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Topic: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle? (Read 1912 times)

legendary
Activity: 1386
Merit: 1053
Please do not PM me loan requests!
I currently believe we can handle a lot more than seven transactions per second. I'm assuming we can handle thousands; putting them into a block would be the hard part.
legendary
Activity: 3472
Merit: 4801
The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction
(second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)

Amazing! I am surprised how the block size follows the tx fee. Very strange!

Amazing?

Huh

You're surprised that blocks that include more fee-paying transactions have larger total block fees?

If you operated a toll bridge, would you be surprised if you made more money on the days that more people crossed the bridge?
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 250
The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction
(second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)

Amazing! I am surprised how the block size follows the tx fee. Very strange!
hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction

The 1MB is a hard limit, while the soft limit was 250KB and has been lifted already. Smiley

As DeathAndTaxes mentioned, we can only have 7 tps with 1 MB block size, but indeed we are still far from that.
You can find the average block sizes here. (second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)
legendary
Activity: 1540
Merit: 1002
The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 250
I think we are safe for now. Bitcoin can always hard fork later to change the max block size.
legendary
Activity: 4214
Merit: 1313
D&T is right, and there have been tons of discussions about the issue if you want to read a lot more about it.  :-)
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
I've heard that bitcoin can only handle about 7 transactions per second. Is this true? Seems to me that would be a limiting factor in worldwide adoption of bitcoin. Has this been addressed by developers?

What if bitcoin were adopted by every nation, every person. The only currency. Can this be done?

I don't think so, 7 transactions is a very low level for a even simple server. 

Thanks
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
Currently the protocol limits block size to 1MB.  This doesn't correspond to any specific transaction volume the 7 tps is an estimate based on average transaction size.   The block size can be increased and I don't see any scenario where it remains 1MB forever.  The debate is more on how should the limit be determined, how much should it be increase, when would it be appropriate.
newbie
Activity: 48
Merit: 0
I've heard that bitcoin can only handle about 7 transactions per second. Is this true? Seems to me that would be a limiting factor in worldwide adoption of bitcoin. Has this been addressed by developers?

What if bitcoin were adopted by every nation, every person. The only currency. Can this be done?
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