Almost 6 months ago, when the number of transactions etc was a lot lower than it is now, Segwit was released which, if it was activated so it could be used, would alleviate some of the issue. It would allow LN to be implemented (both litecoin and vertcoin have performed real transactions on their mainnets using LN already). For 6 months it's been in the hands of the miners. They're the ones that have been in the position to determine whether bitcoin explodes or not since it's their voting that makes the decision. Until the outcome is decided, there's nothing to do and assuming they continue to block it, that's almost 6 month away. What I don't get frankly is that as far as I see, the vast majority of users/businesses want segwit activated. So why aren't the miners doing it?

I'm sorry, but if you think you can convince me that core would be to blame at that point you're sadly mistaken. There's plenty of blame to go around but as things stand right now, failure of bitcoin will be due to the miners as they could just suck it up and activate segwit. There are plenty more battles to be fought over all this stuff.


I wasn't aware that he unilaterally decided what code ended up being released. As far as I'm aware it's the actual bitcoin developers that decide and he isn't one any more.

As far as the "fee market", that's controlled by the miners and always will be. The intent was always that as mining rewards decreased miners would get more out of fees. So higher fees to replace block rewards is just the natural progression of bitcoin over time.