Here is what will happen (my guess): as Bitcoin usage continues to grow, the limited capacity will start to hurt over the coming months, with the planned "segre

Here is what will happen (my guess): as Bitcoin usage continues to grow, the limited capacity will start to hurt over the coming months, with the planned "segregated witness" proposal not helping much. Also, the block reward will be cut in half this summer to 12.5 Bitcoins per block, driving many miners out of business and reminding the rest that they could earn more with larger blocks. Furthermore, some of the affected companies (e.g. Coinbase) will announce rewards for larger blocks mined (e.g. 1 Bitcoin reward for each block above 1MB for the next 1000 blocks), making the first miners jump to the new protocol (the much feared hard fork), with the others following soon after the most popular exchanges announce that they will not accept "old branch" coins.