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You do realize that bitcoin transactions are near-zero-cost, don't you?
If by "near zero" you mean "about $7 US @ current exchange rate, subsidized by block rewards (base money inflation)," then sure.
The spammer isn't paying these, so it's near zero cost to them
You do realize that bitcoin transactions are near-zero-cost, don't you? What central planning and quotas are you telling me about? What protection from decentralization or spam? We are at almost 70gb, with most of it being crap.
Uh, really? The malicious miner DoS protection limit set in 2010 turned central economic policy tool.
Again: we are at practically zero-cost-txs with 1c-2c-5c etc. This is bullshit.
At what point is it not near-zero-cost?
There is not a single point where extremely cheap suddenly stops being extremely cheap. At least not if you have 0.01 usd increments. You can't say 0.05 is cheap and 0.06 stops being cheap. That doesn't work.
How much competitive advantage do you want to sacrifice at 25BTC per block reward?
As I demonstrated BTC is not losing anything to its competitors.
We have a "blocks are full" situation. Who is getting BTC traffic due to our "disadvantage"? Competitors blockchains are empty ghost-towns.
The competitive advantage rationale could also be applied for block times and have people asking for "urgent" cutting to 2.5m or 1m blocks etc. "Ohhh our opponent has faster blocks, quick, let's make our block fast too because we'll be very slow compared to them and we'll lose clients".
2-3-5 years after the introduction of faster currencies, BTC is still king despite it's competitive "disadvantage". Why?