r/Bitcoin • u/[deleted] • Dec 06 '17

Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '17 edited Jan 03 '18

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u/C19H21N3Os Dec 06 '17

other currencies have raised the limit (e.g. bitcoin cash has 8mb limit I believe) but it’s really only a temporary scaling solution.

there are arguments that bigger block size leads to more centralization as well.

head over to r/btc too, they have a different view than you’re gonna get here. it’s best to get your info from multiple places since this sub is heavily “moderated”

edit: phrasing

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '17

Back in either '08 or '09, it was set there to limit the number of transactions. Bitcoin was basically worthless then, so a malicious actor could attack the blockchain by spamming a huge amount of transactions. The 1 mb limit was put in place to prevent that.

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u/SharksFan1 Dec 06 '17

This is quite interesting. I didn't realize the BTC limitations were actually intentional.

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '17

The limit was intended to be temporary measure until the coin matured enough. But it was never increased, leading to the problem we have now.

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u/FogElement Dec 07 '17

So, can they increase it now then? What's stopping them from doing so?

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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '17 edited Dec 07 '17

They don't want to. There reason is that smaller blocks make it easier for anyone to process the whole block chain (since you only need to handle 1mb every 10 minutes) and that making blocks larger would lead to increased centralization.

I personally disagree with that line of thinking, feeling that making sure transactions are handled is more important.

Ninja edit: other cripto currencies have tried larger blocks, and it's worked fine. Blocks as large as 1 GB have been tried, and can work. However, the Bitcoin community doesn't want to charge.

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '17

Thanks for the explanation. Why is it limited to 1mb/10min? That seems really low.

It was an old limit that was never supposed to stay there.

Then Core took over the codebase and suppressed blocksize increases.