Bitcoin Forum

Obviously, bitcoin required bandwidth, space, and computation power.

So I am trying to estimate the year that bitcoin cryptocurrency would be a practical based on computation power, bandwidth, and HD space. "Practical" as in, most users would not hesitate putting the bitcoin software on their low-end computer and use it with no problem.

This is the year at which the bitcoin economy could start germinating itself in earnest with technology NOT be the bottleneck.

Tech isn't the limiting factor today. 

And it's not the point of this exercise.

I am simply estimating when bitcoin could possibly take off much earlier. I know 2008 is definitely possible.

Haha, I get it now.

What year did 50% of people have high speed internet? It would suck to get the block chain on dialup.

I realy don't see how this question is so relevant to bitcoin realy taking off;

it doesn't require some insane highspeed connection, nor a lot of diskspace, nor computing power (generating is just optional).

I don't see how anyone can use one of these as an argument not to use bitcoin.

He means "How long ago could bitcoin have been viable?" It would have had trouble taking off in 1990 even though implementing it would have been possible.

Leaving aside the technical obstacles, I doubt it could take off before the World Wide Web took off and before the Internet became a popular platform for commerce. It's the second half of the 90s.

Title should read "the year it would have been practical".

I'm thinking late 90s.

Did I miss the year of the Linux desktop?

1995. Home internet was common enough by then (for the geeks who would be the Bitcoin early adopters). Sure it would take a while to download the block chain on a 56kBaud/sec modem, but we were used to waiting for things back then. I remember taking many days to download Linux distributions, one floppy image at a time.

Yeah, I remember doing that as well.  Also, I remember buying such large data on CD-R's for $10 at a time.  It's not unrealistic that new bitcoin users would have ordered a CD-R from one of those many mail order sources with a recent copy of the blockchain to start with, or attend a Linux users' group in order to get a copy on a 3.5" floppy.

damn... I also remember waiting a week to download a movie off Kazaa and 2 days off a warez site... How times have changed...

Heh, I once bought a CD-R for $10 which contained the whole of Usenet! This was 1993 or maybe early 1994.