Bitcoin 20MB Fork

[RoadStress]

In that case let's lower the block size to say 50KB, get some more competition.

Sure, but please first demonstrate how there's currently not enough of it.

Who said that there's currently not enough block size? Don't change the subject. I see it just as preparing for the future. When you see that you are running out of gas you don't wait until you are out in order to refill.

[1713971873]

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[1713971873]

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[iCEBREAKER]

I'm liking JR's paper. Micropayment channels is the most constructive approach to permanently dealing with the block size limit, since defenders of the limit are mostly concerned about the data overhead on full nodes.

Maybe if the limit was higher.  Payment channels still require at least one transaction per payment channel set.  How often are you willing to reset payment channels?  Once per week, once per month, once per year? The longer the period the larger the initial escrowed amount.  How many payment channels if the average user going to have. Say the average user accepts escrowing 6 months worth of future payments and has 3 payment channels payees each.  BTW I consider this unrealistically low and of this was the upper limit most users would trade principles for convinience and user centralized services.  Still lets look at it as an upper bound. That still requires 6 on block transactions per user per year.  2 tps @ 6 txn per user =  10.5  million users.  

Do you really think Bitcoin will be a global revolution with an upper limit @ 10 million users?


Payment channels are a great concept but even they are hamstrung but a ridiculously low limit.  We wouldn't even be having this discussion if the limit was anywhere near realistic but it simply isn't. A 1MB cap is simply a joke.  It just guarantees that either Bitcoin dies on the vine or it is replaced by something superior. Payment channels, sidechains, and cross chain atomic transactions are transaction multipliers.  They move us from one economic transaction per block transaction to more than one economic transaction per block transaction and that is a great thing.  If natively a blockchain can support n users it can support xn users where x>1 using payment channels.  In essence they make the primary block space more efficient but efficiency only takes us so far.  You can't get any kind of scalability out of 1MB permanent limit.  It either remains perpetually a nerd toy or it is killed off by something which can scale.

We won't know what "kind of scalability out of 1MB permanent limit" is possible, until we get there and observe how the system (market/ecosystem/infrastructure) reacts.  Testnet can't predict nor account for Human Action.

We're already out of "nerd toy" territory.  We're in the middle, somewhere between obscure curiosity and Great Success.

$3-$6 billion market cap isn't a "joke."  When you say "upper limit @ 10 million users" you obviously mean direct users, purposely excluding indirect users.  Even in Bitopia, most people won't even realize (or care) that their handy/magical payment network is transparently settled using BTC, LTC, etc.

Capital B Bitcoins, which cost ~$250 each, must scale vertically, with no need (or want) for more transactions when the average transaction/fee is growing exponentially in value.  This store-of-value function is logically prior to ensuing systems-of-payment purposes.

Forking on a whim, so some VCs who bought $1000 BTCs are that much closer to realizing their dream of everyone using BTC at Coke machines and Starbucks, harms the store-of-value function by diluting the previously more scare and extremely valuable commodity of blockchain real estate.

Lower case b bitcoin, the FOSS anyone can fork, scales horizontally, so each cup of coffee can find a place to call home on an appropriate side/alt-chain.

Bitcoin won't "die on the vine."  It will do very well, the best of all, even as it is supplanted (not "replaced") by other coins.

We can all benefit from a gold standard without the need to maintain a personal vault or drive a Brinks truck to the coffee shop.  Myopic focus on direct use is red herring.

10 million direct users is more than sufficient for the Global Bitcoin Revolution.  Even as indirect users, the rest of us can still participate/innovate/benefit.

[DooMAD]

Forking on a whim, so some VCs who bought $1000 BTCs are that much closer to realizing their dream of everyone using BTC at Coke machines and Starbucks, harms the store-of-value function by diluting the previously more scare and extremely valuable commodity of blockchain real estate.

I feel this brings us to the crux of the matter.  Ultimately, the anti-fork argument boils down to "Bitcoin works for us, and does what we want it to, so we should burn the bridge behind us and protect our interests.  Let's stop here".  

The pro-fork argument says "actually, we're not done yet, let's get some more people (directly) involved with this and see what further innovations we can come up with.  We see a bright future ahead and it will be a change for the better".

And the best part is, you get to choose.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the fork has enough momentum behind it to go ahead.  And when it does, you can stay behind on the old chain and stagnate in a niche with your precious limits, or you can stay with the clear majority and see where things go from here when enough people are on board to really challenge the widely accepted perceptions about how money should work.

If sidechains do eventually come to fruition then it's a win-win either way, but until then, the rest of us don't want to risk the network grinding to a halt because too many people wanted to try out Bitcoin and we hit a wall on some inane limit.  The future potential for sidechains is not a substantial reason to delay this necessary update.  The simple fact is, you can't promise sidechains will be ready in time before we start piling up unconfirmed transactions.

[tvbcof]

Forking on a whim, so some VCs who bought $1000 BTCs are that much closer to realizing their dream of everyone using BTC at Coke machines and Starbucks, harms the store-of-value function by diluting the previously more scare and extremely valuable commodity of blockchain real estate.

I feel this brings us to the crux of the matter.  Ultimately, the anti-fork argument boils down to "Bitcoin works for us, and does what we want it to, so we should burn the bridge behind us and protect our interests.  Let's stop here".  

The pro-fork argument says "actually, we're not done yet, let's get some more people (directly) involved with this and see what further innovations we can come up with.  We see a bright future ahead and it will be a change for the better".

Personally, I feel the odds much greater that I could make more money off my stash if the gavincoin side wins and I got some timings right (and I seem to have a knack for that.)  I've made enough off Bitcoin in straight up monetary gains that now I feel it appropriate try to put in the good fight toward having it be the foundation for something useful to humanity.

You gavincoin people simply won't do the math.  There is no realistic point where a decent fraction of the worlds population can use native Bitcoin and have it remain supportable by anything but the most well situated mega-players.

You people remind me of someone who would put a gallon of gas into their tank and drive off into the desert toward a location 1000 miles away.  You just cannot get there.  You'll die.  'free markets' are not going to magically conjure up gas stations as needed for you.  Really, what passes for your thought processes here seem just that stupid, and then some.  Really!  Else you want Bitcoin to fail for one of several reasons.

And the best part is, you get to choose.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the fork has enough momentum behind it to go ahead.  And when it does, you can stay behind on the old chain and stagnate in a niche with your precious limits, or you can stay with the clear majority and see where things go from here when enough people are on board to really challenge the widely accepted perceptions about how money should work.

If sidechains do eventually come to fruition then it's a win-win either way, but until then, the rest of us don't want to risk the network grinding to a halt because too many people wanted to try out Bitcoin and we hit a wall on some inane limit.  The future potential for sidechains is not a substantial reason to delay this necessary update.  The simple fact is, you can't promise sidechains will be ready in time before we start piling up unconfirmed transactions.

The whole 1MB 'crisis' has been under discussion for at least three years.  I don't sense a huge change in sentiment one way or another.  A decent percentage of people recognize the futility of simplistic scaling.  Perhaps even more now.  Various 'world saving' things like micro-channel payments pop up, but eventually it dawns on people that they solve at best weird little corner-case problems.  Various Rube Goldberg econo-babble things are proposed and inevitably go nowhere.  (I'd be happy to see one in practice, BTW.)

The reason to NOT do a simplistic block size scale without first having a reasonably workable target solution (and sidechains appears the strongest at this point) is because even at 1MB there are still some questions about how defensible that is under certain kinds of attack.  How people could watch Obama and Cameron agreeing that nobody should have private info on their own fucking cell phones while at the same time taking it as a certainty that we will always be able to exchange whatever info we want at will even if it threatens corp/gov systems is baffling to me.  It's pure hopium and very short-sighted.

As for the unconfirmed transactions, they'll time out.  If it stresses some nodes, good for the owners to know it now.   It would be the kind of shock which is good for Bitcoin to have now and then.  If Bitcoin only functions based on it's ability to stay ahead of the demand, that's pretty week and lame.

[justusranvier]

You gavincoin people simply won't do the math.  There is no realistic point where a decent fraction of the worlds population can use native Bitcoin and have it remain supportable by anything but the most well situated mega-players.

I would ask if you'd change your mind if the math showed you to be wrong, but we already know the answer to that, don't we?

[tampazeus]

+1 pro. Im for any increase in block size. The advantage of using only one coin is much higher than the HDD space required for anyone wanting to run full node.

[tvbcof]

You gavincoin people simply won't do the math.  There is no realistic point where a decent fraction of the worlds population can use native Bitcoin and have it remain supportable by anything but the most well situated mega-players.

I would ask if you'd change your mind if the math showed you to be wrong, but we already know the answer to that, don't we?

Yup.  I'm not interested in theoretical hand-waving base of simplistic assumptions of how computers and systems generally work (and x*y/y=x is unimpressive to me mathematically.)

You (nor anyone else) responded to my simple arithmetic showing we need 10,000 tx/sec or so for less than half the world to use Bitcoin once per day.  Show me any example of anything remotely resembling a full scale Bitcoin network even existing in the real world, much less one under any sort of attack, and maybe I'll re-think my position.

Give me one clue about what you are thinking should Bitcoin somehow unexpectedly stop working well after 5,000 tx/sec and why we should put our finger into the Chinese finger-trap to figure out when we need to shift gears.

Nobody wants to address the possibility that governments may wish to clamp down on the solution if it becomes a challenge to them, and play that out to what it might look like.

As I've said before, it I were planning an attack on Bitcoin, I'd to exactly what the gavincoin folks are doing, and I hypothesized about it years ago.  I think it very possibly that this is one of the main incentives for trying to introduce exponential growth.

Here's the deal.  I do NOT think that it is irrational to consider our 'best bet' to go the direction our leaderships map out for us.  It is NOT irrational to trust the democratically elected political and social leaders over a band of often-criminal malcontents who happen to have a disproportionate number of chips at this point in the game.  Most people 'love big brother' and I have no reason to think that Gavin and the folks involved with the Bitcoin Foundation are any different.  Just the opposite in fact!  For that simple reason it does not strike me as especially unlikely that they would like Bitcoin as a solution to be brought to heal and they probably see plenty of legitimate uses for it even when it is.  For my part I simply dis-agree with this analysis and see Bitcoin as a pretty boring and useless, and mainly as just stepping stone toward a real solution if they get their way.  I'm not ready to give up on Bitcoin just yet.

[NewLiberty]

You gavincoin people simply won't do the math.  There is no realistic point where a decent fraction of the worlds population can use native Bitcoin and have it remain supportable by anything but the most well situated mega-players.

I would ask if you'd change your mind if the math showed you to be wrong, but we already know the answer to that, don't we?

You (nor anyone else) responded to my simple arithmetic showing we need 10,000 tx/sec or so for less than half the world to use Bitcoin once per day.  Show me any example of anything remotely resembling a full scale Bitcoin network even existing in the real world, much less one under any sort of attack, and maybe I'll re-think my position.

...

As I've said before, it I were planning an attack on Bitcoin, I'd to exactly what the gavincoin folks are doing, and I hypothesized about it years ago.  I think it very possibly that this is one of the main incentives for trying to introduce exponential growth.

Here's the deal.  I do NOT think that it is irrational to consider our 'best bet' to go the direction our leaderships map out for us.  It is NOT irrational to trust the democratically elected political and social leaders over a band of often-criminal malcontents who happen to have a disproportionate number of chips at this point in the game.  Most people 'love big brother' and I have no reason to think that Gavin and the folks involved with the Bitcoin Foundation are any different.  Just the opposite in fact!  For that simple reason it does not strike me as especially unlikely that they would like Bitcoin as a solution to be brought to heal and they probably see plenty of legitimate uses for it even when it is.  For my part I simply dis-agree with this analysis and see Bitcoin as a pretty boring and useless, and mainly as just stepping stone toward a real solution if they get their way.  I'm not ready to give up on Bitcoin just yet.

I'm pretty much with you on this, though I'm in favor or changing the 1MB limit.  I don't like the proposed solution of 20MB + exponential increase and I would not fork to it (so count me as 'anti' for the poll).  The proposal creates problems.
It is a sort-of simple proposal, (which is in its favor), but I think we can do better.  

We aren't in a crisis, and there may not be a crisis for quite a while.  Even having the horrible circumstance of queueing transactions (this already happens for low/no fee transaction), is not the end of the world for Bitcoin, but it will limit growth and adoption.

So since we have time to improve the proposal, this is what we ought to be doing.

If we are changing from a static to a dynamic limit, it ought to be sensitive to the need for increase rather than exponentially increasing.  This could be either too high of a limit (and creating the potential for vastly increasing network costs unsupported by Bitcoin economy), or it could be too low (and we end up back where we are now).

I would support either a sensitive increase, or a static increase (which just kicks the can down the road but caps the risk), but not a dynamic one that has exponentially increasing risk.

[traincarswreck]

 There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the fork has enough momentum behind it to go ahead.

I feel like you are misunderstanding the nature of this problem. I don't think you can be so confident.  I am extremely confident this needs to be a dialogue, and that we need to suspend all arguments, rather than sort them out.  This will then be a "reveal".  And I am not sure that we already know what will be revealed.  Clearly we are divided, and there can be no change with such division.

[traincarswreck]

The reason to NOT do a simplistic block size scale without first having a reasonably workable target solution (and sidechains appears the strongest at this point) is because even at 1MB there are still some questions about how defensible that is under certain kinds of attack.  How people could watch Obama and Cameron agreeing that nobody should have private info on their own fucking cell phones while at the same time taking it as a certainty that we will always be able to exchange whatever info we want at will even if it threatens corp/gov systems is baffling to me.  It's pure hopium and very short-sighted.

I read this as you have not read the "Origins of the Non-delegation doctrine.", and I wonder if this is true.  Because I'm not debating (or perhaps even engaging in dialgue) with a person on this subject that has not read such material. Obama is the Pharaoh that sits atop our Keynesian pyramid.  He necessarily guards the gold, and makes the final consensus decisions.  It means as we make these decisions and move to the block chain standard, he will no longer be relevant. Your fears then, are just that.

[wilth1]

If we are changing from a static to a dynamic limit, it ought to be sensitive to the need for increase rather than exponentially increasing.  This could be either too high of a limit (and creating the potential for vastly increasing network costs unsupported by Bitcoin economy), or it could be too low (and we end up back where we are now).

++

Make it scale organically according to need

[traincarswreck]

If we are changing from a static to a dynamic limit, it ought to be sensitive to the need for increase rather than exponentially increasing.  This could be either too high of a limit (and creating the potential for vastly increasing network costs unsupported by Bitcoin economy), or it could be too low (and we end up back where we are now).

++

Make it scale organically according to need

My understanding is this is exactly something we cannot do.  I didn't think it was part of the debate either, especially as it would be the obviously favorable choice. 

Here's the deal.  I do NOT think that it is irrational to consider our 'best bet' to go the direction our leaderships map out for us.  It is NOT irrational to trust the democratically elected political and social leaders over a band of often-criminal malcontents who happen to have a disproportionate number of chips at this point in the game.  Most people 'love big brother' and I have no reason to think that Gavin and the folks involved with the Bitcoin Foundation are any different.  Just the opposite in fact!  For that simple reason it does not strike me as especially unlikely that they would like Bitcoin as a solution to be brought to heal and they probably see plenty of legitimate uses for it even when it is.  For my part I simply dis-agree with this analysis and see Bitcoin as a pretty boring and useless, and mainly as just stepping stone toward a real solution if they get their way.  I'm not ready to give up on Bitcoin just yet.

I didn't fully understand you here, although I do like Bitcoin as a thing that is pretty boring and useless (like gold).  I do need to reiterate though, I am the worlds best poker player, I have a chip, and I have a chair. 

[hdbuck]

If we are changing from a static to a dynamic limit, it ought to be sensitive to the need for increase rather than exponentially increasing.  This could be either too high of a limit (and creating the potential for vastly increasing network costs unsupported by Bitcoin economy), or it could be too low (and we end up back where we are now).

++

Make it scale organically according to need

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Trash it, change it, mail - upgrade it,
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick - erase it,
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,
Load it, check it, quick - rewrite it,
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it,
Drag and drop it, zip - unzip it,
Lock it, fill it, call it, find it,
View it, code it, jam - unlock it,
Surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it,
Cross it, crack it, switch - update it,
Name it, rate it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax - rename it,
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it,



fork it!

[Cryddit]

I would support (and prefer) a limit that is set every two weeks (along with difficulty) to thrice the load experienced in the previous two weeks (so that the limit remains approximately thrice the actual usage).  That seems more responsive and more likely to survive relatively sudden and extreme changes in usage patterns if something unexpected happens over the course of a few weeks.  At the same time it doesn't permit horrible abuses by attackers unless they mine a significant fraction of all blocks for a long-ish period of time.

Regardless, I support the plan to increase the block limit whether it is done the way I'd prefer it or not.  Gavin's plan, while simplistic, is a MUCH better plan than failing to increase it.

Cryddit

[traincarswreck]

I would support (and prefer) a limit that is set every two weeks (along with difficulty) to thrice the load experienced in the previous two weeks (so that the limit remains approximately thrice the actual usage).  That seems more responsive and more likely to survive relatively sudden and extreme changes in usage patterns if something unexpected happens over the course of a few weeks.  At the same time it doesn't permit horrible abuses by attackers unless they mine a significant fraction of all blocks for a long-ish period of time.

Regardless, I support the plan to increase the block limit whether it is done the way I'd prefer it or not.  Gavin's plan, while simplistic, is a MUCH better plan than failing to increase it.

Cryddit

I might not be correct here, but its worth clarifying (by others).  I have read some papers thoroughly and some not so much (alas I cannot read everything). My understanding was that you cannot put a market mechanism in place here and especially not at this time (I have a thought about a future possibility that is not relevant at this time). If I understand this all correctly (and keeping in mind there is no bitcoin elite to confirm or deny), such a proposal would be EXACTLY like trying to square a circle (which requires geometry not necessarily of this universe). We can only guess, and put in some form of static (albeit variable) rate.  And then further more there must be a consensus.  This makes the problem very defined, and very simple, although psychologically difficult for each of us to accept.

[tvbcof]

I'm pretty much with you on this, though I'm in favor or changing the 1MB limit.  I don't like the proposed solution of 20MB + exponential increase and I would not fork to it (so count me as 'anti' for the poll).  The proposal creates problems.
It is a sort-of simple proposal, (which is in its favor), but I think we can do better.

I'm actually in favor if raising the limit as well under certain conditions:

 - There is a well defined end-goal and a well studied (and obviously, open) path to getting there

 - There is a need based on the above.

It just makes ZERO sense to do a Hail Mary and get a tiny fraction of the way to anything meaningful just because it 'feels' like the right direction.  Bitcoin is already important enough to where this type of thing does not make any sense, and under the quasi-management of the Bitcoin Foundation there is an appalling lack of transparency which totally sucks.  The little bits that do sneak out, like the discussions about 'red-listing' are not very heartening...though they do have a high potential to explain the current direction since increasing the exclusivity of operators is a necessary first step.

We aren't in a crisis, and there may not be a crisis for quite a while.  Even having the horrible circumstance of queueing transactions (this already happens for low/no fee transaction), is not the end of the world for Bitcoin, but it will limit growth and adoption.

So since we have time to improve the proposal, this is what we ought to be doing.

If we are changing from a static to a dynamic limit, it ought to be sensitive to the need for increase rather than exponentially increasing.  This could be either too high of a limit (and creating the potential for vastly increasing network costs unsupported by Bitcoin economy), or it could be too low (and we end up back where we are now).

I would support either a sensitive increase, or a static increase (which just kicks the can down the road but caps the risk), but not a dynamic one that has exponentially increasing risk.

I'm 10-times more negative about dynamic adjustments than I am about simplistic block size for scaling.  Throw in the towel at that point.  They are extraordinarily difficult to get right in the best of circumstances, and that is far from the case in Bitcoinland where everyone and their brother are trying to game the system for fun and profit (as the design correctly anticipates.)

Bitcoin is utterly lacking in any viable feedback mechanisms to make dynamic adjustments tenable.  Just to set fees have struggled mightily with this.  Adding such mechanisms into the mix would necessitate a fairly significant overhaul (my gut sense of things.)  If Bitcoin had some sort of 'benevolent dictator for life' then _maybe_ dynamic feedback would work _sorta_ for a while.  But if Bitcoin had such a thing it would not be Bitcoin.  The window of opportunity for dynamic feedback probably ended at about the time Satoshi announced the whitepaper.  That bird has flown.  The best bet is to address the need by careful design of autonomous semi-auxiliary systems in my opinion.

[traincarswreck]

It just makes ZERO sense to do a Hail Mary and get a tiny fraction of the way to anything meaningful just because it 'feels' like the right direction. 

It makes sense if we need a consensus for change though, because for a long period of time, it is going to get more and more difficult to do so.  In fact, we haven't yet shown that its not impossible at this point.

Bitcoin is utterly lacking in any viable feedback mechanisms to make dynamic adjustments tenable.

I suspect this is the problem solved here, but not with any mechanism we can possibly have access to today.

http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html

Again I could be off, but I seem to be thinking backwards and upside than all of us (which might be useful to have such a different view). Szabo often presents strangely and had to do so because of the difficult material that was not anywhere near relevant in the time he wrote these things.  We can remember he explained smart contracts with elves ringing bells.  

We must not be trapped in our thinking with this problem, we should seek to think outside it and around it...I do not think this problem was come across as it arose, I think it was already well thought out.

[traincarswreck]

I think we should press on.  I think we have exhausted the possibilities, the views, the opinions, etc. In light of the 'evidence' provided, I want to make a suggestion, and then I think we should give our reactions and opinions to the possibility of its truth(-ness). We must keep in mind I am the worlds best poker player and in fact have over 100k games under my belt.

I'd like to suggest that Satoshi and Gavin, know that there can be no consensus, and that the proposal is exactly a test to prove it. The euro decision awaits ours, and so they will indefinitely stall until we come to this realization. No consensus can be made, and entropy suggest then that there will never be such a change.  Price then we should expect has started to fluctuate based on the stability of this realization.  After bitcoin's network grew to a certain size, and had a certain mixed distribution of followers, then theory can only be proven by the proposal of 20mb and the on goin realization that no consensus could be made.


I think we should discus the plausibility of this (possibly being a fact)...

For example there has been a quite dramatic improvement in the (internationally perceived apparent) quality of the money used in the countries of Italy and Greece simply because they have moved through the revol-utionary transition of renouncing the use of the lira or the drachma and have accepted the use of the newly established “euro” unit.

Nowadays we see some new areas of competition between different major currencies of the world since the euro has come into existence and the psychological climate in which the "central bankers" are operating is recently changed by the theme that is next described.

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. There is now
the "euro" and the inflationary tradition of the Italian lira seems to be past history now. And there COULD be introduced, for example, a similar international currency for the Islamic world, or for South Asia, or for South America, or here or there.

   So we can imagine the evolutionary possibility of “asymptotically ideal money". 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 value comparisons. The currencies being compared, like now the euro, the dollar, the yen, the pound, the Swiss franc, the Swedish krona, 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 rate of inflationary depreciation in value.

 Illustrating these optional choices that the public, the users of a money, may have, the people of Sweden recently had the opportunity of voting in a referendum on whether or not Sweden should join the euro money bloc and replace the krona by the euro and thus use the same currency as Finland. The people voted against that, for various reasons. But it cannot be irrelevant whether or not the future quality of a currency is really assured or whether instead that it depends on the shifting sands of political decisions or the possibly arbitrary actions of a bureaucracy of officials.

 The voters in the U.K. are expecting to have the opportunity to vote in a referendum relating to the adoption, for the U.K., of the euro (which is already adopted in Ireland). Here they have a dramatic conflict, since the pound was the original currency of "the gold standard", with its value pegged to gold in 1717 by Isaac Newton (who was then Master of the Mint).
    In recent years the pound has had a comparatively good rating with regard to inflation, inferior to the rating of the Swiss franc but superior to most currencies of the world. So the British have the alternatives of accepting adoption of the euro when first voting, or after a delay, or never.
    We can legitimately wonder how the speediness of its adoption or delays in its adoption might affect the poli-cies operating to control the actual exchange value of the euro. The constitutional structure of the authority behind the euro is of the "paper money" character in that nothing is really guaranteed as far as the value of the euro is concerned. But this is typical of all currencies used in the world nowadays.

[Cryddit]

I would support (and prefer) a limit that is set every two weeks (along with difficulty) to thrice the load experienced in the previous two weeks (so that the limit remains approximately thrice the actual usage).  That seems more responsive and more likely to survive relatively sudden and extreme changes in usage patterns if something unexpected happens over the course of a few weeks.  At the same time it doesn't permit horrible abuses by attackers unless they mine a significant fraction of all blocks for a long-ish period of time.

I might not be correct here, but its worth clarifying (by others).  I have read some papers thoroughly and some not so much (alas I cannot read everything). My understanding was that you cannot put a market mechanism in place here and especially not at this time (I have a thought about a future possibility that is not relevant at this time).

I agree with both Keynes and Smith, in thinking that it would be mad to seek to put into place a limit with significance as a market mechanism.  Creating a 'market' imposing a significant cost in fees on ordinary transactions is a poisonous side effect of having a limit at all, and one whose influence we seek to minimize.  The only reason limits are necessary is to prevent denial of service and outright theft of services.

The point of retaining a block size limit at all, in fact, was never driven by any supposed need for scarcity in a fees market; it was and is driven by the fear that the blockchain will be abused, either for an attack on bitcoin itself (ie, making it so onerous to download the chain that bitcoin is thinly supported by full nodes) or as a way of using the block chain to 'steal' huge and inefficiently utilized storage space to record data irrelevant to the purposes of those who would be paying for the storage.

Both of these remain concerns when raising the limit.  But the limit must be raised, because in general it would be actively bad to create a scarcity market in the ability to make transactions.  

If I understand this all correctly (and keeping in mind there is no bitcoin elite to confirm or deny), such a proposal would be EXACTLY like trying to square a circle (which requires geometry not necessarily of this universe). We can only guess, and put in some form of static (albeit variable) rate.  And then further more there must be a consensus.  This makes the problem very defined, and very simple, although psychologically difficult for each of us to accept.

Here is an interesting tidbit, although I know well that this is not exactly what you mean by squaring a circle.

But this is the equation of a circle:

x² + y² = 1

And here is the corresponding equation of the square which exactly circumscribes such a circle:

x^infinity + y^infinity = 1

They are more closely related than most people realize.  Similarly, sometimes a very closely related problem which has a simple solution can be found and, for some purposes that solution may serve.

At any rate for practical purposes the impossibility of calculating pi to the last digit isn't a significant limit as to what we can actually do.  Getting 'close enough' to squaring a circle gives results indistinguishable from perfect results.  We can these days square a circle bigger than this solar system with an error smaller than the width of a hydrogen atom.  Even though we will never be able to exactly square a circle, we have reached a point at which our inability to do so imposes no practical limit.

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We must keep in mind I am the worlds best poker player and in fact have over 100k games under my belt.

Watch out everyone, he could be bluffing, or maybe not.