The total speed of my torrents has been 200KB/s, once even got 300KB/s. Honestly, that’s not a problem for me; I’m not hooked and don’t need an instant fix.
It’s also logical that I2P can’t access the clearnet. That’s not the purpose of I2P. Theoretically there can be inproxies and outproxies, but AFAIK very few people operate them. Having an outproxy is like operating a TOR exit node.
Speed is side-effect of anonymity. The more people you route a request through, the slower it gets. It’s at least as slow as the slowest link. A VPN is one single, high speed link, but it doesn’t grant you anonymity (if the VPN provider collects logs). IINM you need at least 2 hops to be anonymous. A - B - C, B doesn’t know if A is the source or just forwarding a request nor if C is the final destination or just another hop.
At a measly 200kb/s it would have taken me more than 200 days of constant downloading at “full speed” to build my media library to were it is now (3.6tb), instead of a few days…that’s not about instant fix IMO, that’s just super duper slow. Few (no?) people need true anonymity for torrenting, just enough to not be indisputably linked to it so they can’t take you to court.
I dunno how old you are, but I come from the time of internet where loading pictures happen line by line. It took me a decade or more to get my library.
I’m patient. I don’t need my stuff to be there immediately. Maybe that’s the minority, I dunno, but a little bit of anonymity and patience ain’t hurt nobody.
Old enough to have experienced the world before the internet was widely available in the “western” world. It’s not about getting things instantly, but I’m also over waiting for a week+ just to download a movie. The level of anonymity that a good VPN provides is good enough for me.