This sort of argument boils down to an assumption that miners are not net economically-rational. If you think that, then you must think that bitcoin can *never* work. Miners being net-econo-rational actually *IS* probably a core axiom that must be accepted for Bitcoin to be viable. So arguments that reject that idea are worthless.

Ok, you're getting pedantic today, so yes, of course, key properties of bitcoin are its fixed supply and censorship-resistance. That's what I signed up for. I didn't sign for deliberately breaking free-market properties where we can easily have them.

It sounds like you don't realize how the network was designed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11625671#msg11625671

Just because the miners decide on the blocksize it does not follow that people will not be able to run full nodes. Miners will choose what they think is best for Bitcoin, if they think it is important that more people can run full nodes, they will make the blocksize smaller or keep it at its present size. The miners are the best group of people to make this decision because they are incentivized to do what is best for Bitcoin, whatever that might mean at the time.

Melbustus is correct in saying that having the blocksize decided by the Core development team is anti-freemarket and the equivalent of economic engineering or centralized planning. Especially when compared to consensus through proof of work and or other more distributed decision making processes.

There's a giant misinterpretation going on here. "bigblockism" is not pro-statist. If any similar generalization is true, it's that small-blockism is anti-freemarket. Lift the cap, and miners will respond to free market dynamics and set soft-caps that make sense given the market demand for blockspace; maybe that'd still be around 1mb, maybe not. But intentionally leaving the cap in place amounts to deliberate economic engineering; aka, central planning.

How on earth do you manage to run into this? Blocks are reguraly underfilled, the transaction rate is ~2 tps, average blocksize is 0.5 Mb. Your transaction should've been included quite fast. I guess you simply have wallet problems, e.g. improper fees, non-standard tx or something of that kind, that prevents you txs from being included in a block.

The chart is showing you what you will get: Higher prices in the future.

The past 5 years have clearly shown that Bitcoin transaction levels are correleated to its market value.
Thousandfold increase of both levels. @r0ach is 100 pct right.

Exactly.

Hyperbole much?

They're going to raise the TPS capacity modestly? Good. The 1MB4EVA crowd may be ridiculous, but they exist.

On the Bitcoin supply side, conversely, things look quite grim. Up until recently Bitcoins were generated via mining at the rate of about three million a year. Starting with the current year mining rewards halved, which means yearly Bitcoin generation is 1.3mn tops. Out of this, a fraction between a third and a half will have to be sold to pay operational costs of the miners - so about 600`000 Bitcoins are meeting the market this year (although part of them are possibly meeting the market straight in the pockets of their owners, who bought mining gear in the first place to acquire Bitcoins, so they've paid for the rigs and electricity in fiat, are registering the tax-deductible loss thereof and keeping the Bitcoin).

Other than this ~4% of the Bitcoin monetary mass, there may be as much as maybe 10ish% that is looking for dollars for whatever reasons. Then again, that 10ish% could be as low as 1%.

Now let's remodel : what happens when a 300% increase on the supply side meets a 5% increase in the demand side ? There's pretty much literally nothing those extra dollars nobody wants can do to increase the Bitcoin supply. It's very, very inelastic, and consequently the only stability point is when equilibrium is reached. Two billion dollars divided by 600`000 Bitcoins comes to three thousand dollars and change per Bitcoin.

Will people stop throwing dollars at Bitcoin because Bitcoin prices in dollars are rising ? No, they will not. If anything the converse is more likely. Will people start throwing Bitcoin at dollars because Bitcoin prices in dollars are rising ? No, they will not. If anything, the converse is more likely.

You seem pretty confident that no investment is being deterred by 3 TPS. I would argue that much of what is invested into bitcoin is on the basis of "what it can be", not necessarily "what it is today". 3 TPS being permanent would certainly dissuade me from future investment.

Thankfully, even the Core devs seem to be coalescing towards a modest increase in capacity to allow time for alternative scaling solutions to move from theory to reality.

Bitcoin's network effect does not operate solely as a function of its transactional capacity.

It is impossible for Bitcoin to differentiate itself through its transaction throughput. Only its censorship resistance and decentralized nature makes it unique.

Seeing as a large majority of Bitcoin users are only interested in holding for the near future we have to assume this will be through of prospective adopters and therefore it is wrong to propose that Bitcoin's TPS put a glass ceiling on Bitcoin's network effect.

In one paragraph why you have to be seriously out of your mind to try and stop bigger blocks:

The original post is mostly concerned about WHEN and HOW Bitcoin can match or pass Paypal market cap/value of around 50 billion.

If you're to assume sole value of the network is determined by transaction processing capability relative to it's competitors with a 2x markup for decentralization

The blockstream shills here should risk a bet. Next year this time we'll have at least a doubled blocksize cap, triggered by XT, and Mister Maxwell can't do anything against it, because of lacking economic power.