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December 31, 2015, 10:14:23 AM

Going from 2.7 tps to 5.4 tps isn't trying to make a VISA competitor where the world's cups of coffee will be forever on the blockchain. It's simply growing in line with (actually more conservatively than) hardware/bandwidth improvement. With current number of tx, and no block subsidy... this thing is as good as dead.

That's why the block reward exists, to provide cheapish transactions while we grow the base number of transactions that will eventually cover the cost of mining security. 

That's the baffling/infuriating part with small blockers, they assume that if we hard fork to 2MB once, 256MB is right around the corner... it's not. It's also completely different from changing the reward schedule, which is often raised in the next sentence.

If Bitcoin is artificially crippled at 1MB4EVA, or even 1.75MB with segwit through 2018, competitors will be picking away at that first mover advantage like a vulture on a corpse. This is not gold, it's not on the periodic table, it's open source software. It's value is derived from utility, and expected utility. Kill the utility, kill the coin... or at least relegate it to rpietila's new castle game.
+10

In the end, because security depends on fees, and users pay fees based on utility, bitcoin's security model directly depends on the total utility it provides to users.

A widely used bitcoin has infinitely higher utility than a 1mb limited bitcoin.

This is what satoshi meant when he said that in a couple decades bitcoin would either be widely used or not used at all. Unless bitcoin is widely used by the time the coinbase rewards role off, its security model breaks.

This is why we have to scale, period.