I think that the issue of anti-spam measures kind of solves itself when we have a deflationary and scarce coin like bitcoin.
The minimum on-chain unit is 1 satoshi, which with current prices is at 0.0003604 USD. Ste standard segwit transaction is 140 vBytes according to mempool.space. So even at fees of 1 satoshi per vByte one would have to pay at least 5 dollar cents per btc transaction. Of course, a block size increase doesn't have to completely decimate the fee market, which is a useful feature. A block-size increase could be dynamic and adjustable. There were such solutions presented even circa 2015 with the bitcoin XT and bitcoin classic clients. Under these measures, a spam attack could in par to how expensive it is now.

I don't understand the point then. If you agree that BCH and BSV are shitcoins for reasons other than the blockchsize increase, what makes you be against block size increases then?
If bitcoin increases its block capacity it wouldn't make it lose all that makes it good, right?


If we are to examine the specs of those running a bitcoin full node right now, how many would 100% be unable to sync with a block size increase? And what would cause it? If let's say the block size goes from 4 MB now to 8 MB, maybe a concern would be CPU power. But bitcoin core already works great with even the weaker CPUs. The only requirement listed in bitcoin.org is for the CPU to be above 1GHz. These days it's actually hard to find a CPU that old for sale.

The other requirement might be disk space. Well with even the maximum expansion of 4 MB per 10 minutes, the BTC blockchain can't grow more than 210240 MB a year (525600 minutes in a year / 10 minute block time * 4 MB block capacity). So a 2 fold increase could generate 400GB blockchain files in a year at MAXIMUM utilization. Honestly it's not that bad. Disk space is very cheap when we talk about these sizes. A 1 TB HDD costs 20$ new now.

And also one does not need to store the full historical record of transactions to host a trustless node. A node without the full blockchain stored can still produce trustless network information so long as it's connected to the network.

The biggest issue might be bandwidth. Currently bitcoin.org lists 15 GB/month as a requirement to run bitcoin core. Many parts of the world have slow internet but honestly 15 GB a month is nothing.
What connection speed translates to 15 GB a month. Let's see. 15 GB is 120000 Megabits. If you divide 120k to the seconds in a month, you get 0.04566 Mbits per second or 45.66 Kilobits. Speeds such low aren't even commercially available anymore. 2g and EDGE connections have been taken out of commision in most places for at least 3 years now and so has been ISDN/Dial up etc.. Anyone with signal or an internet connection to his residence should be able to run a bitcoin node reliably even if the bandwidth requirement was increased 10 fold.

And all that IF the blocksize increase is utilized fully (which is unlikely to happen imminently)


tl;dr my calculations show that even with a substantial block size increase at full utilization most hosting a bitcoin node won't need to upgrade their infastracture. And those that will probably will still be able to host a node by spending an extra 50$ maximum once.

What makes BCH and BSV shitcoins is a plethora of reasons other than just having bigger blocks. Mind you, bitcoin was very close to having double the block capacity it has now when SegWit got activated. It was called SegWit2x. And in the end even without the 2x part, bitcoin went from 1MB blocks to 4MB. So it BTC a shitcoin as well?
No! Because bitcoin has a community, some fragments of democracy (unlike the two aforementioned coins that are self centered projects), the best developers, the biggest and most active community.


Satoshi could have only done so much himself.
And it's funny how these days many people bring up sidechains and lightning as potential solutions to bitcoin's scalability issue, based on the argument that bitcoin should change as little as possible, when satoshi himself admitted that the infrastructure as it stood when he was around in the community was insufficient for scaling, and would eventually need to be changed.

Not changing bitcoin at least slightly to accommodate for biger volumes of transactions, especially when there's demand for that, is actually against satoshi's very vision.

This is something I've always been wondering about. Gamblers tend to have a league, be it basketball football or any famed sport, that they tend to love most. For instance in the USA American football and NBA betting tend to be very popular, while in south and south east Asia countries cricket is also very popular among other sports. So people tend to have a league in a certain sport that they know the most about, have a favorite team in, know the players etc.

So what's your experience with this. When your league is in break, do you tend to try to follow other leagues that you're familiar with, or will you gamble on anything really? I'm interested to hear what other people have to say in this matter.

For me personally, I try to limit my gambling to teams where I know at least some players, because otherwise it's easy to get carried away. Really in my opinion, gambling on leagues and sports that you know little to nothing about, only increases the edge against you.

The Greek subforum in bitcointalk currently has no moderator. There used to be a single moderator but I guess he became busy with life and gave the forum up.

If theymos would be kind enough to assign a moderator, I can say that I volunteer for the role.
I have been a member of this forum since 2013 and I am a native Greek speaker with activity in the Greek community.
Most threads that were removed for spam in the Greek community were reported by me, global moderators can attest for this perhaps.

Anyway, hopefully theymos listens. No need to dedicate this entire thread to me. If theymos decided to add a mod it could be me or anyone else really. It's just that someone active needs to help on the Greek subforum. Other members of th Greek community have also been saying the same as it becomes evident by recent threads.

Aren't you a developer? I thought you'd know the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin. Even though the Ethereum Blockchain is above 15 TB, minimum gas requirements put it in a situation where fees can never be low. And to think, these gas requirements were programmed while ETH had an ICO pricing it at 30 or so cents. So this is entirely irrelevant to our discussion. It's a different architecture, very inefficient, and built on a very different approach.

As of the lightning network, it has been in development for so many years and still no end on sight to ever being viable. I wrote about it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471172.40

Also, economic wise, lower fees will result in higher transaction numbers which will potentially balance out the total amount of fees to a bigger number. It's basic economic principles: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5474087.0

It was interesting how kosovo won against Israel and how Switzerland fought so hard to win against them but still secured a tie.

Honestly to me it's sad to see how tightened the security has to be just to justify Israel's participation in the tournament:
https://www.thenationalnews.com/sport/football/2023/11/13/israel-lose-to-kosovo-on-return-to-euro-2024-qualifying-in-pictures/

I'd be easier for everyone if they just let the tournament. People in Europe are objecting to the idea of hosting Israel in the tournament and rightly so, especially given what they're doing in palestine now, it's up there with Russia or even worse.

Welp, I was dared to create a thread specifically discussing a potential max block size increase... So here we go:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5474329.msg63169376#msg63169376

Feel free to drop by, vote, and give your two cents on the matter. In 2023 we shouldn't consider this matter as taboo. Right?!
Let's see what the sentiment is now that years have passed since the so called "block size wars".

I'll start by dedicating this thread to stompix (honestly, no hate, debate with him is enjoyable even though we sometimes disagree) who dared me to make this thread.


It's already 2023 now and I think having a taboo over mere discussion of block capacity shouldn't be shunned or considered taboo.

Continuing the debate:

Well well well... This is an age old arguement.
Quoting my post that I also linked in the OP:


Yet, in the end, we got 4MB blocks and still no super computers are needed. It's probably safe to say that even higher max block size increases could be easily accommodated by a run in the mill home computer. Moore's law is still a thing. Computing and storage space becomes cheaper. So, surpassing 1MB blocks didn't destroy BTC. Even 4MB blocks didn't. But now, so many years after 2015, storage, memory and computing power are cheaper than ever. So this argument doesn't stand.

But what do you know! It doesn't even matter if bitcoin full node requirements are raised. Why? Because decentralization doesn't necessarily guarantee trustlessness and immutability. And in a way, mining nodes are already way fewer and with much higher requirements than normal network nodes. So we've already been beyond the point where maximizing decentralization mattered ever since ASICs were introduced for bitcoin. Even satoshi admitted to such:

But people often forget that satoshi didn't romanticize decentralization over trustlessness and immutability. Instead only this part of the quote became famous.

Circa 2014 the block size wars took bitcoin by storm.
Eventually after a lot of drama that has been well documented elsewhere (I made my own attempt documenting a time line of the blocksize wars, its outcomes and conclusions here).

But I'm starting this poll in hopes of getting the community's opinion. So for this post I'll not go through my opinion in the OP.
Please feel free to answer the question in the poll and even better if you can also explain your answer.

Back in 2015, and after the adoption of a compromise in the form of SegWit, the topic of the block capacity was very taboo.
Well, we're in 2023 now, and for different reasons congestion is still an issue. Increasing the capacity of bitcoin blocks could potentially be a solution to the issues of high fees and congestion.

So I think it's worth exploring what people think about this issue. Please share your thoughts below.

Bitcointalk username: alani123
Forum rank: Legendary
bech32 address: bc1q54u6us9hj79wf3hldxqk9hekzjmksuc26fwcev

I'm not sure if betking.io used betking.com's reputation.

betking.com might be an established casino in nigeria but as it goes with many such businesses, they've optimized their services to this country's audience mostly.
I browse online casinos daily and never happened to come across betking.com. Most probably that's because it's a casino specific to Nigeria. For casinos that seek out national licenses it's almost a must to actually optimize their services to the country they're holding the license at, so it doesn't surprise me.

Could it be that you're confusing betking.com with betking.io?

I'm pretty sure betking.io was a casino that started with an ICO and is pretty notorious over here in bitcointalk for having many dissatisfied investors. There's a huge discussion about this in the thread you also linked in the OP.

So the Nigerian betking seems to be a successful casino in Nigeria but probably has nothing to do with the .io betking that's known in bitcointalk.

I think the principles of gambling are similar between it and any risk-based activity. For example the principles of trading without taking unbalanced risks are very well documented and generally respected in the community.

These principles are pretty simple and easily understood.
For instance, you should consider that gambling any amount means that it could result in the total loss of this amount.
So based on that, only a portion of your steady income should be risked with such activities.
Let's say you make 300$ per week.
After expenses like rent, bills and various other smaller things, maybe you can put aside 50$
Of the money you put aside you should also keep some for emergencies.

So the self-imposed limits should be to never gamble more than 50$ a week, and ideally even less. For instance if you already have a decent savings account, gambling with all the 50$ you put aside in a week won't do much harm to you for one week. But especially if you don't putting money aside should be a priority so the gambling spending should be reduced.

To adapt the above example to your personal income, you can simply take an average of how much you can put aside each week from 3 or more months, and then put a hard limit to how much you will be gambling with.

I think it should work the other way around. Large winners from luck-based games are very few and sporadic. So if we want gambling to reliably have a positive impact somehow, those hosting the games (i.e. casinos) should maintain some programs to give back.

A casino has a steady source of income from people's losses. And having a stable source of income means that they'll be able to fund larger programs that can have a lasting impact communities. Giving someone a laptop once is very good also, but imagine a program that provides education and provides laptops every week. Hopefully more of the bigger casinos will adopt some such programs as they become successful.

Well then you picked a very weird time to make this post. We're facing very high fees as bitcoin users in this moment, which as you're rightly pointing out is pricing out many bitcoin users and provides counter-incentive to use bitcoin for most types of normal transactions.

So saying that bitcoin is absolutely bound to have high fees due to it not having tail emissions, while true, isn't something that would have to be discussed now. Maybe after 2 or 3 more halvings? But that's years away from now. Even based on this logic, we don't NEED to have big fees neither now nor at any point in bitcoin's usage. If the capacity for transactions was simply increased, more people could be paying fees, albeit smaller, but this increased capacity would eventually balance out to higher fees in total.

So really the solution of providing incentive to keep the network secure even after emissions in the form of block rewards end, the simplest solution to provide miner rewards could just be making it easier for more transactions to happen.

This is not true. Ordinal inscriptions have a comparative advantage to other types of transactions. For the amount of space they take on-chain, they pay less actual sats/vByte.
This is very easy to demonstrate. For instance, this following transaction should have paid ~300 USD in fees but instead was given a 75% discount due to exploiting certain Taproot and SegWit features that are overutilized to make ordinal transactions much cheaper comparatively to normal transactions.
https://mempool.space/tx/77e996de08c48ed282a7b8bc88ca199712a15fa68babb10a0b3ee760674cf21b

If it weren't for these discounts we'd certainly be having much less spam from Ordinal NFTs and BRC-20 tokens.

I just wanted to make a short post about the differing opinions that there exist about bitcoin's future.
Some people seem to believe that it's bitcoin's fate to have high fees. That the limited block space along with increasing demand will combine to replace block rewards, continuing to provide miner incentives to keep the network secure.

Well, for one, we're far from bitcoin having block rewards that are near zero. So saying that bitcoin having high fees is already meeting its destiny is at the very least a misrepresentation of what's happening.

The thing is, bitcoin's fees are currently up due to NFT and tokens unrelated to BTC trying to be included in the blockchain.
So it's not like bitcoin is facing an unavoidable destiny right now.

There ARE ways that could potentially help with the spam that's causing the blockchain bloat. To name a few:
1. Disincentivizing on-chain NFTs and tokens creations by removing their fee discounts wherever possible.
2. Increasing fees for using certain features.
3. Transaction filtering to invalidate transactions that are with certainty used for putting tokens on-chain.
4. Making block space bigger.

Some of these, or even a combination of the above could easy the strain on the blockchain caused by transactions that aren't actually done to transact value with BTC.
And to address potential concerns about increasing the space for transactions in blocks, one must understand economics.
More transaction space resulting in lower fees doesn't mean that there will be no incentive to protect the network.
Lower fees will result to more demand to create transactions which will in turn balance out to total transaction fees potentially even being higher after an equilibrium is reached.  


Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_equilibrium

Well, any educated user would know that it didn't need to be this way...
See this following satoshi post quoted:

The romanticized idea of decentralization we have now is not what the original vision of bitcoin was. Satoshi himself was ready to sacrifice some decentralization so long as transactions remained immutable. If bitcoin's ability to transact cash is reduced to being worse than banks, then what's the point of calling it a A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System anymore?

This brings us to what's causing the current ongoing issue of high fees. It's not high demand and it's not miners wanting to charge extra for "keeping the chain secure".
It's actually ordinal transactions that put NFT and token data on bitcoin's chain and take away space from actual transactions.
Moreover, by abusing Taproot OP codes and SegWit witness data space, they even get discounts that a regular transaction wouldn't.
See for instance this transaction:
https://mempool.space/tx/77e996de08c48ed282a7b8bc88ca199712a15fa68babb10a0b3ee760674cf21b

The fee would have normally been above 300 USD, but by abusing these newish updates on bitcoin they get away with only paying for a fraction of the space they're actually taking in the blockchain.

Satoshi was also for imposing limits on abuses for what could get in bitcoin's chain as a valid transactions. So if ordinals are the single point of concern on what's causing this problem, then they should be addressed. That's 100% in line with bitcoin's vision.

So, your venture is to be a predatory loan shark with problem gamblers!? Well, good luck trying to get your money back. Are you also going to team up with local Italians when you're making these people offers they can't refuse?


Honestly I don't see this working. People that will go as far as to lend money to gamble would never pay back even if they had more money. They'd just find ways to gamble it away too first.