So what?

Miley Cirus and Linday Lohan are both huge on social networks, but that doesn't mean they're smart, talented, or even beautiful. Social networks are like crowds. You wouldn't use them as a tool to measure something or someone is good or bad.

I guess we all know that. BIP 101 was suggesting 8 MB blocks last summer! This didn't go through so the bar has been lowered.

I don't understand why most miners don't want to see big. We need to find a solution which would allow one hundred times more transactions. Let's imagine 1% of humanity doing one transaction each day. Does that sound crazy?

That would be 71 millions transactions each day but the network is already stressed at 200,000 daily transactions. Unless there are major changes, I can't see a bright future for BTC. And change must come as soon as possible. Every single day without a change makes investors less confident.

I find it strange that the guy associates BTC with the blockchain since banks are investigating blockchain technology for their own private use. And his idea that anything programmed can be hacked! I wouldn't feel confident if I had an account in his bank. Banks run everything on software these days...

Several people said that BTC and Paypal cannot be compared and they're entirely right. BTC's vastly superior, it's a currency besides being a fantastic way to exchange money electronically between 2 distant people. I also add that Paypal is old technology, so how come its user base keeps on growing fast and big?

If we look at Twitter, it's leveling while the newer Snapchat app is gaining millions of new users each month. The same thing not happening to BTC, people giving up old tech to adopt the newer and better one, just shows there's something wrong with BTC. Better fix it soon. What can we do to help?

That has already started, they don't pay their women. The American woman who asks her husband money to go shopping, doesn't get anything in Irak. I hope those financial difficulties will prevent them to buy more ammunitions and guns.

I voted yes. I still believe in BTC, but I don't believe in the men, the developers. The block size issue should have been fixed last summer. Something needs to be done to restore confidence. If Donald Trump was managing BTC, he would have fired all the developers long ago, and fixed the problem.

There's another topic comparing the 2: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1260666.0

The subject here is that between 2014 and 2015, Paypal gained 16 millions new users (https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/about). There's no way to be sure as it's impossible to count how many users BTC has, but I believe it's more than BTC. Much more. So I'm asking why? And ultimately, what can be done to reverse this trend?

Since BTC is cheaper to use, I guess Paypal is more successful because it's better at making its users feel safe, without any dark cloud/block size issue above their heads.

I sincerely believe BTC's one hundred times better than Paypal because it's a currency, and unregulated, but something clearly has to change. I've been here long enough to remember guys writing that BTC would kill Paypal, it hasn't, and it doesn't look that it will.

You can rest! I've got nothing about stamp collectors. I used this as an example of a group with static, or nearly static user base.

Let's look at snapchat: it gains more new users in a single month than BTC does in one year. Why? I've been here long enough to remember that where there guys saying that BTC would grow bigger than Facebook. It hasn't, and nobody's saying that anymore. BTC has just stalled. It's not dead, nor dying, but the huge growth everybody was expecting is nowhere in sight, and one reason behind this is the scalability issue. BTC needs to be able to grow ten-fold this year, and one hundred fold next year.

No! Problems are being solved in every business in the real world. The electric car wasn't working, but now we have some which can drive 300 miles. Lightning is getting more efficient with LEDs. We're having smartphones with more computing power than a mainframe computer of 20 years ago. Cars are getting safer and faster...

I created this topic as a reaction to Mike Hearn's departure, but I shall add that I'm a BTC entrepreneur. I have a BTC business waiting on my server (well, a small one, it would be managed in my spare time at first). My project has been sitting since last summer, but I'm not launching it because the market conditions aren't good. I'm ready to make it big, and I'm willing to put money into it, but BTC's future is just not secure enough at this time. I need to see where BTC's heading and I need to be sure that BTC can grow big without any hiccup.

No, war isn't stealing. Stealing is secondary, it's a consequence. War is the destruction of your enemy. IS wants to kill all the infidels. Hitler wanted to destroy all Jews, Gypsies and all people he saw as enemies of the pure Aryan race...

Mike Hearn has left and I fully understand him. He won't the only one to leave.

I'm afraid that in a few months there will be only losers supporting BTC. Yes, losers, because smart guys want action. Smart guys want results. Fast. Now! The block size problem has been hanging around for more than 6 months and no clear solution is in sight. Can you name another business where problems don't get solved, and people just bury their heads in the sand hoping the problem would disappear? What will happen first: the next release of Android, facebook having 2 billions users, Elon Musk going to Mars, or the block size issue solved?

I cannot imagine how much frustration, and sorrow, the people who have invested several years of theirs lives in BTC, shall feel. When I look around I see plenty investing in blockchain systems because the tech is so great, but nobody's investing in BTC anymore.

If the block size issue isn't solved this quarter, any sane person shall leave the ship. I guess that if Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive, he would cry! He launched something truly great, but it has stalled last year. There's no lack of dreamers hoping that BTC shall reach $1,000 again, but I (and the real BTC supporters, I hope) certainly haven't joined to become a renter. BTC may be worth $100 or $10,000 and I don't care. What I do care about is that BTC has the ability to grow ten-fold this year, then one hundred-fold next year (I mean the number of transactions).

If BTC cannot grow, if it cannot change, it will follow the footsteps of the typerwriter. It was fantastic at launch, but it disappeared when a new superior technology appeared, and no typewriter company has survived making computers.

Note: don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying BTC's dead. It can keep on going many years with the same small number of users. There are some old folks very happy to collect stamps, you know.

It's only an idea so far, I'm waiting to see how it will materialize. Very few people living in the UK don't speak at least some of the language. The PM talks about "poor English", but how do you define it? Some teenage girls who left for Syria were going to school, and they fully understand the language.

The stock market and the real estate market are run pretty much the same way in China, and probably also by the same people. There's an empty land, and some high-ranking official says it would be a great place for development. So he green-lights everything and huge apartments complexes are built, before anyone poses market questions. Who is going to live there? Who will want to live there? Same for the stock market. Government says the people should invest in stocks, so millions do without knowing anything about stocks nor the market, prompting the government to intervene to prevent huge disruptions or crashes.

The government should probably stop playing with the economy, but it's in such a mess right now...

Of course not! I want BTC to grow with one billion people using it every day. I want to buy a car with BTC and use it for all my businesses. That also means I hope all faucets will disappear, and BTC gambling websites as well. This should be the main change. BTC should be used for business first.

@pompatore
Thanks a lot for your long post with great info.

I don't think BTC's dead yet, but I see it going into some kind of "vegetative state". All Internet startups need to grow fast, and the blocksize issue has been hanging around for more than 6 months without a solution. Unless this problem is solved, with the network gaining ability to accept ten times more transactions, we can't expect any growth.

60 years ago in the US, in Tennessee or Louisiana, I'm not sure, a man could marry a girl aged 13. The laws have changed, but in most of Europe as well, not long ago, I mean last century, it was possible to marry a girl aged 14. We've changed, they haven't.

Have you tried it in many places? Because the way I see it, it's getting worse and worse. There are more and more places with, as they say, free wi-fi, but you can't send emails because port 993 is blocked, you can't do FTP and all BTC software is blocked. Anyway the solution you propose isn't much useful, because it only allows sending, not receiving, so you would have to connect regularly to synchronize what's on your computer with what's in the blockchain.

Because online wallets are the only wallets which work everywhere. There's no choice.
You can't download the blockchain if you're not at home, and clients like Multibit rarely works in hotels. Wifi's free but they have firewalls and routers which blocks most ports. Same with Mycellium on my tablet.

Have you ever heard about drugs? The cocaine market in America is larger than the whole BTC capitalization and it works without any bank, nor any financial institution. I've heard it's growing, with more and more customers each year, despite the fortune the US government spends on fighting it. It's all illegal and runs 100% with cash, and the government cannot stop it despite the dealers working in the open every night.

If the drug business can thrive, I have no doubt BTC cannot be stopped by anyone.

"it hopefully inspires people". That's what the guy says.

I'm afraid it will inspire people to shoot him a bullet in his head to silence him. If he expects to see women dancing and get a date, he will fail. Miss Irak who was elected recently has received several death threats, and she isn't in an IS controlled town.