Nice write up! I think, in the not so distant future, merchants will start accepting popular in-game (crypto) currencies directly, so the friction of converting to fiat will go away. There are already services like Uniswap and Bancor that allow players to convert their earned in-game currency to something the merchant accepts.

When it comes to speed and scalability, I think EOSIO technology is promising for blockchain-based games. There are already several platforms (UOS, WAX, etc) developing it to build next-gen gaming and item trading platforms. It will just take a little more time to prove its security and reliability, so that gamers can trust it.

Gaming is definitely one of the most exciting applications of blockchain tech and the future of this industry looks bright!