Exactly. Problem is i guess most here are not understanding or dismiss principal economics, and forget the one and only rule: the free market - if it is indeed free - always wins in the long run, and no politically driven central controlled engineering can go against the collective wisdom and need of the users. That is supposed to be the whole point of bitcoin.
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I do not understand how "smallblockers" or elitist (read Hayek's Fatal Conceit) forget this simple fact:
the utility hence the value of the network is solely based on the judgement of the USER - who might have no clue about the technical part, bandwidth, storage space - but the system is for them. It can not exist for the will of developers/miners. Without millions of users, whom voluntary agree to hold, move, invest economic value in the network, mining and development is meaningless. If core can not find a solution for the needs, someone else will, for there is economic reward for it!
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Without ever increasing adoption, and new utility, like colored coins for example, the price will stop growing, and mining becomes ever increasingly useless - because the coinbase reward diminishes, fees can not go up - no new users who would compete for blockspace -, and network value diminishes**.
You use the banks, paypal, credit cards etc, don't you?
As a user you want ZERO fees.
They don't give it to you. They charge you. Some times a lot.
Are these organizations dying from not meeting user demands? Did their network effect got negatively affected and thus never became widespread? If no, why?
The reason is because there was no alternative. So, your economic idealism about market demands by users etc etc hits the wall of economic realities.
Bitcoin is the first thing that comes close to challenging them on multiple fronts. Yet, it too, has some limitations due to technology. These may not be true in 5-10-20 years, but right now they are. So... with this as a given, you can still position bitcoin in the market segment where it is way more profitable to transact with it than the banks, paypal, credit cards etc.
None said we want zero fees. You can not want to have mutually exclusive things like no fees and security at the same time. Any reasonable person knows this. So this argument is flawed.
I use banks because i HAVE to. Am legally forced, i can not get my salary in cash, or travel with cash, or buy a house. Legal tender is the logical opposite of free market currency.
IF bitcoin gets mainstream, integrated into world commerce you seriously think multinationals/tech companies/universities etc. won't run databases, mining centers, with their own copy of the blockchain, and can not organize or pay gladly for the upkeep of the network in change to the reduced overhead and increased (global) market reach thanks to bitcoin?
You guys a bit naive, if you want to go mainstream (read, billion users, total industries), and keep the scoutboy level system structure at the same time. One is not going to happen.