If Block stream had allowed to raise the block size from 1MB to 8MB none of this multisig-side chain-hard fork nonsense would be needed.
How is 'block stream' involved into this debate?
It is the users (everyones) choice which way of scaling to support.
As long as one miner does not upgrade to 8MB (a hell lot of nodes didn't do this) while others do, there is a hardfork.
A hard fork occurs when no consens is reached. This was the case.
You see we would still have only one Bitcoin.
There is still only one bitcoin.
Those shitcoins named 'Bitcoin INSERT_ANYTHING' are NOT bitcoin. They just make use of the popular name to gain awareness/attention.
Just raising the block size was a simple and elegant solution that could have avoided a contentious hard fork
On-chain scaling is NEVER as efficient as off-chain scaling solutions.
And increasing block size is a very very bad approach to scaling (if not the worst one).
Increasing blocksize to scale sounds trivial. But this is just a short-term scaling. You can't always increase the blocksize. This does heavily lead to centralisation.
Raising the block size may be anything but elegant.. It is the exact opposite..
while allowing thousands or tens of thousands of people to have access to their funds in a timely manner.
Funds can always be accessed in no time. I am not sure what you are talking about ?
The 'access' time depends on your storage type and wallet.