[1] "It can be phased in, like:
if (blocknumber > 115000) maxblocksize = largerlimit
It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete. When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade."
~ Satoshi Nakamoto, on bitcointalk.org, October 04, 2010, 07:48:40 PM
[2] "Hi Mike,
I'm glad to answer any questions you have. If I get time, I ought to write a FAQ to supplement the paper. There is only one global chain.
The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling. If you're interested, I can go over the ways it would cope with extreme size. By Moore's Law, we can expect hardware speed to be 10 times faster in 5 years and 100 times faster in 10. Even if Bitcoin grows at crazy adoption rates, I think computer speeds will stay ahead of the number of transactions.
I don't anticipate that fees will be needed anytime soon, but if it becomes too burdensome to run a node, it is possible to run a node that only processes transactions that include a transaction fee. The owner of the node would decide the minimum fee they'll accept. Right now, such a node would get nothing, because nobody includes a fee, but if enough nodes did that, then users would get faster acceptance if they include a fee, or slower if they don't. The fee the market would settle on should be minimal. If a node requires a higher fee, that node would be passing up all transactions with lower fees. It could do more volume and probably make more money by processing as many paying transactions as it can. The transition is not controlled by some human in charge of the system though, just individuals reacting on their own to market forces.
Eventually, most nodes may be run by specialists with multiple GPU cards. For now, it's nice that anyone with a PC can play without worrying about what video card they have, and hopefully it'll stay that way for a while. More computers are shipping with fairly decent GPUs these days, so maybe later we'll transition to that."
~ Satoshi Nakamoto in correspondence with Mike Hearn
This doesn't address the storage requirement problem. 15M transactions per day * 250 bytes per transaction = 1.369 TB per year. After a year most home users wouldn't be able to run a full node without shelling out for extra hardware. After 10 years you'll need to spend hundreds on hard drives just to get started. Sure, it's still decentralized in the sense that you can still run a node, but it'd be closer to usenet (users connecting to independent server farms) than what we have now.
This is an unavoidable physical constraint given Bitcoin’s architecture. You can either prioritize decentralization (and with it, censorship resistance), or you can prioritize TPS or in Ethereum’s case heavy-weigh smart contracts (at the cost of decentralization).
But I'm not comfortable with their marketing it as a "world computer" among other things, implying it's more production-ready and robust than it really is.
Small-time users can use thin wallets; mega-power users can download the whole blockchain and spend whatever (in perspective, not super significant) amount of money they need for sufficient storage. Users in between can carry a reduced form of the blockchain that doesn't care so much about a full transaction log but accurately describes the state of every wallet's balance (thereby functioning the same from a "verify that they're not bullshitting me" perspective).
It's like Kosher food: if a small percentage of people want food to be kosher, it's often easer to make all food Kosher.
As Michael Saylor says, Bitcoin is good enough to store hundreds of trillions of dollars. Just don't f*ck it up.
Do you think that 10 years from now, a 15 TB hard drive will cost at least $200?
So Bitcoin is not exactly what Satoshi planned, but for me it changed my life completely.
Nonsense, he absolutely thought about scaling and in his head it was quite simple...because it was. You just need blocks big enough to allow the transaction throughput the world requires, but they need to be a finite size. That's all.
Not sure what you mean about "block verification time" having a scaling problem. It really doesn't.