rich1.0Tom Harding [ARCHIVE] (npub1ms…pmwjy)https://nostr.ae/npub1msef5qkfwz4t7qacwxz775wgdtlytph78g2g2z903x90874u263sypmwjynjumphttps://nostr.ae📅 Original date posted:2015-07-30 📝 Original message:On 7/29/2015 9:48 PM, Ryan Butler via bitcoin-dev wrote: > > I shouldn't have said unlimited, i should have said a greater > blocksize limit such as 8mb. > > Anyways, why is that the assumption? If a miner can do so, and do so > profitably, isn't that just competition? Isn't that what we want? If > a miner can mine low transaction fees at a profit then don't they > deserve to have their spot? Surely if they do so unprofitably they > quickly find themselves out of business? Besides, if a miner mines > low fee transactions by breaking rank, how does this affect another > miner EXCEPT for the additional blocksize load. I would maintain this > is just competition amongst miners gentlemen. And it's a good thing. > > Right now things are distorted because most income comes from the > coinbase, but as transaction fees start to constitute the majority of > income this idea seems to have more importance. > You're completely correct Ryan. There has been a well functioning fee market since 2011. Average fees have never been zero, despite low-fee transactions being mined, and despite no block size pressure until September 2014. Another empirical fact also needs explaining. Why have average fees *as measured in BTC* risen during the times of highest public interest in bitcoin? This happened without block size pressure, and it is not an exchange rate effect -- these are raw BTC fees: https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees?timespan=all&daysAverageString=7 ... more evidence that conclusively refutes the conjecture that a production quota is necessary for a "functioning fee market." A production quota merely pushes up fees. We have a functioning market, and so far, it shows that wider bitcoin usage is even more effective than a quota at pushing up fees. > On Jul 29, 2015 11:00 PM, "Adam Back" <adam at cypherspace.org > <mailto:adam at cypherspace.org>> wrote: > > > The assumption is that wont work because any miner can break ranks and > do so profitably, so to expect otherwise is to expect oligopoly > behaviour which is the sort of antithesis of a decentralised mining > system. It's in fact a similar argument as to why decentralisation of > mining provides policy neutrality: some miner somewhere with some > hashrate will process your transaction even if some other miners are > by policy deciding not to mine it. It is also similar reason why free > transactions are processed today - policies vary and this is good for > ensuring many types of transaction get processed. >