Low fee transactions could take days to confirm. Zero fee xactions may never confirm.
Sounds like it will finally work like it should be.
The blockchain is too valuable a resource to be wasted by zero and ridiculously low fee txs.
And it's not only scaling but usability too. If I have a 100mb block size and it takes me a couple of hours just to sync the last day or a day to sync the last week (before I send a payment), will this be usable? Or will people say, ah yes, now you lost the ability to run bitcoin-qt, just use a thin client...
That's either stupid or dishonest. Nobody is proposing 100 MB blocks and won't unless bandwidth gets much much greater. The design is for block reward to subsidize miners until the network grows big enough to be supported on fees. How is that possible with ~ half million xactions/day?
This is supposed to be a peer to peer network for the people, not <1 million elitists, criminals and middlemen.
We have different interpretations of stupidity.
When I have a system that has a hole in it (bloat in blockchain through low or no fees, that can be abused as an attack vector and kill bitcoin usage and adoption in the long run), I will not go and make it larger so that someone else can sink my boat. *That* is stupidity.
Scaling is not an issue right now. Not the processing of transactions. If you want to make a legitimate transaction, you'll pay a normal fee and you'll be processed in one block.
If you enlarge the block before scaling becomes an issue, then you open the attack vector wide open for further abuse (because it is already abused with over half the transactions being dust and spam). This is beyond idiotic.
I believe when the time comes, and the need is real, the block size can be increased. If it doesn't, there will be just some fee competition that prevents a lot of low and very low value tx. So what? This is certainly the lesser of the two evils involved here.
So the vulnerability as you see it is that people can throw money at you? You don't feel safe unless you're wearing a money-proof vest? A money-proof vest that weighs 100 pounds? Yeah, I'd say we do have different definitions of "stupid".
The vulnerability is that one can make bitcoin unusable and centralized through a very low cost attack vector if the block size is increased.
I wouldn't mind large blocks (even 20mb) if there was an adequate fee structure in place that prevents abuse.
Let's say I'm the US government and want to shut down BTC... what kind of attack vectors do I have?
Some examples:
a) Built an expensive NSA farm to get the 51%. Doable but it will cost me a few hundred millions. The reward would be to wipe off competition for the USD.
b) Bribe or hack centralized mining systems that tend to have lots of hashpower.
c) Coordinate attacks that allow a 51% attack to go through by preventing others from hashing.
d) Start stealing people's private keys through the use of monitor equipment in people's hardware (that would 'burn' that option from future use, and make it publicly known)
e) Make various DDOS / DOS attacks that have low cost
f) Bloat BTC to infinity, if BTC allows itself to be bloated in this way (and it will with large blocks), again at very low cost. Thus it will become difficult to download, adoption will be hampered and you get it to a much more centralized and vulnerable point.
g) Accumulate or confiscate stashes of BTC to manipulate price and through market manipulation, destroy the BTC market. You can also "use" various exchange owners after they get an offer they cannot refuse ("please cooperate or else you'll be thrown in jail for decades with charges of assisting money laundering").
h) Do mass damage to unsuspecting people and then claim it's BTC's fault, so you need to ban it. Stuff like mass hacking of PCs, encrypting their data and blackmailing people. Or media attacks, association with criminal activities etc etc.
i) Ban it, but then it will flourish elsewhere. So you pressure various governments to do the same. But, that too, shows desperation and panic so it's better not to ban it and go more "subtly" about it (GOTO other attack vectors).
- stuff like that.
(f) is an avoidable attack vector.
=== not many ppl go long yet 
