Bitcoin 20MB Fork

[traincarswreck]

20 years of lectures about bitcoin you are all ignoring, about how bitcoin shall come about and what it should be...

Who will bring sanity to this community?

No one who doesn't address the topic of Ideal Money should be given a voice in ANY of these matters.

[1713969014]

1713969014

[1713969014]

1713969014

[1713969014]

1713969014

[1713969014]

1713969014

[iCEBREAKER]

I haven't read this thread much at all, so maybe this has already been said, but I've been noticing a lot of people saying things like, "If the block size isn't raised, then that would be bad because ..." But just wanting larger blocks isn't a good argument for increasing the max block size. By far the most important issue is what the network can support. We're just going to have to learn to deal with the fact that the network's capacity is limited and fees will probably always be larger than many people want.

Exactly what block size the network can support is very much debatable. I currently think that 10 MB would be fine and 50 MB would be too much, though these are mostly just feelings. There should be more rigorous study of the actual limits of the network. (Gavin's done some nice work on the software/hardware front, though I'm still worried about the capabilities of typical Internet connections, and especially how they'll increase over time.)

It's not just wanting bigger blocks. There is a reason behind that. The bigger blocks are needed if we want a bigger bitcoin net-worth overall. That brings a lot of good things to the ecosystem in form of development and innovation.

What the network can support is subject to technological development and innovation. This is not a mechanical issue where you try to fit a square into a round hole. While technology also has its limitations, there is a lot of room for improving it. Just a few years ago we were all watching low quality youtube clips, while now we can watch 1080p videos. Playing heavy 3d graphics games on our smartphones is another example of technology that is developing and that hasn't hit its cap.

Also since I'm also a hobbyist miner please give me full 10MB blocks right now and I will invest part of my earnings in setting up full nodes with tons of HDD space available

Not raising the block limit because of a technical reason which can be solved is simply wrong in my view.

Oh look, RoadStress suddenly dropped his previous ad hom attack strategy when addressing the sysop!  I'm shocked...I expected RS to accuse Thermos of being a master scammer (because his forum advertises/discusses ASICs, Ponzis, etc), as well as being an altcoin shill (because he once said something nice about Monero).

Bitcoin's net-worth overall will increase regardless of transaction volume simply because it has the 1st mover, digital reserve currency advantages and status.  It doesn't need, nor should we seek, a monopoly on digital currency, because a Nash distribution is of more economic utility than top-heavy ones.  Bitcoin has a natural monopoly on high-value wealth preservation and transfers, not retail point-of-sale, paywalls, or tipping.

The hubristic Bitcoin2 project seeks to sacrifice current use cases and users for the hope of gaining future uses and users.

That is trading a bird in hand for two in the bush, and fixing what is not broken.  Two famously bad ideas.

Relying of the desirability of future pruning/compression mechanisms still in the vapor stage to fix 20MB blocks' undesirable effects is also a bad idea.

This logic of "we have to break the network to save the network" is appalling.  We need to get this right, not rush and act in haste.

First, we must wait and see how the infrastructure and ecosystem react/adapt to scarcity.   Without this crucial empirical data, we cannot make informed future decisions about ideal block sizing.  We cannot risk a civil war between BTC1 and BTC2 camps by forcing the issue prematurely (but if I were actually anti-BTC and pro-alt, I'd relish such a Great Schism).

Second, we must use the results of the experiment with 1MB scarcity to decide on a preliminary blocksize increase, to somewhere between 2MB and 10MB.

20MB blocks can then be considered, if and only if the community, pruning/compression mechanisms, and TOR/DSL are ready to support them.

As a compromise, I'll support an increase to 2MB ASAP, on the condition that we then maintain that limit until facts about market reaction to block real estate scarcity are ascertained.

[benjamindees]

Ideal Money

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_money

in other words, people are used to measuring the value of goods by money, but due to some reasons the value of money itself changes, which causes the value of silver or gold changes. We can't tell the constant value of the metal, and the fixed mind-sets can not easily be changed.

Gold attains its value only from the far future, from a time when it is needed to consume and is expected to be found in short supply.  In the mean time, the value of gold can fluctuate wildly, because gold is not a good currency for day-to-day transactions.  It is not useful next week.  It is only useful in the long term.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, can be useful *both* next week *and* a thousand years from now.  Bitcoin is, in this sense, gold without the limitations.

"A possible nonpolitical basis for a value standard that could be used for money would be a good industrial consumption price index(ICPI) statistic. This statistic could be calculated from the international price of commodities such as copper, silver, tungsten, and so forth that are used in industrial activities."

Bitcoin can rely on the CPI only in the sense that Bitcoin *becomes* the CPI.  Like I've said before, if this type of thinking (which has been in use since WWII, at least;  it's not a new idea) worked, then all of Alan Greenspan's attempts to peg the US dollar to the price of scrap steel would have worked.  They didn't work.  They were fundamentally flawed.

[traincarswreck]

Bitcoin can rely on the CPI only in the sense that Bitcoin *becomes* the CPI.  Like I've said before, if this type of thinking (which has been in use since WWII, at least;  it's not a new idea) worked, then all of Alan Greenspan's attempts to peg the US dollar to the price of scrap steel would have worked.  They didn't work.  They were fundamentally flawed.

You did not read the lecture and you do not know what you are talking about.  I am not attacking you, I am pointing out something logical.  You spoke about something you didn't READ first:

   Starting with the idea of value stabilization in relation to a domestic price index associated with the territory of one state, beyond that there is the natural and logical concept of internationally based comparisons. The currencies being compared, like now the euro, the dollar, the yen, the pound, the swiss franc, the swedish kronor, etc., can be viewed with critical eyes by their users and by those who may have the option of whether or not or how to use one of them. This can lead to pressure for good quality and consequently for a lessened inflationary depreciation in value.”

    “It seems possible and not unlikely, however, that if two states evolve towards having currencies or more stable value as measured locally by national CPI indices that then also these distinct currencies would tend to evolve towards more stable comparative relations of value.

    Then the limiting or “asymptotic” result of such an evolutionary trend would be in effect “ideal money” but this as a result achieved without the adoption of anything like an ICPI index as a basis for the standard of value.”

"Satoshi" your jesus, is what happens when the world won't listen to you for 20 years, so you figure out a way to do what you know is going to work anyways.

I am telling you that you are not understanding what I am saying.  You don't come in a thread, and not read any literature and tell Nash or Satoshi how economics, cryptography, math, gold etc. works.

Nash has been explaining EVERYTHING, and people like you have been drowning out the peoples that have been reading his vast works.  Can someone translate my words, I don't know what language I am speaking:  A man toured the world for 20 years telling us of a new currency technology that is going to revolutionize the money printing systems...and you all are worshiping a FAKE NAME!!!

[tvbcof]

Exactly what block size the network can support is very much debatable. I currently think that 10 MB would be fine and 50 MB would be too much, though these are mostly just feelings. There should be more rigorous study of the actual limits of the network. (Gavin's done some nice work on the software/hardware front, though I'm still worried about the capabilities of typical Internet connections, and especially how they'll increase over time.)

Exactly. 30 kBps upload is common in Australia, and you sure should be able to run a full node in a typical internet connection in Australia, or Brazil, or Philippines, or whatever. The block size needs to be useful for the (lowest reasonable) common denominator, not the median.

IMO 10 MB is too much, maybe 5 MB.

If you come within 1/3 (and probably much less) of maxing out your network connection, your ability to run Bitcoin is dependent on the government NOT telling your network providers to interfere with certain kinds of traffic.  A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.  If Bitcoin depends on this not happening on a fairly wide scale globally at some point in the future, then it is simply not a very strong solution to me.  Maybe it is to others.  Fine.  I'm not going to be putting a lot of my eggs into that basket however.

[RoadStress]

Oh look, RoadStress suddenly dropped his previous ad hom attack strategy when addressing the sysop!  I'm shocked...I expected RS to accuse Thermos of being a master scammer (because his forum advertises/discusses ASICs, Ponzis, etc), as well as being an altcoin shill (because he once said something nice about Monero).

Hello Icetard! I only attack a couple of people that I consider that they deserve this kind of treatment. If you would've paid any attention to this thread you would've seen that for yourself. I even tried to have a decent talk with one of MPs sock puppet account and after realizing that he only likes to throw shit I switched to directly attacking him because that's how scumbags should be treated. You are included in that category too because of your big campaing of supporting HashFail which has scammed tons of customers and for your useless posts where you attack instead of bringing anything good to the discussion.

Everyone is free to check your posts in the HashFail thread to see that you deserve to be treated this way.

The fact that you expect me to accuse Thermos (sic) of being a master scammer is yet another proof that you are a retard clown. It's like accusing DPR of being a drug lord while he was only providing a medium for people to get their stuff safely.

Bitcoin's net-worth overall will increase regardless of transaction volume simply because it has the 1st mover, digital reserve currency advantages and status.  It doesn't need, nor should we seek, a monopoly on digital currency, because a Nash distribution is of more economic utility than top-heavy ones.  Bitcoin has a natural monopoly on high-value wealth preservation and transfers, not retail point-of-sale, paywalls, or tipping.

So your argument is that Bitcoin's net-worth will increase just because it was the 1st mover? Are you that idiot? By this logic Archie should be the top search engine, and not Google.

As for "digital reserve currency advantages and status" please explain why or how will this guarantee Bitcoin's net-worth increase because I fail to see the points. I assume that these 2 attributes do not restrict only to Bitcoin so your point is kinda invalid. (unless it's something only specific to Bitcoin which I haven't understood)

Relying of the desirability of future pruning mechanisms still in the vapor stage to fix 20MB blocks' undesirable effects is also a bad idea.

We are not relying on the future pruning mechanins when we make the fork for the 20MB blocks because it will not be an issue at start and there is enough time to develop it. Blocks will not start to fill as soon as we raise the limit so we are find for a certain period of time.

First, we must wait and see how the infrastructure and ecosystem react/adapt to scarcity.   Without this crucial empirical data, we cannot make informed future decisions about ideal block sizing.  We cannot risk a civil war between BTC1 and BTC2 camps by forcing the issue prematurely (but if I were actually anti-BTC and pro-alt, I'd relish such a Great Schism).

Second, we must use the results of the experiment with 1MB scarcity to decide on a preliminary blocksize increase, to somewhere between 2MB and 10MB.

How long do we gather and analyze data after we get full 1MB blocks? 1 week? 1 month? 1 year? 5 years? How do we decide that we had enough data to analyze the issue?

Also you ignore the fact that the moment when we start to analyze how the ecosystem reacts/adapts it's also the moment when we all start to use a bottle-necked network and it will be like this for the whole period of our analysis be it 1 month or 1 year. This will severely hinder development and new projects and services because they will have to take into consideration the block availability and the higher and higher fees that will have to be paid. This is the worst thing that can happen to the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

20MB blocks can then be considered, if and only if the community, prunability, and TOR are ready to support them.

As a compromise, I'll support an increase to 2MB ASAP, on the condition that we then maintain that limit until facts about market reaction to block real estate scarcity are ascertained .

Don't worry. The community will decide whether you like the outcome or not.

Why TOR? Who says that TOR is mandatory? You?

[theskillzdatklls]

noob alert - does raising to 20mb blocks mean every single block from there on out is exactly 20mb in size or just that any block can go up to that much if there are enough transactions to make it that big?

[iCEBREAKER]

20 years of lectures about bitcoin you are all ignoring, about how bitcoin shall come about and what it should be...

Who will bring sanity to this community?

No one who doesn't address the topic of Ideal Money should be given a voice in ANY of these matters.

Given Aristotle and Xenphon, more like 2500 years, but I'll give it a shot.  I hope Prof. Szabo doesn't grade my essay too harshly!

I dispute the monopolist-maximalist premise (held by many in both 1MB and 20MB camps) that Bitcoin and only Bitcoin may be Ideal Money.

Ideal Money is a moving target, best approximated by vigorous innovation within a market of competing solutions to the traditional problems of transactional friction, exchange/systemic/technological/firm/counter-party/political risk, and wealth protection.

Because macroeconomic conditions and individual microeconomic situations are always changing, Ideal Money means different things to different entities at different times.  Thus gold is historically the ideal money for kings, silver for gentleman, and copper for peasants.

The best form for the ensuing market of competing forms of money is a dynamic equilibrium, with a structure and adjustments governed by Nash non-cooperative game-theoretical rules and constraints.

The monopolist-maximalist holds that Bitcoin alone should convey and record every transaction in the world, from tips for witty posts, to micropayments for paywalls, to coffee at Starbucks, and on up to settlements between central banks.

Satoshi rejected such a one-ledger-to-rule-them-all approach:

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

The networks need to have separate fates.

This monopolist-maximalist approach is unsettling.  Given BTC's transparency, it would create a Third Temple with an all-seeing eye.  Such NWO hubris is of course doomed to failure, and (mostly for sentimental reasons) I don't want to see it take BTC down with it.  Better that BTC serve a Bitopian crypto-heaven than rule a hellish cryto-dystopia.

I favor a different kind of maximalism (let's call it mini-maximalism), where BTC is the gold standard/backbone of crypto and reserve digital currency, while specialized altcoins handle tiny, small, medium, large, and private transactions, leaving BTC for the very important huge deals.

Bitcoin blockchain real estate is the most precious thing ever invented, and must be priced as such, as soon as possible.

Diluting the value of this real estate is functionally equivalent to increasing the maximum number of coins, and should only be done out of absolute necessity.

How many transactions does the BIS settle in 10 minutes?  That's about how many BTC blocks need to accommodate.

Rex regnat et non gubernat

[RoadStress]

noob alert - does raising to 20mb blocks mean every single block from there on out is exactly 20mb in size or just that any block can go up to that much if there are enough transactions to make it that big?

Raising to 20MB blocks will not make every single block exactly 20MB in size. Blocks can go up to 20MB if there are enough transactions.

Bitcoin blockchain real estate is the most precious thing ever invented, and must be priced as such, as soon as possible.

Diluting the value of this real estate is functionally equivalent to increasing the maximum number of coins, and should only be done out of absolute necessity.

Hey IceClown nice way of dodging and ignoring my questions!

Bitcoin is the most precious thing ever invented, not the blockchain real estate you dumbfuck! Diluting the value of the blockchain real estate will only make Bitcoin be usable by everyone instead of limiting it to the highest bidder. You clearly are on the wrong path of advocating crypto and only having a signature doesn't help at all in your advocating mission.

[traincarswreck]

Hello Icetard!

Hey IceClown nice way of dodging and ignoring my questions!

Get rid of this person and their posts; they are useless and shameful to the mods and community.

[traincarswreck]

20 years of lectures about bitcoin you are all ignoring, about how bitcoin shall come about and what it should be...

Who will bring sanity to this community?

No one who doesn't address the topic of Ideal Money should be given a voice in ANY of these matters.

Given Aristotle and Xenphon, more like 2500 years, but I'll give it a shot.  I hope Prof. Szabo doesn't grade my essay too harshly!

I dispute the monopolist-maximalist premise (held by many in both 1MB and 20MB camps) that Bitcoin and only Bitcoin may be Ideal Money.

Ideal Money is a moving target, best approximated by vigorous innovation within a market of competing solutions to the traditional problems of transactional friction, exchange/systemic/technological/firm/counter-party/political risk, and wealth protection.

Because macroeconomic conditions and individual microeconomic situations are always changing, Ideal Money means different things to different entities at different times.  Thus gold is historically the ideal money for kings, silver for gentleman, and copper for peasants.

The best form for the ensuing market of competing forms of money is a dynamic equilibrium, with a structure and adjustments governed by Nash non-cooperative game-theoretical rules and constraints.

The monopolist-maximalist holds that Bitcoin alone should convey and record every transaction in the world, from tips for witty posts, to micropayments for paywalls, to coffee at Starbucks, and on up to settlements between central banks.

Satoshi rejected such a one-ledger-to-rule-them-all approach:

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

The networks need to have separate fates.

This monopolist-maximalist approach is unsettling.  Given BTC's transparency, it would create a Third Temple with an all-seeing eye.  Such NWO hubris is of course doomed to failure, and (mostly for sentimental reasons) I don't want to see it take BTC down with it.  Better that BTC serve a Bitopian crypto-heaven than rule a hellish cryto-dystopia.

I favor a different kind of maximalism (let's call it mini-maximalism), where BTC is the gold standard/backbone of crypto and reserve digital currency, while specialized altcoins handle tiny, small, medium, large, and private transactions, leaving BTC for the very important huge deals.

Bitcoin blockchain real estate is the most precious thing ever invented, and must be priced as such, as soon as possible.

Diluting the value of this real estate is functionally equivalent to increasing the maximum number of coins, and should only be done out of absolute necessity.

How many transactions does the BIS settle in 10 minutes?  That's about how many BTC blocks need to accommodate.

Rex regnat et non gubernat

I read (reed) this as sanity.

As far as I am aware this is the first and truest attempt to discuss the concept of "ideal money" whether as our own ideal or as the subject described by Dr. Nash in the lectures of the same name. Nobody is on topic if not in relation to this subject.  It is not my place to vote on block size, but seemingly it is my place to point out the relevance of the related subjects.

I am also in line with everything you wrote, which is interesting because seemingly I am the only one I can find that is so familiar with the material.

[RoadStress]

Hello Icetard!

Hey IceClown nice way of dodging and ignoring my questions!

Get rid of this person and their posts; they are useless and shameful to the mods and community.

Yes get rid of me and leave the Icetard clown to support scamming companies!

As far as I am aware this is the first and truest attempt to discuss the concept of "ideal money"....

This is not a discussion about the concept of "ideal money". This is a discussion about if we need to increase the block size limit or not. As our Bitcoin Guru Andreas says "Money is only the first application". (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HtP2SOr0isk#t=91) Bitcoin can do much more than money so you are missing the whole point from the start. Just like the Icetard clown.

[sed]

Wow, I didn't vote because I haven't digested it all yet, but thanks for the link to gavin's suggestion.  I'm catching up now!

[traincarswreck]

Bitcoin can do much more than money so you are missing the whole point from the start. Just like the Icetard clown.

You don't know what money is, and frankly none of us do.  The only peoples that seem to have a solid grasp of today's economic climate (and especially in relation to our history of economics) are Nash, Satoshi, and Szabo.  And only one of these peoples is known to be real.

You clearly do not read the associated literature, and you are also name calling.  Should bitcoin's fate truly be decided at the hands of the unlearned mass?

The lecture Ideal Money is exactly this:

Aristotle emphasized enthymematic reasoning as central to the process of rhetorical invention, though later rhetorical theorists placed much less emphasis on it. An "enthymeme" would follow today's form of a syllogism; however it would exclude either the major or minor premise. An enthymeme is persuasive because the audience is providing the missing premise. Because the audience is able to provide the missing premise, they are more likely to be persuaded by the message.

The problem is nobody is "figuring it out".

Read the lecture and say "Because I, Dr. Nash, am going to release bitcoin in the near future, and I am going explain the specifics in a blog" at the end of every sentence.

Here is some help:

"The special commodity or medium that we call money has a long and interesting history."

"Because I, Dr. Nash, am going to release bitcoin in the near future, and I am going explain the specifics in a blog" (http://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/)

...money should have the function of a standard of measurement and thus that it should become comparable to the watt or the hour or a degree of temperature.

"Because I, Dr. Nash, am going to release bitcoin in the near future, and I am going explain the specifics in a blog"

In the near future there may be a smaller number of major currencies used in the world and these may stand in competitive relations among themselves.

"Because I, Dr. Nash, am going to release bitcoin in the near future, and I am going explain the specifics in a blog"

The Keynesian implicitly always have the argument that some good managers can do things of beneficial value, operating with the treasury and the central bank…I see this as analogous how the “Bolshevik Communists” were claiming to proved something much better than the “Bourgeois democracy”.

"Because I, Dr. Nash, am going to release bitcoin in the near future, and I am going explain the specifics in a blog"

…while they have claimed to be operating for high and noble objective of general welfare what is clearly true is that they have made it easier for government to “print money”.

"Because I, Dr. Nash, am going to release bitcoin in the near future, and I am going explain the specifics in a blog"

And this parallel makes it seem not implausible that a process of political evolution might lead to the expectation on the part of the citizens in the “great democracies” that they should be better situated to be able to understand whatever will be the monetary polices which, indeed, are typically of great importance to citizens who may have alternative options for where to place their “savings”.

"Because I, Dr. Nash, am going to release bitcoin in the near future, and I am going explain the specifics in a blog"

Love to hear more from people that don't read the literature tell me bitcoin and ideal money are not related subjects.  Nobody that doesn't at least understand "Ideal Money" should be in any of these dialogues.

[RoadStress]

Bitcoin can do much more than money so you are missing the whole point from the start. Just like the Icetard clown.

You don't know what money is, and frankly none of us do.  The only peoples that seem to have a solid grasp of today's economic climate (and especially in relation to our history of economics) are Nash, Satoshi, and Szabo.  And only one of these peoples is known to be real.

"Money is only the first application" It's not the ONLY application! Why do you keep insisting on the money aspect?

[traincarswreck]

"Money is only the first application" It's not the ONLY application! Why do you keep insisting on the money aspect?

We are trying to have an intelligent conversation with well read and mature persons.  Why do you continually drown us out?  And why do the mods put up with your name calling and incessant voice that lacks-REASON?

[iCEBREAKER]

Why TOR? Who says that TOR is mandatory? You?

"TOR" is shorthand for low-bandwidth connections, whether privacy-enhanced darkweb internets-within-the-internet or plain old slow DSL.

You need to keep up.  This has already addressed here:

In the mean time, we have one chance to stay within the constraints of what is achievable behind TOR and realistically likewise hardening methods.  I'm not interested in throwing it away... especially when there is no need and a very promising solution is around the corner.

TOR has nothing to do with the Bitcoin protocol. TOR was compromised recently. If it was used, it would be in very limited fashion.

I've never trusted TOR as many of my posts here in trolltalk make clear.  That's why I phrased things as I did.  Onion routing generally is adds overhead that can dwarf a small payload such as a Bitcoin transaction and other kinds of cloaking (specifically steganography) can add much more.

I think it more likely than not that at some point there will be the long promised 'cyber 9/11' and some big changes to the global internet even here in the 'free world'.  I've no intention of walking away from my stash just because some douche-bag government administrator and media echo-chamber says that a peer-2-peer internet fosters terrorism or whatever.  If it never happens then that is fine and great, but it means that crypto-currencies are just toys and never did become indispensable tools for wealth protection.  If it does then I want to be prepared and have my wealth protected by the most robust solution available.

and here:

Exactly what block size the network can support is very much debatable. I currently think that 10 MB would be fine and 50 MB would be too much, though these are mostly just feelings. There should be more rigorous study of the actual limits of the network. (Gavin's done some nice work on the software/hardware front, though I'm still worried about the capabilities of typical Internet connections, and especially how they'll increase over time.)

Exactly. 30 kBps upload is common in Australia, and you sure should be able to run a full node in a typical internet connection in Australia, or Brazil, or Philippines, or whatever. The block size needs to be useful for the (lowest reasonable) common denominator, not the median.

IMO 10 MB is too much, maybe 5 MB.

If you come within 1/3 (and probably much less) of maxing out your network connection, your ability to run Bitcoin is dependent on the government NOT telling your network providers to interfere with certain kinds of traffic.  A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.  If Bitcoin depends on this not happening on a fairly wide scale globally at some point in the future, then it is simply not a very strong solution to me.  Maybe it is to others.  Fine.  I'm not going to be putting a lot of my eggs into that basket however.

[iCEBREAKER]

Bitcoin can do much more than money so you are missing the whole point from the start. Just like the Icetard clown.

You don't know what money is, and frankly none of us do.  The only peoples that seem to have a solid grasp of today's economic climate (and especially in relation to our history of economics) are Nash, Satoshi, and Szabo.  And only one of these peoples is known to be real.

"Money is only the first application" It's not the ONLY application! Why do you keep insisting on the money aspect?

I know this is hard for you, so try reading this quote s l o w l y .

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

The networks need to have separate fates.

[sergio]

I see a lot of problems with a 20MB block.
The blockchain database could grow to 1000GB instead of 200GB per year.
Blockchain spam could be a much worse problem.
If the bitcoin decentralized database grows too big it will be more centralized, centralization is a very bad thing.
The blockchain security will be weaker, as the block reward for miners halves, and miners have to depend more and more on mining fees instead of the block reward, by having a 20MB block there will be little motivation to pay any transactions fees at all, causing lots of miners to quit weakening security. With a 1MB block if you are buying something that represents a large amount of money like a car, house, computer, etc you will be motivated to pay a higher fee for a quicker transaction, and for a micro transactions representing something of very little value, it will not be a problem if you have to wait a longer time than usual for a confirmation to confirm the transaction, but on the other hand for a transaction with a tiny value for example a 1 mBTC  if you do not wait for confirmation the risk is little do to the amount.
In the very futuristic event that a block were to be generating more than 25 BTC in rewards based on fees, this would imply a large fee  to get the transaction though in the next block in such an event it could be considered to increase the block size only and only if the current block size would become a problem.

But as things stand now, 1 MB block limit is not a problem, and in the near future it will help secure the network by motivating the miners, only in a very far future it could be needed to be increased, but in such a case then a study would need to take place since in a far future the block reward could be 2 BTC and most of the miners reward could be based on fees as Satoshi had originally planed.

As of today for each block reward, 25 BTC are the block reward, and only on average 0.1 BTC are from fees, the amount of 0.1 BTC would go down to near 0, and that will be a problem for the security of the blockchain once the block reward is something like 3 BTC.

Another thing to consider, today people using modems and low bandwidth can be bitcoin nodes, with a 20MBblock they will need at least moderate bandwidth.

The 20MB block might be needed in the far future but not now.

Also a fork risks the price of bitcoin going down since some may stay on the other side of the fork.

It is better to concentrate on bitcoin gaining adoption instead of solving a problem that today does not exist.

[traincarswreck]

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

And that is where I think it gets interesting:

Here is a thought experiment: what if we decreased the block size to support just one transaction per minute (ten transactions per block)? Would more or fewer people use it? Would the Bitcoin system overall be more or less valuable? I think any reasonable person would agree that a one-transaction-per-minute Bitcoin would be less valuable than the seven-transactions-per-second system we have today.

What is value?  Is value price?  I hope not.

Is value the thing that we need, and so we should optimize bitcoin to be that thing the best we can?  Or...is value the thing that causes is to become more what we want to become.  Or in other words, if we locked in 1 transaction per block, would society be doomed, or would it adjust faster to this slow system?

Is it correct in the future that our transactions on the blockchain continue to increase over time?  Or should we as a society (and will we), learn to thrive and pass efficiency in other better and new and more efficient ways than even the blockchain.  Do not be so quick to answer these questions and I think neither was Gavin so quick or the others...

But what Ice seemed to point out when they called my article on securing decentralization through NE, is that the longer we keep these conversations and parameters open, the less secure and less psychologically secure this "system" is.  We can have infinite networks, systems, and currencies etc...

There can only ever be 1 bedrock.  I don't know if we (generally) understand this.