Weird that in all the coverage of Bitcoin I have read over the years, this is the first article I’ve seen dealing with its absurdly low rate limit,
The problem is caused by Bitcoin’s design, which is capable of processing at best only seven transactions per second. This week the currency, which is powered by a decentralized network of computers run by people and businesses around the world, hit its capacity limit. A backlog of stranded transactions has built up. (There is debate as to whether this happened naturally, or by a person or group intentionally trying to cause problems for Bitcoin.)
At the time of writing there were about 20,000 Bitcoin transactions waiting to be processed. Some will go through much sooner than others.
You can attach a fee to a Bitcoin transaction for priority processing, and some Bitcoin software automatically suggests or sets one that will get you prompt processing. People using software that doesn’t adjust like that have found themselves cut off. Individual Bitcoin users and businesses have complained of transactions expected to go through in minutes getting stuck for many hours, or even days.
Now that’s a scaling problem.