Bitcoin Forum

I've been collecting the data for a couple months and compiled this graphical chart (http://dre.redmartian.org/bcg_chart.htm) to visualize blockchain growth and expected growth over the rest of 2012.  Hope it could be useful.

Notice the accelerating growth as of May 2012 due to the SD success.

So we will most likely be hitting the 3GB mark in mid-July, 4GB in September and 5GB in November (Note that these figures are the total size of the blockchain database, thus including the blkindex.dat index.)

BTW: I'm aware of the Blockchain.info (http://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?timespan=1year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=) chart but oddly the values seem way off, unless I'm missing something?

Wow, 5GB +/- some by year end?  Thats pretty farking big.  We need to work on this whole merkle root reduction thing.  And by We I mean the propeller-head devs who will rock this!  I have not the math or programming knowledge.  My head is full of worthless finance stuff.

The blockchain.info chart does appear to show some invalid numbers, especially prior to Jul 2011.

By the way, Is yours the size of both the blk00001.dat plus blkindex.dat combined?

Also, any way to see a longer timeline further back?

Yes.


I haven't got enough accurate data points prior to September 2011.
If someone can point me to such information, I'll be glad to add it.

I would guess, that the official client is the main choice for newbies.
I personally know two people, who complained about the duration and the heavy CPU usage while downloading the blockchain.
One was affraid of some kind of virus and quit, the other one was complaining, because he had to wait a whole day to spend his new BTC.
This is the main obstacle for greater adoption in my eyes.

when I look at the current rate of increase, I guess it will take about 3 days to download it somewhere next year.
and if you have bitcoind running only when you want to spend newly bought BTC, you always have to waaaaiiiit.

If you want to save a large amount, it's no problem to wait.

If you want to spend a smaller amount, it's no problem to land them in instawallet between where buying and spending.

If you are making a big purchase, get an address from the person/business and buy right to that address.

This is a problem with many solutions.

right, but it's an obstacle for newbies, as they need to aquire such info first.
Is there a plan for reducing the chainsize in the long run?
it can't be satisfying, if you have to wait 10 days for the download in 2 years and the size will be 30GB.
in my eyes, that's a real problem. what if BTC sees a mass adoption in 2 years?
the size will explode.

my ratio of
(time to update blockchain)/(time passed since last update) is around 0.0125.
that converts to an average of 1,25% CPU load by bitcoind.
next year it might be 3% or 5%.

Would it perhaps make some sense to put the electrum client on the main bitcoin page alongside the official client?

What is the chance that price of Bitcoin will drop due to technical problems? I sit in dollars right now, looking forward to buy cheap coins...

Low.

It does not sound simple to newbies. 

If we properly explain to a newbie what to expect, there will be no worries or disapointements. If you want to run your own bank, you'll need a full client, which initially takes a few days to prepare itself. Once this is done, it will quietly run in the background, and you can use it whenever you need to.  Alternatively, you can use one of the "light" clients or Web services, which rely on third-party servers, but you still keep and control your bitcoins on your local machine (bitcoin spinner, blockchain.info, etc.). Finally, you can keep your coins with a third party (online wallets, exchanges).