Why a 1MB Block Size May Be Right for Today’s Bitcoin

By July 4, 2016Bitcoin Business

Ariel Deschapell is currently content manager for Ubitquity, a blockchain real estate startup, and recently held the Henry Hazlitt Fellowship at the Foundation for Economic Education.

In this opinion piece, Deschapell argues the current cap on bitcoin transactions isn’t likely to hurt the technology’s long-term adoption, and that more creative solutions should be prioritized. Bitcoin finds itself at an interesting, perhaps even pivotal, moment. In the wake of the UK’s EU referendum, or ‘Brexit’, many financial news outlets have taken to recognizing bitcoin’s increasingly credible role as a safe haven asset. Institutional investors like Daniel Masters are starting to signal it could be ready for primetime, and the market cap is hovering around $10bn after a recent string of gains.

But as its price and investment outlook continue to improve, a question hangs over the decentralized network behind the digital currency: Can it scale to meet adoption pressures?

On its current development trajectory, some don’t think so.

The technology behind bitcoin is called the blockchain. Blocks containing all recent transactions on the bitcoin network are confirmed about every 10 minutes, and are currently capped at 1MB of information a block.

The problem? Average block sizes are trending closer to this limit and some are already hitting it, pushing excess transactions to the following block. Consequently, there are periods of delayed confirmation times and higher transaction fees that have many in the space feeling anxious.

As a result, the question of how to scale bitcoin is currently the most divisive in the space.

While the Bitcoin Core developers have a plan in place, a vocal minority believes more immediate action is required. The coming months will cement which approach is taken, so it’s important to explore if that more immediate action is needed for bitcoin’s continued success. How should bitcoin scale? The dream of bitcoin […]

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