Quote from: Peter R on September 06, 2015, 07:40:46 PM

Quote from: brg444 on September 06, 2015, 07:33:05 PM

Quote from: Peter R on September 06, 2015, 07:24:33 PM

Quote from: LaudaM on September 06, 2015, 05:28:33 PM

Quote from: manselr on September 06, 2015, 04:50:34 PM

What is a small purchase? a cup of coffee? Where did satoshi specifically say that bitcoin wasn't made to buy coffee but to buy I don't know... Xboxes? where is the cutoff from "this belongs in the blockchain but this doesn't because its too small"??

What does satoshi have to do with this? Do you believe that he was some majestic coder? Because he was not. Bitcoin was never designed for small transactions auch as buying coffe or micro transactions. It is going to be a difficult task to get it to scale like that.

According to the Bitcoin white paper, it was designed for "small casual transactions" that are too costly with conventional trust-based online payment methods (e.g., Visa, Paypal, etc.)

source: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

...I really don't see how you're still trying to fight for including all of the world's transaction on the blockchain when there is consensus among pretty much all the qualified engineers (that would include Gavin although I'm increasingly doubtful about his qualifications) that a POW system is simply not able to efficiently service this type of load/transactions.

I don't believe the Blockchain will be useful for sub-penny micropayments (for example); I like the idea of payment channels for that.

The point of my post was to show that @manselr was correct: Bitcoin was designed for small casual online transaction that are too costly with our present trust-based model. Whether it continues to meet that design objective, the truth is that no one knows. Will the threshold for direct Blockchain access be sour-candies from 7-11, Xboxes from BestBuy, or something else?

Why is the payment channel idea not good enough for most transactions that do not require censorship resistance?