Bitcoin Forum

I have decided to convert most of my alt coins into BTC this week, therefore I needed to download the Wallet (no intention of leaving it in an exchange). After starting it 24 hours ago I still have 50 weeks to go. Do we think the average Joe on the street could be bothered with this? 

I had a wallet 2 years ago (before my PC died) and that took no time at all. This problem is only going to get worse over time.

I think you are absolutely correct. The size of the blockchain is the most significant obstacle preventing Bitcoin from going mainstream. Cryptocurrency is the future. Bitcoin is not it, IMO.

Do you really have a use for a local copy of the blockchain?

If you don't, then I'm sure you'd find it much more convenient to use a Multibit or Electrum, you won't have to store 20 GB of data, and wait days to start using the client.

it is because block chain is getting bigger and bigger :) and each day more users are making transactions :)

And this is the problem. Eventually nobody except large centralized servers will store the blockchain. This will lead to issues with security if the owners of those large centralized servers experience "issues" like MtGox did.

It takes more than 5 years to generate those blocks, and it is around 17 GB now.
And you could use thin client rather than bitcoin-qt :)

The situation is not really that bad, even if the blockchain become 30, 40, 50 GB, we will still have enough people capable of storing it. And we will have cheaper and larger HDD.

What if the transaction volume is 100 or 1000 times greater in five years than it is now?

I believe the maximum bitcoin can handle now is 7 tps (transaction per second), and we will need hard-fork if we really have a lot more transaction volume.

indeed it will be. And what is the problem with it?

The blockchain will be terrabytes and terrabytes

And before that, we need a hard fork.

Good to see people thinking ahead to future problems with Bitcoin. QT obviously cannot go on indefinitely, the blockchain file size and wait to sync would be a nightmare in 5 years time. It's good that alternatives such as multibit and electrum exist for sure. It's also exciting to think of the possibilities of the next generation of wallets. :)

I think in near future terrabytes will be not a problem...

just look how technlogy is changing over time.

I'd say get multibit.

The ever-increasing size of the blockchain is something I hadn't considered.  That could definitely be a problem.  Like others have said, at least there's Electrum!

By the time it's increased to a huge size our own storage memory capacities will be enough to handle it, look at the development over the last 10 years and you'll get what I'm saying.