Block size limit controversy

Argument in favor of increasing the blocksize

• Bigger blocks (more transactions per second)
• Sidechains and Lightning require waiting for development.

Argument in opposition of increasing the blocksize

• A hard fork requires waiting for sufficient consensus.
• Orphan rate magnification, more reorgs and double-spends
• European/American pools at more of a disadvantage compared to the Chinese pools
• No amount of max block size would support all the world's future transactions on the main blockchain (various types of off-chain transactions are the only long-term solution)
• Risk of catastrophic consensus failure

Damage to decentalization

• Bitcoin is only useful if it is decentralized because centralization requires trust. Bitcoins value proposition is trustlessness.

• The larger the hash-rate a single miner controls, the more centralized Bitcoin becomes and the more trust using Bitcoin requires.

• Running your own full node while mining rather than giving another entity the right to your hash-power decreases the hash-rate of large miners. Those who control hash-power are able to control their own hash power if and only if they run a full node.

• Less individuals who control hash-power will run full nodes if running one becomes more expensive.

• Larger blocks leads to more expensive full nodes.

• Therefore, larger blocks lead to less hashers running full nodes, which leads to centralized entities having more power, which makes Bitcoin require more trust, which weakens Bitcoins value proposition.

Entity	Supports Larger Blocks	Supports Hard Fork
CoinBase	Yes