Are Bitcoin transactions really "frictionless" given confirmation time? One of the big selling points for Bitcoin is that transactions are frictionless.  I understand this to mean that there is no middleman to take a cut.  However, there are 2 major frictions I see.

1) Clients are difficult to use for "non-techies".  This can easily be solved with better clients.

2) Transaction confirmation times can take 10 to 60 minutes.  This seems like major "friction" in that it prevents fast transactions - something most people are really used to with cash and plastic.

So is Bitcoin really frictionless?
For small amounts it's fine to accept unconfirmed transactions. You must really understand how the protocol works to be able to double-spend an unconfirmed transaction. I'm sure in the future hackers will build tools to allow for these sort of scenarios to benefit them, but also bitcoin clients will grow more secure and be able to diminish the propagation of a double-spend in the network, perhaps using trusted central entities that can propagate your transaction much quicker than the attacker could propagate their double-spend.

If I'm selling something for lots of bitcoins, yes I'd wait at least 10 minutes. But if you compare this to selling something for cash, you'd still need the time to sit down and count the money and make sure it's real and that you're not being scammed. This could take you more than 10 minutes and you'd probably need to do it in a private area. With bitcoin you can do it in any public place using your phone, and instead of using the 10 minutes to check whether you're being scammed, you can have a friendly conversation with the person you're doing business with.