Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by AaronFriel 1954 days ago
> Bitcoin's maximum possible transaction rate could be arbitrarily scaled up without impacting the electricity usage at all

If it can, why hasn't it?

1 comments

For example, increasing the block size could have some disadvantages like increasing how quickly the size of the blockchain grows, which will make it harder for new users/miners to join the network and possibly increase centralization.

It's also not clear the market has a strong demand for an increased transaction rate yet. Eventually it will be almost unavoidable, but we might not be there yet. If that's the case then it might be harmful to increase the number of frivolous/unnecessary transactions for no reason.