Also note the absence of any thing like, "all aspects of bitcoin may be compromised so that maximum adoption is achieved." Satoshi never framed this as "the fastest and bestest way to send money for all people no matter how stupid or poor they are." Your quoted texts prove my point rather than yours; we need "cryptographic proof instead of trust." When it comes to the money supply, I don't want to trust banks; I don't want to trust governments; and I certainly don't want to trust developers!
Maybe. I love the idea of algorithmic (in a formal sense) determination of almost anything. Money supply is definitely included in that.
But that wasn't the point. Other than the "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" message, what's the hard evidence Satoshi saw the network's main purpose as 'sound money' more than 'trustless payment system'? I still believe the fixed supply in the limit is more due to finding a solution for the economical bootstrapping problem than political/economical conviction, but my guess is as good as yours in that matter. There's simply not much evidence on this matter, to my knowledge.
That said, there
is evidence what Satoshi thought about the max block size limit. Can't quote this often enough, it seems:
The threshold can easily be changed in the future. We can decide to increase it when the time comes. It's a good idea to keep it lower as a circuit breaker and increase it as needed. If we hit the threshold now, it would almost certainly be some kind of flood and not actual use. Keeping the threshold lower would help limit the amount of wasted disk space in that event.
Conclusion: Whatever one's arguments for or against raising the limit are, leave Satoshi out of it. From what we can gather, the thought it's a non-issue. Doesn't mean he's automatically right of course, but arguing
against a relaxation of the limit by appeal to the creator's authority just doesn't fly, given the evidence.
You know who uses "algorithms?" The Fed. Are you seriously suggesting that even the 21 million cap be raised? As for "trustless payment system," clearly this includes "sound money." Otherwise I need to trust an issuer. I already trust the mining process, but at least they are bound to a strict set of rules. Satoshi says "when the time comes," but you idiots want it ahead of time. Do you think it wouldn't be abuse if the threshold were reached today? Or if the limit was 20 MB? That wouldn't be
abuse? How much does the USG pay you to slander bitcoin and satoshi?
it's really a simple thing. DO WE NEED IT? Is the current limit affecting us or not? Have we reached a point where it is not enough?
The answer depends upon whether a system is centralized or decentralized. When Psy's Gangnam Style "broke" the download counter on YouTube the developers could easily upgrade it after the event, even though they saw it was going to happen. Centralized system, fixed in one place. Very easy!
With Bitcoin, the software is being run on many thousands of computers, owned by thousands of different people who have different opinions, speak different languages, have different priorities. If this change is delayed until it is obvious it is needed, then
everyone has to upgrade, at once. Very messy!
Remember that a YouTube counter is nothing important, but if large numbers of YouTubers were waiting hours or days to see a video then the service becomes total crap. That is the equivalent to the dismal PR scenario being faced here.
it's really a simple thing. DO WE NEED IT? Is the current limit affecting us or not? Have we reached a point where it is not enough?
Today no but properly done a hard fork is a 6-9 month process. Hell it almost took that long for P2SH. We are roughly 35% to 40% of max capacity and txn volume over the last year (in a major bitcoin decline) still doubled. Over a longer period of time it has grown more like 3x to 5x per year. Waiting till 100% of blocks are 1MB and there is a 50,000 txn backlog is probably the wrong time to start discussing the issue.
Thank you both for your answer. Based on that i think it is prudent to lay the ground work for expansion and explain it for what it is,
evolution, not a hard fork. Hard fork just has a bad ring to it and is mostly used to explain
fixing something broken with the system . I think this is a good step forward.
About space on HDD, the question becomes, do you prefer to have an extra 100GB of sauce or run your own node? The vast majority of users are now on lite clients so they are not affected, but if you can run a full node now then you already have the infrastructure to handle the
expansion.
It's not just hard drive space; it's
processing power and
bandwidth. It's ironic that opponents of the hard-fork are framed as elitist when the proposed changes would make running a full node the kind of thing only wealthy people can afford.
Bitcoin's ability to destroy socialism is not strengthened by the inclusion of every Tom, Dick, and Harry that has two cents to scrape together.
I wasn't aware that everyone had agreed on this being one of Bitcoin's aims. While you're entitled to have your own agendas, conflating them with Bitcoin seems rather naive. It's an open source protocol, people can do whatever they want with it. There are people, myself included, who would like to see the inclusion of everyone in this technology and you can't do anything to change that. If anything, your insistence to the contrary only reinforces my view that a fork would beneficial, since clearly there are different ideals at work in various corners of the community that aren't compatible. There are those whose only concern is worshiping at the altar of money and turning a profit, whereas others see Bitcoin as a tool for social and political revolution. Ultimately, we're all going to use it in the way our own personal ideals deem best, but try to understand that you can't force your view onto others.
Who are you to make such grand decisions?
An individual with a mind of his own who is entitled to make his own decisions, much like everyone else. Anyone who wants to propose a fork can do so, but similarly can't force anyone to go along with it. Anyone can choose to ignore someone else's view on the matter and can encourage others to do the same if they so choose. Again, personal freedom. For what it's worth, if there is a fork, I'll happily go along with it. Feel free to tell me why you don't agree, but you can't stop me. Such is the beauty of decentralisation.
Are you making the argument that bitcoin will be used to further socialism? You don't think that socialism is made
impossible by bitcoin? As for "why I don't agree," it's a warning to you!
Gavincoin will not succeed (if the hard-fork
even happens). If you don't have the private keys to your funds, you won't be able to split them into real-bitcoin and gavincoin. Exchange operators and service providers will be able to split your funds, sell the bitcoin (if they are stupid), and keep the gavincoin. When the dust settles (gavincoin price approaches zero), any exchanges that made the switch and sold the bitcoin, are now insolvent. The hard-fork scam has the potential to cause a lot of pain to a lot of unsuspecting gavinbots.