2. The bitcoin network is having a lot of traffic (many transactions - could be a spam attack as well)
Meec. Error.
Five transactions per second are not "a lot of transactions" for the current Bitcoin network.
Affirming this is a joke.
Anyone who knows a little of computers, hardware and software knows that the current problem is not bandwidth, spam/DDoS attacks or storage space.
The only fucking problem is two lines of code.
The arbitrary, deliberate and corrupt 1MB block limit.
Bitcoin is in high danger.
We are approaching the irreversible point.
Blame politics, greed and assuming control for that. Increasing the blocksize limit has been debated for 2 freaking years now. Back then, people are telling that "it's not necessary" since "we haven't achieved the same number of tx/s like Visa" handles. We are far from that, yes, but to think that we already need to pay a few dollars to get a few dollars going is nuts, let alone opposing the key reason why people should use bitcoin over bank machines and whatnot.