Quote from: mainpmf on March 03, 2016, 02:06:23 PM

Quote from: BitUsher on March 03, 2016, 02:01:25 PM

Quote from: Fatman3001 on March 03, 2016, 01:44:44 PM

Except if everyone else does it as well. Then you're stuck.

That is not how fee markets work , there are upper limits to how much spammers and users will spend on fees. My wallets adjust just fine and insure I always get in the next block. There is never a moment where I have to worry that my tx will time out within the new 72 hour mempool window.

Which means you want to limit btc usage to important tx. Which means btc will never scale and will never be able to be used on an everyday basis.

Never is a big word.

Right now bitcoin is transacting (outputs minus change) 220mn per day in 250k txs.

https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?showDataPoints=true×pan=1year&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&scale=0&address=

This is ~880$ per average tx and it means ~80bn* USD per year.

If you implement segwit + 2mb blocks (2.7txs x 1.65 x 2) you get 8.9tx/s.

With a steady volume (I'm not even following the upward trend in value transacted), you get 880$ x 8.9 x 60 x 1440 = 677mn USD per day and 247bn USD per year.

Paypal does 228bn USD. At that point we've already "scaled" financially past Paypal with our "pitiful" 9 tx/s, and with fees being at ridiculous costs like 0.02-0.05$.

Don't underestimate the scaling of value transacted. It's a very important side of scaling.

* Western union at 85bn USD in the consumer market: http://ir.westernunion.com/News/Press-Releases/Press-Release-Details/2016/Western-Union-Cross-Border-Platform-Connects-Consumers-to-over-One-Billion-Bank-Accounts/default.aspx => "The Western Union Company completed 255 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, moving $85 billion of principal between consumers, and 484 million business payments."