It obviously can't work for a lot of applications on its own. Another limitation is that blocks are only every 10 minutes, so you're at an hour wait for the rec

It obviously can't work for a lot of applications on its own. Another limitation is that blocks are only every 10 minutes, so you're at an hour wait for the recommended 6 confirmations. Worst case, you could imagine most Bitcoin trading going through something like Paypal, which would have some advantages over USD (you can't print Bitcoin) but many obvious disadvantages. Better though, Bitcoin has a built in scripting language that lets you implement more complicated logic on top. The lightning network is one way to do that, which coalesces payments into only a few on chain transactions, and allows instant confirmations, with the tradeoff that nodes must remain online part of the time (compared to Bitcoin where nodes never need to be online, other than to receive and send transactions).