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I think you're missing some context about (what is now called) Bitcoin Cash. Look up the debate between big blockers and small blockers if you're interested in

I think you're missing some context about (what is now called) Bitcoin Cash. Look up the debate between big blockers and small blockers if you're interested in learning more; a quick summary, many people wanted larger block size so bitcoin could process more transactions. I believe several newer core developers staged a coup to prevent this from happening, despite several of the longer-term contributors being in favour of it. The original contributors (sans satoshi, who was mostly inactive at this point), had their access to the git repositories revoked. This video goes into a bit more detail (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcvX0P1b5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcvX0P1b5g) but basically the people opposing a larger blocksize had financial incentives.. a lot were in bed with a company called Blockstream which benefits from their development on sidechains (now the lightning network). Had the block-size been increased, Bitcoin would be much more useful as a means of exchange (more transactions would be processed, and they would be cheaper). This is where Bitcoin Cash is now, but it doesn't get the BTC ticker symbol because Bitfinex and other CEXes have a lot of influence as well.

ntoskrnl 4y ago
> Had the block-size been increased, Bitcoin would be much more useful as a means of exchange (more transactions would be processed, and they would be cheaper). Of course the flipside of this is that it would become very expensive to run a node. Bitcoin's blockchain is ~400 GB after 13 years. BCH has a 32x larger blocksize cap, so we can extrapolate that if anyone actually used that fork, it would grow a 12 TB blockchain over that same period. As a result running a node would become expensive and the network would become much less decentralized (the very thing people are complaining about in this thread!)
- etherael 4y ago
  This would be true if the number being 32x'd was actually high, but that is not true. It was 1 megabyte. 32 megabytes over ten minutes is not even 512kbps. Other chains that process much more throughput, as well as BCH itself, has been benchmarked on very modest hardware pushing that boundary and higher. Simple fact of the matter is that the whole justification for the permanent 1mb limit was an outright indefensible lie, pushed on idiots, and supported by censorship. Nothing more, and nothing less.

ntoskrnl 4y ago

> Had the block-size been increased, Bitcoin would be much more useful as a means of exchange (more transactions would be processed, and they would be cheaper). Of course the flipside of this is that it would become very expensive to run a node. Bitcoin's blockchain is ~400 GB after 13 years. BCH has a 32x larger blocksize cap, so we can extrapolate that if anyone actually used that fork, it would grow a 12 TB blockchain over that same period. As a result running a node would become expensive and the network would become much less decentralized (the very thing people are complaining about in this thread!)

etherael 4y ago
This would be true if the number being 32x'd was actually high, but that is not true. It was 1 megabyte. 32 megabytes over ten minutes is not even 512kbps. Other chains that process much more throughput, as well as BCH itself, has been benchmarked on very modest hardware pushing that boundary and higher. Simple fact of the matter is that the whole justification for the permanent 1mb limit was an outright indefensible lie, pushed on idiots, and supported by censorship. Nothing more, and nothing less.