Quote from: kokojie on January 14, 2015, 08:35:25 PM

Quote from: Rannasha on January 14, 2015, 07:53:27 PM

Quote from: elephantas1 on January 14, 2015, 07:49:56 PM

so if they all choose to not include transactions we wouldnt be able to send coins?

Correct. But if miners decide to make Bitcoin useless that way, they're also hurting their own profit. That is why these 1-transaction-blocks are quite rare fortunately.

No it actually helps their profit to include very few transactions, since they get less orphaned blocks this way.

(bolded for clarification)
You misunderstand. If all miners were to somehow collude and decide that they're only going to mine 0 transaction blocks (technically 1, the coinbase transaction), which seems to be the doomsday scenario proposed here, they're definitely hurting their own profits. In that scenario it doesn't matter how many blocks they mine or how many of those blocks are orphans. Bitcoin is effectively worth $0 if you can't spend it and you also can't move it to an exchange to sell it because transactions aren't being confirmed. Even if miners colluded and decided to only include their own transactions (so they can spend their hard-earned BTC) it doesn't improve the situation because Bitcoin would still be useless to everybody else in the world and would still be worth $0. To the miners it would be worth less than $0 and they'd actually be taking a loss since they'd be spending money to burn electricity for nothing.

edit: I admit, it is a highly unlikely (and probably near impossible) scenario in reality, but it is the scenario that was being discussed in that post. I'd think most (home and corporate) miners probably have enough greed and/or common sense to avoid crippling Bitcoin that way and would include at least a few transactions in most of their blocks just to keep Bitcoin moving to protect their investment in mining equipment.