Can the Bitcoin protocol support very small transactions effectively? Say in a few years Bitcoin is where we hope it is, like $1000 or even $10000. In such a scenario one cent is about 1-10 microBitcoins (1 millionth or 0.000001 BTC).

In my experience, attempting to use bitcoins for small transactions (even of order 0.001 BTC) usually either takes a very long time, or just doesn't get processed at all. It thus worries me that BitCoins cannot be used for small transactions which correspond to a big and important part of the economy (e.g. a kid buying a Popsicle, or giving a $1 tip, or buying bigger stuff in third world countries, etc.)

Does anyone has a useful perspective on this issue?
The answer is multifaceted.


Microtransactions were not a design goal of Bitcoin. Even if they're not well supported, that's ok.
Off-chain transactions might be used if on-chain microtransactions are too expensive.
There are a few possibilities to implement microtransactions on the blockchain. One such implementation was recently added to bitcionj. Also see this interesting proposal for nondeterministic nanopayments.
Alt chains for microtransactions are a viable solution as well.


TL;DR - it's not a problem.