Topic: Why i will support bigger blocks - and you should too - page 11. (Read 8663 times)

1. Currencies have network effects. A currency that has few users is
   simply not competitive with currencies that have many. There's no such
   thing as a settlement currency for high value transactions only, as
   evidenced by the ever-dropping importance of gold.


   2. A decentralised currency that the vast majority can't use doesn't
   change the amount of centralisation in the world. Most people will still
   end up using banks, with all the normal problems. You cannot solve a
   problem by creating a theoretically pure solution that's out of reach of
   ordinary people: just ask academic cryptographers!


   3. Growth is a part of the social contract. It always has been.

   The best quote Gregory can find to suggest Satoshi wanted small blocks
   is a one sentence hypothetical example about what *might* happen if
   Bitcoin users became "tyrannical" as a result of non-financial transactions
   being stuffed in the block chain. That position makes sense because his
   scaling arguments assuming payment-network-sized traffic and throwing DNS
   systems or whatever into the mix could invalidate those arguments, in the
   absence of merged mining. But Satoshi did invent merged mining, and so
   there's no need for Bitcoin users to get "tyrannical": his original
   arguments still hold.


   4. All the plans for some kind of ultra-throttled Bitcoin network used
   for infrequent transactions neglect to ask where the infrastructure for
   that will come from. The network of exchanges, payment processors and
   startups that are paying people to build infrastructure are all based on
   the assumption that the market will grow significantly. It's a gamble at
   best because Bitcoin's success is not guaranteed, but if the block chain
   cannot grow it's a gamble that is guaranteed to be lost.

   So why should anyone go through the massive hassle of setting up
   exchanges, without the lure of large future profits?


   5. Bitcoin needs users, lots of them, for its political survival. There
   are many people out there who would like to see digital cash disappear, or
   be regulated out of existence. They will argue for that in front of
   governments and courts .... some already are. And if they're going to lose
   those arguments, the political and economic damage of getting rid of
   Bitcoin must be large enough to make people think twice. That means it
   needs supporters, it needs innovative services, it needs companies, and it
   needs legal users making legal payments: as many of them as possible.

   If Bitcoin is a tiny, obscure currency used by drug dealers and a
   handful of crypto-at-any-cost geeks, the cost of simply banning it outright
   will seem trivial and the hammer will drop. There won't be a large scale
   payment network OR a high-value settlement network. And then the world is
   really screwed, because nobody will get a second chance for a very long
   time.

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-July/009815.html