my impression of this whole debate is that no one really knows for sure what's going on.  esp the CS guys who didn't contribute a lick to Satoshi's original code or assumptions.

the internet is still a relatively new phenomenon that is not well understood.  not to mention, distributed/decentralized systems like Bitcoin.  so many smart technical ppl missed the boat on the investment part of Bitcoin early on b/c of extreme skepticism across the board esp regarding the technical system. even insiders.  they didn't and still don't fully understand the network topology and we see new information uncovered everyday from researchers like Andrew Miller to the selfish mining folks like Sirer to today's report from Zohar.  as evidence for what i say, all we have to do is go back over the dozen or so academic papers over the last 6 yrs that have outlined detailed attacks based on various unfounded assumptions and a ton of math.  so far the result?  nothing.  they've all been wrong.  i was one of the first to start talking about the game theory around Bitcoin and mining.  not that i'm a game theory expert or anything but it was clear to me that there are a lot more disciplines intersecting at the Bitcoin nexus that make it successful, not just the CS.  namely, finance, group psychology, CS, math, networking, engineering, the speculative mind, big money, politics, etc.  it appears no one really has a grasp on all the components.  so yeah, i get a little defensive when new and esp existing ppl from one small corner of the space start going around and making statements as if they're facts.  i'll listen to what they say but if it doesn't make sense, i will challenge them.  iow, i know enough about Bitcoin to make me dangerous.

so yeah, i extrapolate out this "revelation" even to the current set of core devs who are holding up the block size debate.  i think one of the inviolable principles behind Bitcoin are that as many tx's should be kept on MC to replace block rewards going forward.  otherwise, how will miners get paid to confirm tx's and provide the security and decentralization the network desperately needs in the long run?  thus we should try, even at some risk, to expand the block size to as large as we can to accommodate user growth worldwide as no one can predict how fast tech improvements will grow with time to mitigate the effects of slower propagation.  which also is another principle Bitcoin should try to achieve; that being maximum user decentralization worldwide so as to minimize the ability of any one gvt to intervene.

i think Bitcoin is awfully close to achieving this.  if only we can get bigger blocks simply b/c they can provide the growth we want now.  and i say now, b/c as i've been quite nicely forecasting for all of you for a long time now (4y), the financial markets and pm markets are now undergoing the suffering i've predicted and demonstrated in real time.  and i really mean nicely b/c i don't have to do this. i could just simply lock the thread down and sit here behind my computer silently and pick all of you off as a swing trader timing the cycles or by injecting alot of financial obfuscation like many others do.  some of you might actually want to say thank you every once in a while instead of trolling the hell out of me for trying to help.

Bitcoin needs to be ready to accept all that fiat flowing out of those mkts so something needs to be done.