So people who oppose the change are basically saying, BTC transactions have to be severely limited (at around 7 TPS) forever, just to stick to the 1MB limit forever. That is nuts.
It actually could be as few as 2 tps, meaning that if there are over 60 million Bitcoin users, each one will only use the blockchain once per year, and with a billion users (1 out of 7 people in the world), each person can use the blockchain less than once a decade:
The numbers below are for 2tps. Double the numbers if you think 4tps is more appropriate but it doesn't materially change the insignificant upper limit.
Maximum supported users based on transaction frequency.
Assumptions: 1MB block, 821 bytes per txn
Throughput: 2.03 tps, 64,000,000 transactions annually
Total # Transactions per Transaction
direct users user annually Frequency
<8,000 8760 Once an hour
178,000 365 Once a day
500,000 128 A few (2.4) times a week
1,200,000 52 Once a week
2,600,000 24 Twice a month
5,300,000 12 Once a month
16,000,000 4 Once a quarter
64,000,000 1 Once a year
200,000,000 0.3 Less than once every few years
1,000,000,000 0.06 Less than once a decade
This is totally unrealistic, and it's not going to work. Running a block-space scarcity experiment on Bitcoin to see what happens when people can no longer use the blockchain for real-world transactions, when the block size can still be significantly increased without making the network centralized, is dangerous and irresponsible. The idea that they'll opt for a Bitcoin micropayment channel hub, rather than just giving up on Bitcoin, is pure speculation, and one that I don't think will be borne out.