it's called Metcalfe's Law. "value" of the network is squared by every new user. iCE would rather keep it strangled down to him and his Myrcea buddies.
Not every new user needs direct access to the Mother Blockchain:
The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".
-davout
"Strangled?"
Typical of you to invoke a violent metaphor, which entails me ruthlessly killing poor baby bitcoin asleep in its little crib. How scary! Quelle horrour!
I keep explaining your politics of fear have no power here, yet you persist in framing the 1mb limit as a death sentence despite having spent the last 4 years hyping Bitcoin's antifragility.
My "Myrcia buddies" include all the core devs, minus Gavin (who barely contributes code these days). Gavin has successfully created rough consensus among them w/r/t 20mb blocks. But it's not the consensus he wanted, so now he's staging a coup.
Gavin is mad with power and has gone completely Even Duffield. He wants to infect BTC with supernodes! You are both welcome to bugger off to the altcoin ghetto with Gavin's bloated XT fork, but please leave the rest of us (who want to keep Bitcoin diffuse/diverse/defensible/resilient) out of it.
Perhaps it would be better for the pointy-haired boss to listen to the coders and engineers responsible for fixing Bitcoin when the GigaBlocks break it?
The network isn't "choking" under this stress test. "Choking" means no air can enter the lungs, and the choking victim dies. Nothing analogous is happening here; tx are still being confirmed as usual but with some delay depending on the fee paid. If nothing was being confirmed, that would be "choking." All that happened is free tx take longer.
"Strangle?" "Choking?"
WTF is it with you stealing metaphors which portray the non-Gavin core devs as murdering their own baby? Nobody "strangling" or "choking" Bitcoin. If and when Bitcoin chokes or is strangled, please rest assured it will emerge from the conflict more resilient than before.
Why can't you take Szabo's advice to calm down and stop exaggerating?
Get a grip Doc. Your "zomg Bitcoin is literally going to dieeeeee" panic attacks are becoming unseemly.