Instant payment solutions can significantly increase the speed of retail payments.10 With instant payments, funds are settled with finality and are available for use by the recipient within seconds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Since bitcoin transactions take, on average, about 15 minutes to validate, and even bitcoin enthusiasts acknowledge that this type of settlement cannot be considered reasonably irrevocable before at least one hour has passed, instant payments may render large parts of the alleged benefits of crypto assets redundant.