Topic: Bitcoin was a great experiment. We learnt a lot from it. (Read 2069 times)

Not to detract from you main point...

Is not an essential part of the definition of 'monetary asset' that it is readily transferrable? (I would assert that it is) If this be true, then 'space on the chain' is not a monetary asset.


Multiple chains scale exactly the same as a single chain. (actually slightly worse) Anyone wanting to freely conduct business will need to employ all significant chains.

Actually you do have points on what you are trying to say comparing alts and bitcoin and i partly agree on some related to the capabilities of some coins that could be better than bitcoin but seeing on the situation bitcoin has gone away to far and its hard for people switch directly.

I fully agree. I think the idea of putting an organization at the top much like the way the normal government is run these days can be so detrimental to the idea of decentralization and is something that Bitcoin and its technology behind is fighting and avoiding for. Anyway, OP must just be joking and can even be laughing now that his/her post has elicited some good responses.

Of course not.  In order to face the same problems, they would have to have similar investment, adoption and so on.   Most alt coins are technically superior to bitcoin and would only run into the same problems at even higher levels.  Take litecoin for instance.  Litecoin has more room on the chain than bitcoin.  DASH too.  They are also "hard block chain limit" coins, but both of them can at least accommodate 4 times bitcoin's max volume.  Before they run into the same problems, they have to have 4 times more capital/adoption.... Then, they are as strong as bitcoin at that point.

Then there are other coins like monero, that have flexible block sizes, and will never hit a hard wall.

But in the end, all block chain based chains will run into problems of scale, because it is a technology that doesn't scale well.

That said, if we have many *different* chains, they can all carry part of the volume of course. 

I think I understand this point.

We don't NEED it, but the dynamics of trustless consensus leading to immutability IMPOSES it.  That's my point.  This is nobody's fault.  It is the inherent dynamics that brings immutability, that will also keep this (unfortunate) parameter fixed.


The definition of a soft fork is: the new protocol makes blocks that are all accepted as valid by the old protocol, but not all blocks accepted by the old protocol, are accepted as valid by the new protocol.  In other words, a soft fork is an EXTRA CONDITION on the previously existing protocol.  Every 1 MB block is compatible with the previous protocol that allowed blocks up to 32 MB.  But, say, a 7 MB block, that was compatible with the old protocol, is not valid any more under the new protocol.

If gold was still shipped around the world for the majority of international settlements, and demand exceeded capacity, people would build more ships. I don't see why we need artificial scarcity based on transaction rate. We have that scarcity on coin cap and eventual lost coins.

Please explain how lowering the limit is a soft fork.

Now, for me, bitcoin is no longer an experiment, it is something very familiar, and it plays a key role in my life. Before, I had never known it, and I was a poor citizen, and when I knew it, things improved, my life had changed since I knew bitcoin. Bitcoin is something new but has a lot of value, i feel like it

Yes, we need an urgent solution.That would be the real tribute and homage we pay to Mr.satoshi nakamoto.

The fact that there IS a hard limit in the protocol is the essence.  There are alt coins that have technology-limited block sizes, like mining is technology-limited: from a certain point onwards, with a given technology, it becomes too expensive.  But when technology advances, this limit is pushed higher.  In that case, the commodity price is elastic, and determined by real world cost of resource usage.  As it should be.  And is not an artificially created scarcity, but just the price of used resource.  In order to make a monetary asset, you have to make an artificial scarcity, like the number of bitcoins.  If you make an artificial scarcity of block chain room, that automatically ALSO becomes a monetary asset from the moment that it becomes more scarce than the real resource usage.  The 32 MB limit will reach that only much later, but will reach it.


One could lower it back then, because it was considered a *technical* parameter with no scarcity involved.  One could have increased it before it became a scarcity parameter.  But that window is closed now.

Note, BTW, that LOWERING the limit is a SOFT FORK. 

This was originally 32MB wasn't it? If hard fork consensus can decrease it, then hard fork consensus can increase it.
No consensus and things stay how they currently are. Only the rich can afford to use bitcoin.

And "consensus to fix the known issue" is essentially impossible, for exactly the same reason that protects the 21 million coin limit.


Not all altcoins have hard block limits.  But they will also run into problems.  However "other coins running into problems" doesn't mean that bitcoin's problems can be solved.   If you're falling out of an air plane, saying that others are falling too, will not avoid you crashing on the floor, right

The fact that bitcoin has a hard block size limit, makes that block chain space is a limited resource in the same way that the number of coins is a limited resource.  From the moment that there's a market with finite price for that limited resource (like from the moment that bitcoin wasn't $0,- any more), the consensus mechanism protects this resource scarcity.  As there is now a strongly rising fee for "room on the chain", this resource scarcity will be protected by the same mechanism that stops people form increasing the number of bitcoins beyond the original protocol.

Bitcoin having a fixed block size was programming, from the start, a scarce resource of "room on the block chain", that is coming to maturity.  The artificial scarcity of coins, that made the market cap of bitcoin's coins, is now also applied to block chain room.  Whenever this market cap becomes bigger than the coin market cap, and when "room on the chain" becomes a much more valuable commodity than (unmovable) coins, the 21 million coin limit will not matter any more, and the true value proposition of bitcoin will be "room on the chain".

This was baked in from the start in the protocol, by setting up a hard limit on block size.

this thread is pure fud and make little sense, OP is expecting that millions invested in bitcoin, in the market and in the mining activity will be fucked only because he think that bitcoin was a "testnet"

other coins out there have their problem also, they are not perfect, their problems won't come off because they have no volume like bitcoin, we just need to reach the consensus to fix the known issue

besides that if you start another chain you will have the same problem as now with the same consensus that will not be reached on the block limit etc..., what's the point?