If you could provide more than one quote supporting your assertion that 'usually people from BU say that they had fun with bitcoin and now it's time for a rebirth of it', I will be impressed. If you cannot, I'll just think you're making shit up to vilify those with whom you do not agree.

Yes, like you leave your old car for a newer one.

And "consensus to fix the known issue" is essentially impossible, for exactly the same reason that protects the 21 million coin limit.


Not all altcoins have hard block limits.  But they will also run into problems.  However "other coins running into problems" doesn't mean that bitcoin's problems can be solved.   If you're falling out of an air plane, saying that others are falling too, will not avoid you crashing on the floor, right

The fact that bitcoin has a hard block size limit, makes that block chain space is a limited resource in the same way that the number of coins is a limited resource.  From the moment that there's a market with finite price for that limited resource (like from the moment that bitcoin wasn't $0,- any more), the consensus mechanism protects this resource scarcity.  As there is now a strongly rising fee for "room on the chain", this resource scarcity will be protected by the same mechanism that stops people form increasing the number of bitcoins beyond the original protocol.

Bitcoin having a fixed block size was programming, from the start, a scarce resource of "room on the block chain", that is coming to maturity.  The artificial scarcity of coins, that made the market cap of bitcoin's coins, is now also applied to block chain room.  Whenever this market cap becomes bigger than the coin market cap, and when "room on the chain" becomes a much more valuable commodity than (unmovable) coins, the 21 million coin limit will not matter any more, and the true value proposition of bitcoin will be "room on the chain".

This was baked in from the start in the protocol, by setting up a hard limit on block size.

The fact that there IS a hard limit in the protocol is the essence.  There are alt coins that have technology-limited block sizes, like mining is technology-limited: from a certain point onwards, with a given technology, it becomes too expensive.  But when technology advances, this limit is pushed higher.  In that case, the commodity price is elastic, and determined by real world cost of resource usage.  As it should be.  And is not an artificially created scarcity, but just the price of used resource.  In order to make a monetary asset, you have to make an artificial scarcity, like the number of bitcoins.  If you make an artificial scarcity of block chain room, that automatically ALSO becomes a monetary asset from the moment that it becomes more scarce than the real resource usage.  The 32 MB limit will reach that only much later, but will reach it.


One could lower it back then, because it was considered a *technical* parameter with no scarcity involved.  One could have increased it before it became a scarcity parameter.  But that window is closed now.

Note, BTW, that LOWERING the limit is a SOFT FORK. 

Now, for me, bitcoin is no longer an experiment, it is something very familiar, and it plays a key role in my life. Before, I had never known it, and I was a poor citizen, and when I knew it, things improved, my life had changed since I knew bitcoin. Bitcoin is something new but has a lot of value, i feel like it

We don't NEED it, but the dynamics of trustless consensus leading to immutability IMPOSES it.  That's my point.  This is nobody's fault.  It is the inherent dynamics that brings immutability, that will also keep this (unfortunate) parameter fixed.


The definition of a soft fork is: the new protocol makes blocks that are all accepted as valid by the old protocol, but not all blocks accepted by the old protocol, are accepted as valid by the new protocol.  In other words, a soft fork is an EXTRA CONDITION on the previously existing protocol.  Every 1 MB block is compatible with the previous protocol that allowed blocks up to 32 MB.  But, say, a 7 MB block, that was compatible with the old protocol, is not valid any more under the new protocol.

Of course not.  In order to face the same problems, they would have to have similar investment, adoption and so on.   Most alt coins are technically superior to bitcoin and would only run into the same problems at even higher levels.  Take litecoin for instance.  Litecoin has more room on the chain than bitcoin.  DASH too.  They are also "hard block chain limit" coins, but both of them can at least accommodate 4 times bitcoin's max volume.  Before they run into the same problems, they have to have 4 times more capital/adoption.... Then, they are as strong as bitcoin at that point.

Then there are other coins like monero, that have flexible block sizes, and will never hit a hard wall.

But in the end, all block chain based chains will run into problems of scale, because it is a technology that doesn't scale well.

That said, if we have many *different* chains, they can all carry part of the volume of course. 

Actually you do have points on what you are trying to say comparing alts and bitcoin and i partly agree on some related to the capabilities of some coins that could be better than bitcoin but seeing on the situation bitcoin has gone away to far and its hard for people switch directly.

You are right.  The term "monetary" doesn't apply.  It is a "valuable asset".

[/quote]

No, you can have distributed exchanges.  Like now, there are many different national fiat currencies, but you don't need bank accounts of all of them.  If there are N chains out there, and everyone uses on average, n < N chains which you pick "in common" with your most important partners, you only need to exchange now and then between one of your chains, and "foreign" chains.

I don't need the chain that is essentially used by customers of groceries, and groceries in a town on the other side of the world.  The single one time I need to buy tomatoes in a far-away grocery, I'll go through some exchanges to "hop" from my chains to the grocery chain over there.  I don't need to have them all.  My transactions with my grocery don't have to fill up their chain.  And theirs are not interesting for me. 

However, a single global chain that has as well my grocery expenditures, as Bill Gates' new porsche buying, as a Chinese guy's buying of a bag of rice, that's simply crazy.  I only need a local chain, a few chains used by local agents of amazon or the like, and the possibility, in those rare cases I need something from far away, to exchange for their chains.