[scotty79]

I don't get your argument. Block size is limited so fees can go up to pay the miners so they have incentive to mine.

If fees are a barrier to you, you can make your transfer of value using any other traded cryptocurrency (or lightning whatever it is).

Aim of bitcoin is not to be the fastest cryptocurrency but the most mined one (thus safest?).

[etherael]

> I don't get your argument. Block size is limited so fees can go up to pay the miners so they have incentive to mine.

Probably because that point has nothing to do with anything, as basically every single blockchain in existence has fees that go to miners. BTC isn't the slightest bit unique in that.

> Aim of bitcoin is not to be the fastest cryptocurrency but the most mined one (thus safest?).

Which once again has nothing to do with the artificial useless block limit. The cryptocurrency that is most mined is the one in which mining is most profitable, the US federal reserve could launch a competitor tomorrow with a goal directly opposed to every other cryptocurrency in existence and if they paid more per SHA256 hash rate unit they would become the most mined cryptocurrency.

[scotty79]

>> Aim of bitcoin is not to be the fastest cryptocurrency but the most mined one (thus safest?).

> Which once again has nothing to do with the artificial useless block limit.

It has everything to do with block limit because its whole purpose is to make each block more valuable for the miners so that a lot of hashpower competes to mine that block.

Size of mining reward and transaction fees per given amount of kb of transactions is vital thing for miners. Increasing block size would be same as decreasing payout (of tx fees) for each block. Since transaction fees will eventually become the only reward for the miners tampering with their value would be just as frightening as tampering with the block reward (like doubling it or halving it on a whim). It would affect miners. And miners are ultimately who decide with their legs on what version of crypto to secure.

> The cryptocurrency that is most mined is the one in which mining is most profitable, the US federal reserve could launch a competitor tomorrow with a goal directly opposed to every other cryptocurrency in existence and if they paid more per SHA256 hash rate unit they would become the most mined cryptocurrency.

Sure, but if you are not federal reserve and can't invest billions of your own money in your crypto then what bitcoin does is exactly how you get to be the most mined crypto.

[etherael]

> It has everything to do with block limit because its whole purpose is to make each block more valuable for the miners so that a lot of hashpower competes to mine that block.

Wrong, this assumes it is the only way to make each block more valuable, it is not only not the only way, it is the most stupid way imaginable; an artificial production quota completely unhinged from underlying physical reality.

> Size of mining reward and transaction fees per given amount of kb of transactions is vital thing for miners.

Transaction fees per given data volume is less important than net profit on actual services provided, a chain that has a thousand times the capacity and a hundred times lower costs is still ten times more profitable than the competition.

> Increasing block size would be same as decreasing payout (of tx fees) for each block.

Just as stupid as saying that increasing seats on a train decreases the ticket revenue on that train. Completely false.

> Since transaction fees will eventually become the only reward for the miners tampering with their value would be just as frightening as tampering with the block reward

Tampering with the value of transaction fees is exactly what setting an unjustified artificial production quota does. And yes, this is "frightening" to a certain extent, but if you're still around on BTC by now, nothing is going to frighten you into abandoning it because it's absolutely valueless and idiotically stupid at this point in time, propped up only by the self-admitted unbacked charade that is transparent USDT manipulations.

> It would affect miners. And miners are ultimately who decide with their legs on what version of crypto to secure.

And as a miner, we will mine whatever pays the highest immediate return on invested power, no matter how ridiculously stupid that thing appears to be to us, it still makes sense to do that and immediately sell it and pocket the difference between the nearest sensible competitor to that for those who actually accrue proper genuine working cryptocurrencies with utility or whatever other legitimate financial instrument you care to mention that isn't transparently sabotaged and utterly broken.

> Sure, but if you are not federal reserve and can't invest billions of your own money in your crypto then what bitcoin does is exactly how you get to be the most mined crypto.

On the contrary; if you are the federal reserve, or that clique of financial manipulators (see AXA investment in Blockstream), and you're desperate to protect your collapsing imaginary financial system from genuine auditable competition, taking control of BTC and ploughing money into an avenue anybody with an ounce of sense could tell immediately was a dead end just from the specifications of the chain is how you get to be the most mined crypto whilst maintaining plausible deniability that you're meddling in the process at all.

[scotty79]

>> Size of mining reward and transaction fees per given amount of kb of transactions is vital thing for miners. > Transaction fees per given data volume is less important than net profit on actual services provided, a chain that has a thousand times the capacity and a hundred times lower costs is still ten times more profitable than the competition.

That's true but you it's not guaranteed that you'd get 1000 times more transactions when you increase capacity 100 times. It's a gamble and if bitcoin did that it would get unpredictable result but show miners that it is willing to gamble with their profitability.

>> Increasing block size would be same as decreasing payout (of tx fees) for each block.

>Just as stupid as saying that increasing seats on a train decreases the ticket revenue on that train. Completely false.

Increasing number of seats might cause the train to be partially empty and if this one isn't the next one might be. Since people get tickets on auction then non-full trains bring no revenue because tickets for them cost zero. So it might be not sufficiently attractive to participate in the burden of sending more trains.

When there were ton of transactions fees skyrocketed but in weeks they went back to normal and tx fees revenue for miners dropped. Tx fees dropping to too low value in times where they are main income source for miners might be what kills bitcoin. Same way that low traffic might kill a train line if trains are running mostly empty and tickets don't have fixed price and their are auctioned instead.

Again. Bitcoin is built and governed for survivability first. You can do it differently with other cryptos. You can even fork bitcoin. People did. Miners voted with their legs on which solution they prefer. It's really miners that decide everything.

I don't get where you were going with federal reserve tangent. I'm just getting a vibe that you overestimate politics and underestimate economy.

[etherael]

> That's true but you it's not guaranteed that you'd get 1000 times more transactions when you increase capacity 100 times. It's a gamble and if bitcoin did that it would get unpredictable result but show miners that it is willing to gamble with their profitability.

This argument is stupid both because it justifies restricting the chain throughput even further to whatever arbitrary number you like above zero and assumes it's always an unalloyed positive because the artificial scarcity should always drive up the price, and because it is completely ignorant of the fact that failing to raise the limit as originally planned has already resulted in 50+ USD transaction fees as an actual result, followed by a mass abandonment of the BTC chain relative to the volume at the time, followed by an uptake of competitive chains.

All existing empirical evidence makes a complete mockery of it, as if it weren't enough from an economic perspective to actually be trying to justify an artificial production quota forcibly imposed from a central committee up front.

> Increasing number of seats might cause the train to be partially empty and if this one isn't the next one might be

And yet still the promotion of artificial scarcity in volume businesses is seen as idiotic, which it is. Perhaps your assumptions are wrong and capacity planning actually aims to serve estimated demand in every other field except the BTC one.

> Since people get tickets on auction then non-full trains bring no revenue because tickets for them cost zero.

This is false, tx fees on non full blocks on chains that aren't sabotaged like BTC are still not zero, and there's no arbitrary limit on what they might be. Suggestions have even been made that the tx fees should be set by a second lowest bid auction where all transactions above the second lowest fee are accepted and that is set as the net as both the most customer and revenue friendly option in BCH for example.

> When there were ton of transactions fees skyrocketed but in weeks they went back to normal and tx fees revenue for miners dropped.

Which is to say a business failed utterly to scale and was largely abandoned by its customers, with the knock on effects on the share price of that business, yes. This is not by any measure a success, and only a complete moron like Greg Maxwell would "pop champaign" (sic) over the event.

> Tx fees dropping to too low value in times where they are main income source for miners might be what kills bitcoin.

This doesn't make even theoretical sense, if the miners don't want to mine blocks at a given revenue level, it is up to the customers to raise their tx fee bids in order to ensure the flow of blocks, and it doesn't matter what the block limit is in question for that to be the case, no matter how high or low it is, it's still true.

> Same way that low traffic might kill a train line if trains are running mostly empty and tickets don't have fixed price and their are auctioned instead.

And this is even more idiotic, low traffic might indeed kill a train line, setting auctions on the tickets that exist in order to save it absent demand isn't a solution, it's a ploy of abject desperation guaranteed to fail, which is why nobody else in the history of time perhaps has ever been that stupid.

> Again. Bitcoin is built and governed for survivability first.

BTC is built and governed to be hamstrung and useless, and the post-hoc narrative after changes that implement that hamstringing will be whatever idiots suck up and accept. By and large actual usage moves on because customers don't care about unconvincing and frankly idiotic justifications for obviously stupid moves. And that's exactly what we actually see in reality on this question.

> You can do it differently with other cryptos.

And every single other crypto in existence agrees that it is in fact stupid to do it the BTC way and does indeed do it differently. Which is supposed to be "just some weird coincidence" or everyone else in the world being wrong and the core coterie being inexplicably right.

> You can even fork bitcoin. People did.

As well they should, since BTC is useless and sabotaged.

> Miners voted with their legs on which solution they prefer. It's really miners that decide everything.

Wrong, miners mine what is most profitable, not what solution they prefer, and according to the core coterie, miners decide absolutely nothing, in fact your idol gmaxwell has literally said that if miners disagree with the way that the core council runs bitcoin that they should be fired. In response, miners have demonstrated that they don't give a damn if BTC dies completely and will happily mine whatever else is more profitable than it as a result. The fact that the BTC faithful aren't concerned about this despite the slow adjustment of the BTC DAA is just another indication of just how stupid said faithful actually are, as it's an obvious existential risk to the chain.

> I don't get where you were going with federal reserve tangent. I'm just getting a vibe that you overestimate politics and underestimate economy.

This, like every other point you made, is wrong, but since you admit you don't even understand the point I'm not going to bother discussing it. What "vibe" you get from admitted ignorance on a subject isn't worth addressing.

[scotty79]

I wrote down my understanding of bitcoin and influence of the block size as a train analogy. Here it is for you to make fun of:

Imagine there’s a train line. Trains go at regular intervals and have fixed number of seats.

Operator of the train line gradually issues unfalsifiable coins which there will eventually be specific number of and not one more. You can carry any amount of coins while you ride the train. People started to find them valuable so you can buy them before departure and sell on arrival.

Tickets for the train are auctioned for coins. Only the people who bid most can ride the next train. You can even bid 0 coins and get on the next train for free if not enough people outbid you.

Making train go is the cheap and easy part. What’s expensive is securing it from robbers that could disrupt the service and tank the value of the coins. Operator outsources this task to Miners&co. They make the train secure proportionally to the amount of real money they spend. To compensate them operator pays them with freshly minted coins for securing each train. Since operator intends to emit a predetermined number of coins in total it has to periodically lower Miners&co reward for each train secured.

There’s a risk that the price of the coins won’t grow fast enough and securing trains will get less and less profitable for Miners&co and they will secure trains less and less until train line falls victim to the robbers.

To create a second source of income for Miners&co operator gives them the fees that people bid to be on the next train. Operator is not sure if it will suffice but that’s the best he could come up with.

There’s a surge in coin price and people start to ride trains like mad to sell their coins at places where there are buyers. People outbid themselves to be on the next train to the point that travel becomes uneconomical for casual travelers. Some of the travelers say: “Make the trains larger so we can all fit in for cheap”. Operator could do that at no cost, because running trains of any size is the cheap and easy part.

If the operator decides to make the trains larger he is lowering the amount of coins that people will have to pay to travel and thus lowers income of Miners&co and thus lower the incentive to maintain high security of the trains. Incentive that the operator already wasn’t sure was sufficient to keep Miners&co interested forever. Operator would be taking away profitability from Miners&co and make them worry that he could just take away more of their profitability in the future on a whim. What’s next? Even less fees? Maybe no base reward for securing trains? Maybe fixed or increasing reward that makes coins not scarce anymore and thus less valuable in terms of real money?

If the operator decides to not make the trains larger, he makes the casual travellers that like to travel often with a small amount of coins unhappy, to the point of using other trains and coins altogether. But the operator keeps Miners&co profitable and communicate to them that he doesn’t intend to change any core rules in a way that negatively affects their profitability

Travellers say, if the operator makes the trains larger, and as a result makes travel faster and fees lower then more people will travel and coin will become more valuable offsetting any loss of profitability that Miners&co suffers as a result of larger trains.

But the operator knows that what makes his coins valuable is not that his trains are fast, or large or cheap or used often. What makes coins valuable is that they are in strictly limited supply and that the trains will operate forever secured strongly enough to never get disrupted by robbers. So the operator chooses not to make trains larger because Miners&co profitability and trust must be considered before anything else because security they provide is one of the two necessary things for the coins to be valuable.

Some people are very upset and they make their own train line and coins (which they give to people that own operators coins). Miners&co prefers to secure operators trains more and the new larger ones less. Price of operators coins doesn’t suffer and follows usual curves it previously followed around moments of high interest. Operator can infer from that that he chose correctly.

Will the operator be able to keep trains running safely forever? Nobody knows, because outside of well modeled problems, nobody knows what the future will be. And this train line is the first of its kind. I you think it’s doomed you are free to ride any other. There are so many now that do various things differently. Choose wisely because many of them already died abandoned by Miners&co.

[scotty79]

> ... it justifies restricting the chain throughput even further ...

Yes. There might come a time when block reward is miniscule, volume of transactions is too low to support mining at reasonable level, and the only way to incetivize the miners will be to reduce block size.

> already resulted in 50+ USD transaction fees as an actual result

Briefly. And 50$ is not an unreasonable fee if you are transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars in value to sell it at the peak.

> followed by a mass abandonment of the BTC chain relative to the volume at the time, followed by an uptake of competitive chains

Which is completely fine because small fraction of bitcoin value comes from it being transferred. Bulk comes from it being scarce and secure which limited block size helps to ensure.

> This doesn't make even theoretical sense, if the miners don't want to mine blocks at a given revenue level, it is up to the customers to raise their tx fee bids in order to ensure the flow of blocks

Single miner can ensure flow of the blocks once difficulty adjusts. Bitcoins doesn't die because it stops transferring. Bitcoin dies when so many miners leave it to make double spend attack trivial.

There's no reason for any bitcoin user to give any transaction fee if all transactions fit in the next block. Even if all but one miner leave bitcoin.

> low traffic might indeed kill a train line, setting auctions on the tickets that exist in order to save it absent demand isn't a solution

You misunderstood. I'm not saying that auctioning tickets is supposed to save train line dying to low traffic. What I was saying is that train lines can die to low traffic even more likely if tickets don't have fixed price but they are auctioned instead (like bitcoin tx fees).

> Suggestions have even been made that the tx fees should be set by a second lowest bid auction where all transactions above the second lowest fee are accepted and that is set as the net as both the most customer and revenue friendly option in BCH for example.

From what I'm getting, you don't only want to increase block size but also change how should fees work.

Maybe you should focus your advocacy efforts on other crypto that's closer to your liking because you don't seem to like anything about bitcoin except for the name and perhaps popularity that it managed to accumulate from the ground up and hold without your enlightened guidance.

> Wrong, miners mine what is most profitable, not what solution they prefer

They prefer the solution that is most profitable for them. Or are you saying that they cry all the way to the bank?

> ... your idol gmaxwell ...

I have no idea who that is.

I'm speaking purely from what I know about how bitcoin works and what I think makes it successful. I'm not familiar with other peoples opinions on the subject let alone which specific people hold which specific opinions.

> gmaxwell has literally said that if miners disagree with the way that the core council runs bitcoin that they should be fired

Not sure if you can fire someone you never hired and have no relationship with. But in a sense yes. If you don't like what bitcoin is you are free to mine something else. But statistically you will want to mine bitcoin because it's built to be most profitable for you.

> they don't give a damn if BTC dies completely

Can you show me some data that indicates that bitcoin is close to dying?

Also, why do you give so much of a damn if BTC dies or not? There are so many cryptos. You can jump ship at any time. Why are you so attached to bitcoin?

General remark: When I think something is stupid, innane, idiotic, moronic and useless that's usually for me an indication that I don't quite understand the thing or at least the reasons why a lot of seemingly reasonable people pursue it and I should learn more.

> What "vibe" you get from admitted ignorance on a subject isn't worth addressing.

Do you admit ignorance often? Because it is a declaration of openness to information and it usually prompts people that have some point worth communicating to clarify it. If you do not admit ignorance you are missing out on a lot.