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I've had transactions waiting for 8 hours now for a confimation. And some more new ones this morning for 3 hours now without a single confirmation.

All of these contains the default fees added by the clients and which were sufficient last month.

I was trying to demonstrate bitcoin to some friends last night. They made wallets and I tried to transfer some coin to them. After an hour they were saying it would have been quicker to drive to the ATM and get cash. I doubt they'll look at bitcoin again now.

This needs fixing and this needs fixing quickly. Waiting half an hour for a few confirmations used to be a problem that needed fixing. Waiting hours will quickly kill bitcoin.

Not necessarily, if more new transactions are created than old ones confirmed, some of them will have to wait forever.

That's only true as long as the average rate of fee creation is lower than what can fit in blocks.

Since this rate has been rising steadily for years, it's reasonable to assume that it will (probably soon) pass the average network throughout.

And then you are left with transactions that will never confirm, especially if they have low fees.