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
As you can see even with an average transaction frequency of just once a week or once a month the network can't support more than a token number of users.
When someone advocates a permanent cap of 1MB what they are saying is I think Bitcoin will be great if it is never used by more than a couple million users making less than one transaction per month. Such a system will never flourish as a store of value as it is eclipsed by alternatives which are more inclusive. To support even 100 million direct users making an average of one transaction every two weeks would require a throughput of 82 tps and an average block size of 20 to 40 Megabytes.
This. This is excellent.
Good work on explaining it this way.
With this post, you have done a great deed to support the Bitcoin long-term.