I doubt miners would see even a fleeting interest in raising the 21 million cap because they wouldn't voluntarily contribute to a reduction in the value of the coins they're earning. Whatever the founding director of a less-than-transparent foundation thinks, it's not even a remotely likely outcome. Attempting to tie any such willingness to promote such a change in XT is completely baseless. Anyone could theoretically release a client at any point with an altered cap, but:
- a) that doesn't mean anyone would support it
b) XT is no more likely to try to implement such a change than any other client
and
c) no one is likely to try it at all.
Slightly OT, but he also he seems to be yet another person who doesn't understand the simple fact that more users would equal more fees collected in the long term. I cringe every time he calls it a "subsidy" just because he doesn't understand basic numerics. It's not going to be about "free transactions" as time goes on. If you artificially limit the number of transactions you can process, you are in turn also artificially limiting the revenue you could be collecting. Why are people still in denial about this? People also talk about forcing smaller transactions (that goddamned "cup of coffee" argument) off-chain, but again, this would just take away potential mining revenue and give it to whatever third party would process it instead.
Run it through to its logical conclusion. Most new users pick up an SPV/lightweight client and most of those clients are pre-configured to include a fee. The vast majority of those users will have no need whatsoever to send fractions of a penny over the network. It's only natural that over the course of time, free microtransactions will become a smaller percentage of the overall traffic being processed. Most of them will be legitimate, fee-paying transactions. If Bitcoin ever turns into a niche service that only a small number of people use once in a while to move a sizeable amount, that will generate less fees for miners than millions of people using it several times a day for small and medium sized purchases, plus the occasional large one. There is no gain whatsoever in artificially limiting our target audience, so the blocksize has to accommodate them as the userbase grows.
