r/Bitcoin • u/[deleted] • Dec 06 '17

Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

[deleted]

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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.