Quote from: Cryddit on October 20, 2014, 04:04:12 PM

"Only invest what you can afford to lose" applies just as well to any complete technology as it does to something that's still in beta.

Remember, Bitcoin is the initial implementation of a protocol. Even if Bitcoin is a mature technology and no longer experimental, you should still invest only what you can afford to lose, because some other implementation of the protocol (yes, an altcoin) may eventually be the one that businesses settle on as being friendlier to their interests.

I know who you are and I respect your opinion. Do you believe only knowledgable well versed investors are being indoctrinated into Bitcoin? How can we ask even more innocents to buy into a system that they see as a cheap version of a company they trust like Western Union without making it as hardy? Do you believe Hal Finney or Satoshi would have agreed with the rapid spread of Bitcoin without developing solid solutions to issues first? Do you feel this is the solid solution that should be next on the agenda? This has been discussed for a very long time, why is it so important to do it now?

Quote from: Cryddit on October 12, 2014, 02:55:05 AM

Miners are leaving transactions out of blocks today because the blocks propagate faster (ie, have more odds of being confirmed) if they are <250K. Odds on losing the block fee exceed the transaction fees available, and the miner leaves the transaction unconfirmed.

Raising the size of the largest allowed blocks will not change that.

Do we have an implementation yet of broadcasting only the block header, and then letting the nodes assemble the blocks out of transactions they've already received over the network? That would reduce miners' disincentives for including transactions, so wouldn't that would be the more immediate means of increasing the number of transactions per block?

I agree that the block size needs to be increased; I'm just saying that increasing the allowed block size won't help if miners still have a financial incentive to limit the actual block size to 250K.

Are you saying this might not even provide the desired effect? A stepped periodic increase is proposed, is that the right way to go?