How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?

[neofelis]

I've heard that bitcoin can only handle about 7 transactions per second. Is this true? Seems to me that would be a limiting factor in worldwide adoption of bitcoin. Has this been addressed by developers?

What if bitcoin were adopted by every nation, every person. The only currency. Can this be done?

[DeathAndTaxes]

Currently the protocol limits block size to 1MB.  This doesn't correspond to any specific transaction volume the 7 tps is an estimate based on average transaction size.   The block size can be increased and I don't see any scenario where it remains 1MB forever.  The debate is more on how should the limit be determined, how much should it be increase, when would it be appropriate.

[Coinsera]

I've heard that bitcoin can only handle about 7 transactions per second. Is this true? Seems to me that would be a limiting factor in worldwide adoption of bitcoin. Has this been addressed by developers?

What if bitcoin were adopted by every nation, every person. The only currency. Can this be done?

I don't think so, 7 transactions is a very low level for a even simple server. 

Thanks

[cr1776]

D&T is right, and there have been tons of discussions about the issue if you want to read a lot more about it.  :-)

[KaChingCoinDev]

I think we are safe for now. Bitcoin can always hard fork later to change the max block size.

[vm1990]

The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction

[Mobius7]

The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction

The 1MB is a hard limit, while the soft limit was 250KB and has been lifted already.

As DeathAndTaxes mentioned, we can only have 7 tps with 1 MB block size, but indeed we are still far from that.
You can find the average block sizes here. (second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)

[KaChingCoinDev]

The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction

(second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)

Amazing! I am surprised how the block size follows the tx fee. Very strange!

[DannyHamilton]

The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction

(second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)

Amazing! I am surprised how the block size follows the tx fee. Very strange!

Amazing?



You're surprised that blocks that include more fee-paying transactions have larger total block fees?

If you operated a toll bridge, would you be surprised if you made more money on the days that more people crossed the bridge?

[Taras]

I currently believe we can handle a lot more than seven transactions per second. I'm assuming we can handle thousands; putting them into a block would be the hard part.