Bitcoin can support a large scale and it must, for all sorts of reasons.
And before I state an opinion or refute anything, we see a big problem with your argument. You never say how bigger blocks is needed for large scale!! Look at e.g., USD. Block size = 0 forever and always, yet it seems a lot of people use it anyway. I mean, you could try to make the argument that a larger block size would tend towards quicker adoption or whatever, but .. you haven't tried.
Amongst others:
1. Currencies have network effects. A currency that has few users is
simply not competitive with currencies that have many. There's no such
thing as a settlement currency for high value transactions only, as
evidenced by the ever-dropping importance of gold.
Few users != smaller blocks, as I said already. If you want to argue it is, go - do so. I'm listening.
2. A decentralised currency that the vast majority can't use doesn't
change the amount of centralisation in the world. Most people will still
end up using banks, with all the normal problems. You cannot solve a
problem by creating a theoretically pure solution that's out of reach of
ordinary people: just ask academic cryptographers!
It's not clear to me why different size blocks would change Jo Schmoe's use habits. Again, there are no blocks with fiat, and a lot of people still use it. I mean, I can think of some arguments a little bit but not enough to articulate them. If somebody can - I'm all ears.
3. Growth is a part of the social contract. It always has been.
The best quote Gregory can find to suggest Satoshi wanted small blocks
is a one sentence hypothetical example about what *might* happen if
Bitcoin users became "tyrannical" as a result of non-financial transactions
being stuffed in the block chain. That position makes sense because his
scaling arguments assuming payment-network-sized traffic and throwing DNS
systems or whatever into the mix could invalidate those arguments, in the
absence of merged mining. But Satoshi did invent merged mining, and so
there's no need for Bitcoin users to get "tyrannical": his original
arguments still hold.
4. All the plans for some kind of ultra-throttled Bitcoin network used
for infrequent transactions neglect to ask where the infrastructure for
that will come from. The network of exchanges, payment processors and
startups that are paying people to build infrastructure are all based on
the assumption that the market will grow significantly. It's a gamble at
best because Bitcoin's success is not guaranteed, but if the block chain
cannot grow it's a gamble that is guaranteed to be lost.
So why should anyone go through the massive hassle of setting up
exchanges, without the lure of large future profits?
5. Bitcoin needs users, lots of them, for its political survival. There
are many people out there who would like to see digital cash disappear, or
be regulated out of existence. They will argue for that in front of
governments and courts .... some already are. And if they're going to lose
those arguments, the political and economic damage of getting rid of
Bitcoin must be large enough to make people think twice. That means it
needs supporters, it needs innovative services, it needs companies, and it
needs legal users making legal payments: as many of them as possible.
If Bitcoin is a tiny, obscure currency used by drug dealers and a
handful of crypto-at-any-cost geeks, the cost of simply banning it outright
will seem trivial and the hammer will drop. There won't be a large scale
payment network OR a high-value settlement network. And then the world is
really screwed, because nobody will get a second chance for a very long
time.
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-July/009815.html[/center]
Most actors in the space (exchanges, payment processors, big pool operators) have stated, in a scattershot way over time, that they support a blocksize increase.
Also some well known people like Roger Ver and Andreas Antonopoulos support bigger blocks.
I've seen no evidence that block size correlates to user base, nor that "most actors" support larger blocks.
So, it looks like a bunch of banks want bigger blocks. Why? I'm not sure but it makes me not trust it.
