[zeven7]

> What stance does the bitcoin foundation take or whichever is the highest authority talking on behalf of the community?

From what I undertand, it's not a goal for Bitcoin Core (lead dev team for the official client). They want to make Bitcoin a "settlement layer" that serves as a foundation for other things to be built on top of. Lightning network[1] would be the layer built on top that supports microtransactions.

There are others who believe that Bitcoin should be able to scale to support microtransactions and other features itself.

There's a very large controversy in the community over this.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Lightning_Network