All rather rational. I'll just respond to a few of your points.
Yes, mempool is low. You know what else is low? Use of BTC in day-to-day commerce. While I've rarely bought the canonical 'coffee' with BTC, I used to be able to pay my bar and restaurant tabs with it. No more. While my experience itself is anecdotal, retailers which used to accept BTC do not accept BTC any longer. Maybe you have not noticed this trend. Maybe you don't actually _use_ Bitcoin?
SegWit as a capacity increase is laughable. Follow me on this...
A SegWit coin is not a Bitcoin. It has a more tenuous security model. (I'll expand on this if you don't yet know why). The owner is able turn a SegWit coin into a Bitcoin to reclaim the stronger Bitcoin security model. While trivial to perform, it requires another transaction. Even before accounting for this shrinkage, SegWit can only 'increase' transaction capacity in proportion to its usage. When do you expect the universal usage of SegWit, which is required to get to 1.7x?
Yes, I am worried that a significant portion of the 'community' will renege on the 2X portion of the deal. Perhaps you have not caught Bobby Lee's tweet on the topic? Though merely posed as a question, it brought the concept out of the dark and exposed the extent of this attitude.
'Next time we need consensus, no one will trust the agreement'... Hello? Hong Kong? Hello?
Maybe you don't quite understand how Bitcoin works. Miners already can make the block size any size they want.
"They vote with their CPU proof-of-worker, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism."
- satoshi, the white paper
Yes. BCC is an attempt to make Bitcoin better. We see the SegWit approach as violative of the current system principles.
I do agree that one of the reasons the mempool is almost empty (less intentional spam is another) is because we have got used to NOT do tx's except when strictly necessary... which sucks. Yes, I have even been using Litecoin to move funds from one exchange to another. It's also faster.
As I said Segwit will "alleviate" (not completely solve) the problem, but we will probably need an increased blocksize in the near future. I think segwit+LN will play a critical role for mass adoption as a payment system, but I do also agree with the increased blocksize. Both are needed.
Why can't we just stop acting as if it has to be one thing or the other? Or is the acting just ridiculous game theory moves?
I am not sure I do agree with the HK agreement argument... as it seems to me it was not a widely adopted agreement, also not an enough publicised one at the time, nor something that was ever submitted as a BIP voting (as Segwit2x and BIP91 have with the utmost success).
Backing off for no reason now that miners voted with 100% hashrate on Segwit2x (which includes the near future 2MB block size increase) would be deceiptful and rresponsible for the future of Bitcoin... and for any consensus on future agreements that will be surely needed.
Someone (jgarzik?) should submit a BIP for miners to vote same as it has been done with BIP91 but for the 2MB blocksize increase. I am sure miners will keep the agreement and make it pass too.
Yes, I know miners can change whatever they want. They can even change the rewards per block or the total amount of Bitcoins... but THAT would NOT be Bitcoin. That would be an ATTACK to Bitcoin. For some reason the 51% ATTACK was denominated like that by satoshi himself in spite of being a majority. More so if it is done as an unilateral decision.
We have an agreement, miners have supported it with 100% hashrate, majority of community too. Let's just respect it and go on.
And yes, let's also increase blocksize to a fixed 2MB this year... in BITCOIN.
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