I wonder how much it costs to protect the Crown Jewels?

The Mona Lisa?

That red stripe painting in some Canadian museum (a puny 5 million of value to protect, was it?)

Fort Knox yearly operating budget?

The space shuttle?

The pentagon?

The twin towers... oops too late.

Etc... lets look at some real life numbers...

-MarkM-

Maybe call it a currency and final settlement system.

Payment systems differ from final settlement systems largely in deliberately not providing final settlement for some six months or so. It seems to be a feature, might be important in getting spenders to use it, but whyever it is there payment systems seem to be deliberately putting off final settlement, not providing final settlement as irreversibly as possible as soon as possible for as large a transaction as possible, which is where bitcoin shines.

-MarkM-

Do the hoarders want their hoard to be secure or not?

If transactors revolt, resulting in too few transactions to keep difficulty high, difficulty will start to fall and hoarders can either decide to lower the cap at stake by moving capital out, or pay (e.g. by fee-only transactions) to keep difficulty as high as they feel their hoard needs it to be.

This might actually be a good way to motivate people to continue to look for even cheaper methods of storing value long term, maybe someone will come up with something even cheaper per X amount of value to protect than bitcoin is.

-MarkM-

1998 : 00.05 MB (50k)
2002 : 00.10 MB
2006 : 00.20 MB
2010 : 00.40 MB
2014 : 00.80 MB

Hey, you're right, 50k in 1998 with the 4 years thing we're only a little ahead of schedule, but are nowhere near hitting the max. Cool, start the 4 year doubling way back in 1998 then.

If we start it now though, we could instead end up with

2014 : 02.00 MB
2020 : 04.00 MB
2024 : 08.00 MB
2028 : 16.00 MB

So at 2028 and onward we'd be starting into some seriously large increases in size.

As you said, miners are free to voluntarily use smaller if they choose.

-MarkM-

Sounds like all the more reason not to clutter the blockchain with all that penny-ante stuff.

Send their lunchmoney provider their paycheque in bitcoins and let the lunchmoney provider (M-PESA or whoever does lunchmoney in their neighborhood) handle the 270+ transactions a second the paycheque gets spent on.

Bitcoin is a currency, not a [ lunchmoney / pocketchange-convenience / changepurse ] provider / service.

-MarkM-

Huh? Isn't that what I just said?

Let them use petabyte blocks if they want, what the fuck, who cares, if some nations/people's technology or infrastructure can't handle that there are plenty of alt-coins they can use instead.

For example anyone who thinks anything more than 60 megabytes per ten minutes would be a bit too much for them can choose geistgeld, with its 60 one-megabyte blocks per 10 minutes (one block per ten seconds).

Anyone who thinks any more than four megabytes per ten minutes would be a bit much for them to handle can choose a one block per two and a half minutes coin (is litecoin one of the 2.5 minutes blocks ones?)

Anyone who thinks five megabytes per ten minutes is better than four, but more than that might be a problem can use the two minute blocks coin, I am fairly sure there is one I just cannot recall which one it was. Unless it was merely someone carelessly saying two minutes when they meant two and a half.

Basically if the megacorps / superpower-nations, or the places/people with the most-massive highest-capability infrastructure want to remove the limit so the vicious dog eat dog world of ruthless competition can get to the most massive, highest-bandwidth system as fast as possible to ensure it is absolutely bigger than any other in the world, so big no other network could ever hope to compete with it, there are plenty of alternative blockchain based currencies anyone with less interest in or desire for an infrastructure-tech bubble can choose.

-MarkM-

EDIT: "We don't care what your fat cat banker's nubile daughter spent on individual doses or even sixpacks of bubblegum, but we do want to account correctly for our local currency you spend on the shiploads of bubblegum we export to you."

We Consume More Resources Every Day!

-MarkM-

Then maybe it really is best to just let whoever can manage to build petabyte blocks do so as soon as possible to raise the bar as high as possible as fast as possible?

Its not like there aren't alt-chains nations of various sizes, technology-levels and industrial base can use if the G7's ideal uber-network is a bit too much for them to install/use domestically.

-MarkM-

51% attackers were not realistic a while ago, then came ASICs. Once we get tons of ASICs in place, 51% attacks will again start to look unrealistic. What is realistic is the concept of detemined, fanatical foes, even ones willing to sacrifice not just other people's lives but their own. Is suicide bombing realistic? Yet it happens.

As soon as we have some manipulable (and to adapt really just means to be manipulated, whatever is being adapted to is the manipulating variable) increase system, that is a whole new vector for realistic and unrealistic attacks.

-MarkM-

No they don't want to harm bitcoin, they want to increase their 80% to 100% by eliminating the 20%, and don't care if they have to blow out the nation's infrastructure to do it.

That is, they don't care if they have to exceed the block size that protects the infrastructure against coalitions of terrorists and axes of allied enemy nations. In short they are willing to act like coalitions of terrorists or axes of allied enemy nations, or enlist the help of such groups, to get that remaining 20% for themselves.

-MarkM-

Compound interest is a bitch.

The progrssive doubling proposals are suspicious for the same reasons, percentages instead doesn't really change the fundamental unsustainability of compound interest.

Better to be a backward nation with an unassailable infrastructure than a wet paper bag any superpower or axis of allied determined enemy nations will blow right through simply as a side-effect of catering to the endless greed/gluttony of their ever more obese moar moar moar proletariat.

-MarkM-

No. First, as a matter of national security, we need a hard limit no terrorist miner coalition or axis of allied enemy nations can exceed to disable the nation's financial infrastructure.

Within that, miners can go ahead and double and halve and bicker and moan all they like.

-MarkM-

That seems like just an invitation for someone to game it.

How much percent of the hashing power would it take to just drive block size up forever using that formula?

(20% per step! Srsly? At least the 1% in original post would take 100 difficulty periods (or so; is it closer to 70 really?) to double it but compound interest is a bitch, ask investors whether 1% per difficulty interest on an investment would be legit or a ponzi...)

-MarkM-

Can we really not get rid of any going back down? If it can come down later it ought not to have gone up in the first place.

-MarkM-

Haha, maybe do it similar to how that newfangled way of getting past the Shannon limit with radio is done, exploiting interference so the values at each location come out right despite (actually even because of) the interference.

Hologramatic in a way even maybe?

Rate of change of balance of an account might be a similar problem to packing information into a "channel" thus admit of similar solutions to "the Shannon limit".

-MarkM-

If so then we are down to determining what percent to increase by per referendum and what percent yes vote in the referendum is required to cause that increase.

Maybe frequency of referendi too. (Faux Latin! Or is that real Latin? (By some sheer fluke.))

-MarkM-

Good point, okay, how about interleave the two adjustments, halving the subsidy halfway through each doubling of the size period aka doubling the size halfway through each halving of the subsidy period?

-MarkM-

Yes, much better image, is it somehow from the same type of camera or did a "better"/different camera have to be used to achieve this?

Beautiful smile/expression by the way, very "warm" / expressive.

-MarkM-

Suppose my idea of imagining Ripples as if they are more like community shares than a community currency per se of a more normal (un-sharelike) type.

Suppose the SEC and other branches of Big Brother have not made any ruling that "community shares" are some kind of "exemption" from rules and regulations applicable to "corporate shares".

Suppose people are already in danger of predatory speculators / Uranian mafia / Ferrengi relieving them of their birthright for a mess of pottage.

What do you say/write?

a) If you are an "insider"?

b) If you are a deniable asset of the Martian Intelligence 5ervice based out of the city MI-5ius of the planet known as M5?

c) Other?

-MarkM-

Multiple chains and off chain does scale "better" though, regardless of whether fully p2p with vast swarms of ubiquitous commodity full peers all of basically the same scale can be scaled up to any desired scale or not. Right?

-MarkM-