As far as I see it Gavin is desperatly trying to save Bitcoin.
but there is no need to save anything at the moment. so far, bitcoin dealt with problems in a good manner.
Right? Its like these "big blockers nao" are under some Reddit spell, talking about problems that are not problems and promoting some solution that is not a solution anyway..
I'm always impressed how non big blockers can say with a straight face that there is no problem leaving everything at 1 Megabyt blocks.
Let's say blocks are half full now. What happens when legit transactions are constantly, on average, 150% of 1MB? It would mean that 33% of all valid transactions will never confirm. Can you imagine a currency where 33% of all transactions never confirm and that currency had somehow a chance to survive?
And fee market... you realize that if constantly many legit transactions are waived, then the fees will rise constantly too. There would simply be no end because even if everyone raises their fee, still 33% can't get confirmed. What would happen? 33% of all users who use bitcoin would drop bitcoin. Surely that would be a great day for adoption.
Except Bitcoin is not contained in a bubble and there are other alternatives by which one can hold & secure their wealth in Bitcoin yet use these superficial open source payment layers to transact with.
Kinda like you don't use your savings account to buy nuggets at McDonald, ya know?
Yes there are other altcoins. But should it really be the plan to practically give up on bitcoin and tell interested users to use an altcoin? That is so very much against the vision every early adopter had of bitcoin. If we give up here then it is claiming being defeated. It says we were wrong, bitcoin can not compete with fiat money. It's use is limited.
Besides, using altcoins surely is no solution to the bandwith problem and all. It would mean you would have to run another node that downloads blocks and so on. It would be pushed from one blockchain to another if the tech is similar.
No, you don't use your savings account for buy nuggets, you would withdraw a little bit from your savings account and go shopping with that. The same with bitcoin. You take some coins out of cold storage and put it in your smartphone wallet. Then shopping. It is still the same currency.
It would be a clusterfuck if we would have to tell interested users that they need different altcoins now because we built bitcoin into a artificial cage. Out of fear. I mean i can understand why fear is spreading in the community. It is, unfortunately, a hunting place for scammers, inept businessmans and whatsoever. Everyone lost huge piles of cash, probably many lost all and becoming cautious is natural. But being fearful and being too restrictive and conservative was never a good receipt for growth.