I thought I would have a look at recent blocks >900KB. There are 21 in the last 6 days.
| Block_height Block_time Size_KB Num_Tx Fee_BTC |
| 341192 31/01/2015_7:10 976.54 2518 0.3303735 |
| 341226 31/01/2015_13:01 903.09 1106 0.15922165 |
| 341305 1/02/2015_1:05 959.89 1320 0.20086461 |
| 341313 1/02/2015_2:19 912.48 693 0.2979134 |
| 341350 1/02/2015_7:49 975.67 1735 0.263689 |
| 341505 2/02/2015_5:11 976.5 735 0.16244257 |
| 341517 2/02/2015_7:02 947.72 746 0.14308729 |
| 341519 2/02/2015_7:36 957.16 482 0.13242593 |
| 341520 2/02/2015_8:02 976.45 1964 0.28018485 |
| 341525 2/02/2015_8:35 973.77 844 0.187877 |
| 341737 3/02/2015_19:00 976.49 1291 0.18828618 |
| 341765 4/02/2015_1:23 976.49 2549 0.35075577 |
| 341773 4/02/2015_2:45 941.58 1635 0.22893775 |
| 341794 4/02/2015_6:05 976.46 2380 0.31873266 |
| 341798 4/02/2015_6:50 971.04 1759 0.24739191 |
| 341810 4/02/2015_8:30 976.17 1705 0.25575189 |
| 341944 5/02/2015_4:08 976.54 2268 0.30628975 |
| 341951 5/02/2015_5:35 974.37 1635 0.23624007 |
| 341963 5/02/2015_7:53 976.46 1911 0.27444743 |
| 341965 5/02/2015_8:33 976.52 2105 0.2951799 |
| 341967 5/02/2015_9:24 973.82 2675 0.33440304 |
Average block size = 965KB
Average number of tx = 1622 (or approximately 2.7 TPS)
Average block total fee = 0.25 BTC
These blocks are near to the 1MB limit and do not really permit that much real-world business to be transacted on the main-chain. If the number of people using Bitcoin, worldwide, increased to 10 million then everyone would only be able do
one transaction per 43 days. This ignores that some blocks will always be mined small or empty while the reward remains high.
20MB blocks would offer 54 TPS and an average total fee per block of 5 BTC (based on this evidence) which means that fees would be comparable with the reward once the average block size hits 20MB and the reward is down to 6.25 BTC (within 6 years time).
The limit increase permits a much healthier outcome for the Bitcoin network and ecosystem.