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Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 22:50:41 -0800
From: Tom Harding <tomh@thinlink.com>
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Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Is there a way to estimate the maximum
 number of transactions per minute Bitcoin can handle as it is today?
Precedence: list

On 1/31/2015 5:11 AM, Wladimir wrote:
> The block chain is a single channel broadcasted over the entire world, 
> and I don't believe it will ever be possible nor desirable to 
> broadcast all the world's transactions over one channel.
>
> The everyone-validates-everything approach doesn't scale. It is however
> useful to settle larger transactions in an irreversible, zero-trust 
> way. That's what makes the bitcoin system, as it is now, valuable.
>
> But it is absurd for the whole world to have to validate every 
> purchase of a cup of coffee or a bus ticket by six billion others.

Well to be fair, nobody suggested 6 billion full nodes.  Although some 
residential connections today do have Angel's 15G/10min... (sadly, not 
mine).

One of the best points Gavin made is, it would be unwise to artificially 
limit the number of transactions below the technical capabilities of the 
network.  That's how competitions are lost. 
http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2015/01/twenty-megabytes-testing-results.html