"Most transactions cancel out at the account level. The binks demand bitcoins of each other only because they don't want to hold account money for too long. So a relatively small amount of bitcoins infrequently transacted can support a somewhat larger amount of account money frequently transacted."
https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/th...
> satoshi expressed in his emails that he was under the impression that bitcoin would scale on its own in the early days
And it did. I don't think today still classifies as "early". See above for people already thinking far ahead for longterm solutions to scaling.