Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I heard somewhere that there is a limit of 1 MB per bitcoin for the data related to the transaction of each bitcoin. I also heard that some bitcoin will be unusable (transaction will not be possible anymore for those bitcoin) starting next november because they will exceed their own 1MB limit.

Is there such a limit of 1MB per bitcoin?

It seems you're a bit confused about this ;)

No problem:
In very simple words: you send bitcoins from an address you controll to a different address by creating a transaction. This transaction basically tells everybody you want to send coins from address A to address B. The transaction is signed by a private key only you hold.
Since such a transaction is actually a piece of text, it has a certain size.

The way it works: you create a transaction and broadcast it to the network, the bitcoin network bundles all these transactions, and puts them into blocks. At the moment, such a block has a size limit of 1 Mb.

On average, 6 blocks an hour are created by the network, limiting the amount of transaction text to 6Mb/hour.

You can add a fee (a sort of 'tip') for the person generating the block to give him an incentive to add your transaction to his block instead of somebody else's. The higher the fee, the more chance your transaction will be mined.

THIS IS A VERY RUDAMENTARY EXPLANATION, it is not 100% correct, but just to give you a basic idear about blocksizes.

For the 1MB limit see the post by altcoinhosting. Id like to add to the bolded part. This is probably a misunderstanding. Any bitcoin will always be spendable as long as someone has control over the correct private key.

What the person that told you this probably referred to is that due to the limit it will be more expensive to make small payments. Due to the limit only a certain number of TX can fit into a block. This number currently is roughly 2000. If there are over 30k TX waiting for a confirmation (as there are now[1]) miners only confirm those that pay the highest fee per byte. This can become a problem if you want to transfer a very small amount (e.g. 0.0001) as the fee required to get a timely confirmation will need to be as high or even higher as the transfered amount. Thus it might no longer economical to use bitcoin for small amounts of coins.

There are different views on how to solve this, but AFAICT the great majoriy agrees that the limit must be increased - the question is how or rather in which order the needed steps are taken.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/BCDDom8.png

There is a proscribed limit to how much transaction data the Bitcoin system can process. The limit is currently set to 1 MB every 10 minutes on average. The fears of this limit somehow causing Bitcoin to fail are unreasonable.

thanks for your answer.

So I get now from where the 1Mb limit was coming from...

however, can this limit of 1 Mb per block increase over time if needed?

Yes, there are currently ongoing discussions (to put it polite, some might say an all out brawl) how to do this best. There are different approaches.

Some (bitcoin classic) prefer to simple increase the limit to 2MB first and do a more fancy solution called SegWit later. This however would split the network and would require everyone to update their client.

Others (bitcoin core) prefer to do SegWit first, which results in parts of the transaction (the signature) to be stored "outside" of the 1MB limit. It would allow 1.75 times as much transactions as the blocklimit, so with 1 MB it would allow 1.75 MB worth of transactions can be done without splitting the network. SegWit itself is not really a blocksize solution. It has other nice properties that make it a desirable solution.

Eventually both parties want 2MB blocklimit as well as SegWit.

Thanks for your answer.

Even if I don't get all the technical things behind the increase of blocksize, I understand that the 1MB limit can be increased if needed.

I assume that if it can be increased to 2MB, It will be possible to make it to 3MB, 4MB,... and so on if needed (there is no limit, right?).

Am I right?

technically, you're right... It's more a concencus problem (people that have to agree when an how big the blocks will become)

For bigger blocks than 2MB it is needed that the Bitcoin blockchain software must be changed. And every bitcoin user must update their software. The people that not update their software can also continue working with Bitcoin and than you have two kinds of Bitcoin, one via the old protocol and one via the new software.  This is called a hard-fork, and is undesirable.

Personally I find it strange that a complete newbie knows about the 1MB limit (people that I introduced Bitcoin to years ago don't even know about that).

My guess is that this account is yet another member of the large block conglomerate of shills and sockies (and now we have another new thread that we'll soon see the shills posting in).

I'd be expecting to see posts here from @franky1 and the others very soon.

So, assuming that change in software, we can go beyond 2MB limit per block...

 

yes but it would require an hard fork, so you need then to upgrade no matter, what, instead we can go to 2mb without any hadr fork thanks to seg wit, but both are not a final solution for the capacity issue

Why  "seg wit" or "hard fork upgrading" are not a final solution for capacity issue? what is the solution then?

Because they still are hard limits. If bitcoin continues to grow, that increased capacity will still run out. Segwit and the hard fork are still just temporary solutions.

There is no "final" solution.

some say that LN is the final solution, but i don't like the centralized apsect of it, also there are some issue with security for the LN

so no not even LN is the final solution, final solution is not discovered yet, and probably has to do with optimizing what we have already

The time will tell but I´m with you that the actual solutions will not work in the future!!

If there is no final solution:

Can BTC blockchain become one day (in decades) unbearable? meaning that even large infrastructure wouldn't be enough to store and process the BTC blockchain?

In theory, yes. I'm practice, probably not, as technology will become more powerful and be able support a larger blockchain. There will also be other solutions that people will think of to mitigate that problem.

The expectation is that technology will outpace the size of the block chain in the long run. Right now, that is not the case.

Is there a risk that only large corporations will be able to process BTC blockchain meaning that they will be the only mining facilities and thus imposing their transaction fee price?

imposing high fee would also ruin merchants business, because they will pay more for their transaction, and since merchants have a great position, i would say the chances are slim

what is LN to solve blockchain capacity issue?

Just know eventually, the 1 MB model scale is going to be forced to be bumped up.

If bitcoin wants daily transactions to happen when there are growing pains, its forced to be more then 1mb.

it has to do with instant confirmations https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/37n0l6/eli5_the_lightning_network/, it does not come without risk like many think

what I don't get is that if you receive 2 BTC and then 3 BTC on 2 different transactions, They won't merge into 5 BTC but will remain as 2 separate value in your wallet. (as explained  here : http://bitcoinfees.com/)
However, when I send 5 BTC and choose to send those 2 separate amounts (2BTC and 3 BTC) via a single transaction, THEN they will merge as a single amount of 5 BTC in the receiving wallet. is that right?

No, if you create two different outputs they are two different outputs even if they go to the same address. Its a bit of an arsehole move, you could even send someone 2 BTC in 0.001 BTC outputs each. Its a bit like paying a large bill in 1 cent pieces. Most wallets will not do this though, youd have to create a TX by hand or somehow force non-default behaviour for the wallet.

The separate 2 and 3 BTC amounts would be combined when sent normally, but it is possible to do it differently, as Shorena pointed out.

when odolvlobo says "The separate 2 and 3 BTC amounts would be combined when sent normally" does it mean that the 2 BTC and the 3 BTC sent together as 5 BTC will reach an other wallet as a single entity (5 BTC entity). right or not?

Yes, if you create a transaction which spends from those two outputs to a single output, that output can have a value of at most 5 BTC.

More the fees, less popular the currecny

imposing high fee would not help the bitcoins users. We have to come up with some other methods

I still have problem understanding how blocks build up.

At a time there is only one block generating. Then transactions are accumulating in that block. then when block reach 1 mb, block is attributed to one miner who gets the subsidies and the transaction fees related to that block. am I missing something?

No, that is not how blocks are generated.

A miner creates a block, full of however many transactions they decide to include. This block, when sent to every other node on the network, must be checked for validity. Part of that check is the size. The block is currently not allowed to be larger than 1 Mb. If it is, a node running current consensus rules will reject the block.

Here is how it works: Each miner assembles some number of unconfirmed transactions into a block (up to 1 MB), and then tries to add that block to the block chain. While each miner is trying to add their block, more unconfirmed transactions come in and the miner may or may not include them in their block. Once a winning block is added, the losing miners throw out their unsuccessful attempt, plus the transactions that were in the winning block, and start over.