What do SegWit or 2 MB blocks actually solve?

[lukaexpl]

Help me out here, I am not technicaly savvy enough to understand it.

If the debate over scaling concerns solving scalability issue or number of transactions on the network how is either of these solutions going to do it?

I read somewhere that Bitcoin network with 1 MB blocks is capable of 7 transactions per second.
If we go to 2 MB blocks I presume we will be able to do 14. Whoaah. What a jump in todays world.

It would be akeen to a discussion like: does Germany need 100 or 200 kms of Autobahns (highways) in total when the real need is somewhere around 12.000 km.
Or should operating systems today be able to address 640 Kb of memory or 712 Kb when we need Gbytes.

Similar story for SegWit - you cut out part of the information that goes into the block but increases are not exponential.

So what is that that I do not get about this scaling solution?
Is implementing one over the other just a basis for further solutions on top of it?

[Blinken]

Right. No kidding.

I have been saying this for years.

The problem is that the "average person" is a retard with no capability for logical thought, and the development trend is driven by politics which are driven by the "average person".

I just read a post about people buying "coffee" in Japan. Then, of course, there are the daily "bitcoin is dead" posts. It is a culture of mass stupidity.

There is a big gulf between reality and what you read in the news and forums. If you use logical thinking, you will find that most of what you read in newspapers makes no sense.

[lukaexpl]

Right. No kidding.

I have been saying this for years.

So it does not solve anything (in terms of transactions per second).
Essentially the moment it is implemented we can start with another SegWit 3x vs. 4 MB debate.

If it is truly so what is the background story behind such a heated debate over cours of scaling?

[gentlemand]

It solves strife mainly. But it's about more than raw block size. It fixes some holes in Bitcoin that allows new systems to be introduced. A straightforward block size increase would never be enough to satisfy every possible user out there. Some lateral thinking is needed. Segwit should allow more development of that.

[NUFCrichard]

Right. No kidding.

I have been saying this for years.

So it does not solve anything (in terms of transactions per second).
Essentially the moment it is implemented we can start with another SegWit 3x vs. 4 MB debate.

If it is truly so what is the background story behind such a heated debate over cours of scaling?

But in the future when 16TB SSD hard drives are the norm, it won't really matter that the block size is 2MB or 8MB or 16MB.
Right now the blockchain is already fairly large, like 120GB (and rising 1GB per week now).  Given that most people won't even have a 1TB SSD (because a decent one is expensive), it means that it is taking up a huge chunk of their hard drive.

If you are happy for people not to run full nodes, and to run lite wallets, then it isn't a problem for you, but if you want to see Bitcoin less centralized, then the size of the blockchain matters.

I think a gradual rise in the blocksize as technology improves is a fair way to go. Segwit helps for the time being, but ultimately we will need larger blocks, meaning a massive blockchain.