time. This is going to take time to create.

I prefer it to be a peer to peer cash IMO, that's more close to the current bitcoin system and it's very idea IMO.

Except that its being "re-engineered" every single day already. There are developers already working on changing Bitcoin right this minute.

I think the most important feature has to be a settlement network, the "new gold" approach is in my book the one that we have to focus on, before we can pretend to compete against centralized systems like VISA.

If we are going to compete against centralized systems like VISA, we must deliver something that makes it worth using for the average user. I think, the fact that anyone can start sending and receiving money without any consent, is a big advantage we will always have against our competition when it comes to the goal of making Bitcoin a worlwide used currency with millions of transactions per second. The work done by Blockstream in this matter is excellent and im looking forward to it.