Earlier quoted context omitted.
That white paper was written when? 2008, give or take a couple years? "Speed," as we refer to it, is relative to the age. In 2008, the threshold for terms like "fast" was much lower than it is today.
In 2008 I could make instant, secure online payments with credit cards.
I'm not entirely sure about the point you're intending to make but I have an assumption. Perhaps your intention is to say that credit cards were faster than blockchains at processing transactions in 2008 (they still are today.) In which case, yes, I believe credit cards have been a thing since the 1950s, so they benefit a lot from the age of the technology. Credit cards are also just kind of a concept that goes almost as far back as banks and bankers do, where banks would loan out money for you to spend and pay back. Credit cards just abstracted a concept that always existed with some additional systems that were built around them over time like maintaining a trust record for individuals (credit scores) and online payment processing that benefits from the simplicity of going through a single trusted party that goes virtually unchecked for accuracy (I can't make an audit of financial transactions that VISA handled today and say "Bob had a 0 balance but they spent $6000 today somehow," for example.) Blockchain has none of that historical advantage, and has essentially only existed since 2008, and has not benefited much from mass adoption mostly because it's extremely easy for rational consumers to dismiss it as slow, or "only scammers use it," which would be even less true if legitimate users dismissed it less easily. That's not to say I think blockchain is ready for general consumers, in my opinion it's still an incubating technology.