Quote from: wachtwoord on August 06, 2014, 11:00:16 PM

Quote from: Peter R on August 06, 2014, 10:51:05 PM

Quote from: wachtwoord on August 06, 2014, 10:41:23 PM

It's almost as bad as outright increasing the maximum number of Bitcoins from the current 21M maximum.

Wachtwoord, do you think the limit should be permanently set to 1 MB? Or just that it should remain "limited" in order to drive a healthy fee market?

I think there should be a limit otherwise no-one will pay any meaningful fees ever and people will stop mining. The system will only work when there is a limited amount of space because if it is unlimited it is advantageous for miners to include transactions with any fee, even 1 Satoshi. If that happens Bitcoin will stop to function correctly as the block rewards decrease.

Why the limit should be at 1 MB? Well the same reason the maximum amount should be at 21M Bitcoin. If it is ever increased it creates a precedent to do so again, and again and again, ad infinitum. I signed up for Bitcoin with a 21M unit cap and a 1MB block cap. Any changes to that will force me to seriously reconsider my investment as the chances of Bitcoin going to zero will increase tremendously.

If people want the limitation to be removed I hope it's published as an altcoin (Bitcoin2) and the initial distribution as proposed by you Peter will be used.

No amount of fees being paid will result in more than 7 transactions to fit into a block.

Also: empirical evidence suggests people pay fees even if there's enough space in blocks (like right now).

I wonder which chain people would use in case of a fork over this issue. I'm guessing the one with lower tx fees.