7 transactions per second is just a tuning parameter though, it's not a fundamental flaw in Bitcoin. The problem is being attacked from two angles right now: The release of segregated witness and increasing the block size.
The real question is, what is the maximum real throughput of the system if we could adjust the tuning parameters to be as high as possible? It's well north of 7 but I bet also well south of, say, 1,000.
You're demonstrating confirmation bias by trying to redefine a payment network flaw as a "tuning parameter", so if you want to actually discuss something, make a case rather than spinning it as something else.
A clip from The Simpsons is not a very compelling argument.
Setting the number of blocks at 2,016 per two weeks is completely arbitrary, as is setting the block size at 1 MB. None of these are "fundamental flaws" because they can be changed. They're hard-coded constants that can be changed in code in a trivial amount of time. The hardest part about changing them is getting consensus on the change and the time it takes the change to roll out to most of the clients on the network before cutting over. The existence of altcoins that have changed these parameters is proof that it's not a technological flaw.
A technological flaw would be some kind of vulnerability in ECDSA or SHA256 that would allow people to spend other's Bitcoins. Now that would be a fundamental flaw that would destroy Bitcoin over night. But coding constants that can be changed, and as time goes on, most likely will be? You are seriously over-dramatizing things.
All I'm getting from you is flippancy, Simpsons references, and strawman arguments. You have failed to make your case at all. If what we are talking about is a fundamental flaw, then every program you have ever written is fundamentally flawed, because I'm sure they've all initially had bugs in them that were much worse than what could be changed by adjusting the values of constants.
The simpson clip is an explanation why I find your comments hilarious, not a claim or basis for an argument. Serious question: is English your first language?
The block size can't be changed because a small number of miners control it, and they stand to profit from the increased transactions fees resulting from the increased competition on smaller blocks. It's tragedy of the commons.
This is a fundamental flaw with Bitcoin- that the people who control the software can also benefit from inhibiting transactions per second. For a payments network, it's not going to get more than 7 tx/s, until someone else is in control. Other enthusiasts have reconciled this by looking to bitcoin as smart contracts, or to side-chains.
But you can continue to spin this as good for bitcoin or as "payments tuning parameter" propaganda if you like, just understand that I'm going to laugh at you for it, cydeweys.
It took you three comments to finally say something coherent. Bduerst, you need to work on your communication skills. There is much room for improvement. HN is not reddit. Do not make low value comments here.
You argument that miners will always want small block sizes is flawed. Miners stand to benefit a lot more from a widely-used functioning currency than one that fails because it is incapable of scaling. They want Bitcoin to succeed in the long run, because a lot of them hold a lot of Bitcoin. Particularly, there is little reason to keep block sizes small for this reason because while the average transaction fee might go down, the total number of transactions in a block will go up, with an overall neutral effect on total transaction fee. Additionally, the vast majority of a miner's reward still comes from the block reward, so miners don't care too much about transaction fees yet.
Segwit is already close to rolling out and block size increases could happen in the medium term. Or, if all else fails, there's always side-chains and altcoins. The fundamental technology (blockchain) is fine, even if a particular implementation of it with a specific set of tuning parameter values happens to stagnate. I don't foresee that happening though, as the incentives for everyone in the ecosystem are aligned for Bitcoin not to fail, and if limited transaction volume truly starts changing that, then changes (beyond what's already on the current roadmap) will be made.
You still didn't answer the question. If English isn't your first language, then it would explain why what I wrote isn't coherent to you.
You're making the same fallacious assumptions about miners that people do about individuals in tragedy of the commons. You think that the individual cares more about the system rather than their own rational goals, but they don't.
The same resource economics that apply to international fishing also apply to bitcoin - both the fisherman and the miners care more about personal gains than they do about the system as a whole. They don't restrain their profit because you project your idealism onto them.
And it doesn't matter who promises what - there needs to be a consensus for the change to happen, and that's why bitcoin is flawed. The previous four forks to fix this block size failed, four times, which is evidence to back this up.
You can keep spinning the flaw as a speed hole though, it's pretty entertaining :)
The real question is, what is the maximum real throughput of the system if we could adjust the tuning parameters to be as high as possible? It's well north of 7 but I bet also well south of, say, 1,000.