and we can easily support more TPS than PayPal.
Off course, but that comes at a cost. I think Paypal is a good target because it's about internet payments that does not require very rapid confirmations. We could aim for a little more than paypal and choose, for instance, a max block size that allows 1.2 or 1.5 of the paypal tps (so 12 or 15 mB).
On the other hand, I think that we should just forget about being able to address the same number and types of transactions visa or mastercard do. Such kind of transactions (super-market, bar, etc.) have to be made off-chain. First because they require rapid confirmations. Second, because it is useless to register everything into the blockchain (I don't want to have even the coffee I buy registered into the blockchain. In fact, the less transactions inside the block chain, the better).
Best regards,
ilpirata79
That is imho the worst approach. It takes one of bitcoins key features away, being a very simple and clear system.
Imho, you have to be able to pay your coffee without any intermediaries to keep bitcoin alive and to have a real impact on the world.
Cutting out intermediaries and making transactions cheap and fast, that was the approach described in the paper and I think this should stay bitcoins goal.
Allowing the same number of transactions as visa should be the midterm goal imho. I started using bitcoin quite regularly as shops start to accept it more and more and I definitely don't want this trend to stop.
This is the real value growth of bitcoin, not some overheated numbers caused by speculation.
I think you will never be able to pay coffee with bitcoins, when (and if) people really start using it (which is what we want). Unless you are willing to pay very high fees.
For this kind of (micro) payments we could follow the approach I described here, which leverages micro-payment channels in course of development:
.