we have had a decade of whales trying to poke their finger in and dig into the majority of businesses/services of bitcoin. (DCG, silvergate and a few other names)

i think the next generation of institutions/whales are starting to dig their fingers into the previous
the next ones go by the name of blackrock Ark and a few other names

then from 2025 we will see the central banks being able to hoard and grab bitcoin as business reserve(though current drafts only allow 2-5% of there collateral/reserves to be bitcoin)

if you are purely buying with new income (your wage) then continual buys when you get paid is great at this time of this year

but if you are buying using some savings. splitting up savings per month. you can customise it a bit

EG knowing the major window of trade is between $15k $90k (world economics of value:premium window)

put more in when the price is nearer to bottom and less as the price increases

EG if you have $24k you want to invest over 2023 meaning you set yourself a limit of $2 a month of your savings

realise that
if the market value: premium window is 15-90
the midpoint is 52.5
meaning the potential flippening of sentiment of when you change from a buyer to seller
(if you only want to invest for a year to exit at the year)

thus set limits of how much of your $24k you put in per month between the $15k-52k range

EG
$3k at 15k-24k
$2.5k at 24k-33k
$2k at 33k-42k
$1.5k at 42k 51k

very first lightning payment was done on using value pegged from........ LITECOIN
people can do that.. its not just locked to bitcoin

users do not need to lock funds just to access lightning funds
a. get inbound balance from hub managers (giveaways, faucets)
b. thor turbo gave msat balance with no confirmed funding utxo
c, users dont even need to be a 2-of-2 co-signer of funds to ensure no cheating
    = cheating can happen
    = ownership of payment promises are not guaranteed

and yea there are many other subnetworks that act just like lightning (bridging between many networks)
lightning is not special or unique. its 7 years old and has less liquidity than other subnetworks

maybe if you tried to research you will see more then the small pamphlet advert you have been reading and narrowing your views around

---

back to the topic. unlike some that want to
-pretend bitcoin only works running a server (facepalm)
-pretend bitcoin only works running on a super high spec hardware designed mainly for server architecture (facepalm)
-pretends it wont work on normal consumer class hardware available today (facepalm)
-pretends its only for the elite.. (facepalm)
-pretends bitcoin cant work by using [insert hardware spec pc of 18 years ago]  (facepalm)

bitcoin can run on normal consumer hardware and even core devs admit it
so all these subnetwork salesmen.. do YOUR RESEARCH
and realise your subnetworks have the flaws!

oh look the usual crowd, and then the usual side-ssles pitch to a silly subnetwork that has no blockchain
(facepalm)

though this topic is about bitcoins blockchain size. seems a certain group love to  do all they can to subtly and implicitly pretend bitcoin is only for the elite or pretend everyone they know things it is and all that crap. while then adding in a sale pitch at some part in their conversation about another network.. boring not original. shameful

funny thing is majority of promised use cases of lightning wouldnt work.. let alone if you needed a laptop when you go to just purchase a small pack of chewing gum or a small coffee in those small use cases

reality:
lightning is a thing where idiots load up funds from multiple blockchain networks. and bridge to lightning(much the same as many other subnetworks that do the same thing(yep lightning is nothing special)) locking up value with a hub/manager and use their lite-app on their phone
lightning is not even a network thats made to work only with a bitcoin blockchain. infact people can create balance without any funds locked at all.. thats how bad it is, it can fractional reserve

but yea doesnt matter much anyway because there are many other sub networks that have more liquidity locked up from bitcoin locks. to then play around with silly micro amount units, becasue many realise lightning is the unfit network people need to know about.

even other similar buggy networks like avalanche which is only 1 year old has more liquidity locked than lightning. so i keep wondering why are these same fools  trying to say bad stuff about bitcoin, trying to divert people away from using/securing bitcoin.. just to then promote some other network called lightning which is not even going to meet expectations or fulfil its promises

but hey. if they dont like me calling out Lightning flaws. maybe they need to stop snake oil selling lightning while trying to pretend they are bitcoiners

maybe they should/could try to back things up with stats data and math. not their subtle crappy attempts to try to say bitcoin doesnt need more nodes, bitcoin can function fine with les people whilst then promoting another network
idiots

when it comes to renting.. 99.99% are scams
they wont ever be profitable
if they were profitable the hardware owner would not be selling off mining time for other people to profit from his hardware

however when it comes to mining procurement and hosting. thats different
what they do is allow people to BUY hardware either upfront or on 'buy now pay later' and then host (receive delivery) of the hardware in locations of lower electric,(compared to some places like hawaii/japan) to allow owners to mine cheaper than their own local electric rate

but be sure that their management fee's and electric are then profitable for the owner(the customer)

so now your "defation" is not about bitcoin.. but about a fiat "defation"

ok lets handle this new swerve to your topic you instigated

after all inflations there is always recession.. its fiats polar opposite.
they dont call it deflation they just call it the correction of inflation where there is still inflation but just at lower %
they hope to get back to 2%

for a fiat DEFLATION there would need to be true money being taken away. a minus interest.
this will be where all bank accounts instead of earning a small interest, start charging people for using banks. and where people have to hand in their $100 bank note and only get out $98 for a 2% deflation

the effect of such an event is that people start allowing more bread to be bought with less dollar needed.

but that is not what is going to happen

they just want to recess(take a break) from printing 11% more paper. and bring it down to a 2% print
i cant see a minus money clawback and destruction event happening

yes recession may feel like people have less money. but thats because there is still more then 2% being printed. but normal people are not the receivers of it. it ends up in the back pockets of institutions

its not about wearing a hat and ultra sounding whole brain
its not about it as a sound knowing to only target a clot

its about doctors doing a MRI scan. seeing a clot. rushing you into surgery, sticking something as thin as a cats whisker up your vein to you brain/lung/muscle(where ever it needs to go) to the position of a clot and then blasting sound at the site.

its precise targeting via a small thin device that can blast out enough bass to pound a clot into mush, at the site.

when you have 4-5litres of blood through your body. but a cluster of 0.00001ltr blood stuck in a 1mm-1cm area.. its only targetting that area thus only that small amount of blood

lets simplify it

ALL sound moves in circular form its called sound waves
looking at a soundwave in 3d is a coil/spiral.. they all are

however they are small very small

traditional ultra sound is about sending many waves out. which at the macro is like a shower head. where it appears as just linear outputs(lines)

however at the pico/nano level they are all spirals

by having a output tip that can broadcast ultra sound at a small thin point. then it becomes more visually equivalent to looking like a vortex rather than a shower head of lines

less noise= more precise targetting meaning allowing to up the intensity to burst clots without surrounding damage
(shotgun at 200m vs .22mm to the temple)

the technology is not in "ultrasound".. its in the smallest "speaker/amplifier"
small enough to slip through a vein. and then able to turn the bass up to get them sounds pounding

the difference is like
pregnancy ultra sound is playing classical music inches away, through a headphone at lowest volume
vs
bloodclot bursting loud bassy techno/rockmusic through the tip of a cats whisker 0.1mm away

yea yea yea..
but the topic.. is hard drive. so to address the hard drive factor.
there is no need for some special hardware or expense of needing some large super fast device/server

boom. end of story

we could digress and say if you want to download the blockchain faster (as just a download process) by ensuing you have fibre and setting peers to be a higher number than 1-2 (to get more then ~9 blocks a second*)
*(where 36mbit/s is needed for the average pre 2017 data and 80mbit/s post 2017 data)
(then only ~1mbit/s once uptodate/synced)

we could digress and say the validation of blocks can be reduced in delay/bottleneck with high multithread CPU and high ram.. but it actually makes no difference if you have 256gb ram or 32gb ram
when a validation process only needs (purely for validation) 1gb. then you only need maybe 4gb to do all your normal windows desktop activity, plus active scan antivirus plus watching a movie/gaming while you wait for the sync while also having ram spare for the sync
having 256gb of ram on a server is wasted/overkill

there is no need to buy a whole server (usual cries).
bitcoin can sync fast enough on normal consumer bought equipment in their home
even the core devs have deemed upto 4mb a block data as being consumer safe and not cause a need for the doomsday cries of some people you know well shouting "but centralisation" "but servers"

---

i know you're subtly now admitting defeat that hard drives are not the issue without flat out saying so. by avoiding continuation of hard drives to then digress to talk about ram, internet..
for instance wanting to digress the discussion to now talk about Pc's with 1gb ram(loyce:'Take an old netbook with 1 GB RAM').. but come on.. even a decade ago normal retail bought pc's had more than 1gb ram. so dont do that silly narrative (subtle)"we are stuck with windows-XP era technology so we are doomed and bitcoin is slow" please dont follow your chum group narrative of excuses of decades old tech as sync delay reasons
as you sound like the fools of "but HD snapshot cameras wont be a thing because floppy disks only hold 1.4mb"
that mindset was soooo 1990's.. so dont be like that

and stop the subtle narrative that you only experienced a 24 sync using a super spec server that you wish you had access to, i know all the scripts your chums repeat, no matter how subtly you imply them here.. trying not to be so verbatim, but still trying to hint/push them

and no dont even hit the reply button with the script of "but i never said what you said i said, strawman". i know the silly narratives of your chums, in many topics. i know the subtlety you are trying to imply, but making it not sound like their narrative, whilst you still hint at the same script propaganda points they always do.
(again highlighting the whataboutism of a '1gb ram notebook', hinting of your server experiences)

not time to call off the bear. nor time to call in the bull..

what is actually happening since atleast second half of last year is saying "hello whales"

take just this last 5 days.
there are 2 pods of whales

one pod is futures trading with bets the price will be above $22k. and so they have spot market bots trading to keep prices above $22k

another pod is futures trading with bets the price will be below $23k. and so they have spot market bots trading to keep prices below $23k

both pods like to bait the sharks(smaller traders) by letting the price slip above limits for a short period(minutes-hour) to tickle and tease and bait the sharks to make opposing bets that the price will go above $23k or below $22k

this is so that the whales have a pool of opposing bets to win against (take their money)

we are not going to see much "free market" natural trading this year (my opinion, do you own research) where the price will move freely and more volatility within the natural wide window of $15k-$90k(read my post history for my numbers explainers, there enough of them)

instead we are going to see alot of 1 week-8 week straight horizontal lines (zoom out to 3-6 months and is clearer)
when then step up or step down once the futures contracts expire and the whales turn off their spot bots for a few hours or day to allow a little bit of freemaket movement before readjusting and setting new support/resistance narrow window frames again

power plants may be private businesses but they have government contracts and grant/finance deals to provide a sustainable service to residents/retail. where by they cant just stop servicing residential customers and just put all that energy into industry customers

that said
when NEW power plants start up. they are not making just capacity to meet current need. they are building a 50 year plan to meet future demand.

this mean in the first couple decades they may have 50 users of a 100 user capacity meaning they are charging the 50 customers 2x the 100customer cost because there are only 50 customers

so by allowing industry to jump in and buy up the excess 50. it means the existing 50 customers pay less over all

@loyce
the MANY topics talking about blockchain vs hard drive size.. mention the same doomsday about how hard drives and blockchains cant cope.. its the norm expected evolution of the topic of such. so best bite the bullet and state the facts before the fud
 funny part is you start by saying not many say it, then.. YOU go and say it and re-join the club

@sarah
850-481 = 369
imagining a 1.3mb average data load now per block
~ another 283k blocks
so about the 1.05m blockheight mark.. about 5 years from now

not so true

lets use some prospective
coinbase, binance have cumulative 100m customer accounts
that means there are more crypto accounts than british people
thus more people in the world use crypto than there are people that use the british pound

yes the pound is mentioned now and again in media and yes when brits hear the pound mentioned in america media brits think it must be something important to get america to care about the pound. and yes brits like me see alot of pound based community in britain

but from an outside prospect if americans seen pound mentioned they would not care so much.

but over all crypto is more used by more people than the pound

its like.. "silver car"
once you say it. you see them everywhere on the road.

however 10 minutes ago you were not thinking about cars and so you were not looking or recognising or caring about them when they pass you by on the street

..
over the years i have gone down the same motorway(highway) dozens of times a fortnight. oblivious to my surroundings.
then giving a lift to a friend that is obsessed with fishing. he was pointing out al the rivers, and ponds along the motorway. now i cant stop noticing them.. and im not even into fishing but now its like these fishing spots are everywhere i see loads of them on my travels

banks offer 0.01% savings interest.

even 15% a year is acceptable. but its funny that people in crypt are not even happy with a 15% a week and are waiting for 100X like they seen in 2011 charts

i was actually being favourable with my rounding of numbers to the hard drive doomsayers.. whilst still debunking them, i

however if you really wanna go full on best case if you compute it more accurately
the read-write data per second even with rev, blk and all other files. the data is still not even close to the basic read-write rate of cheap data storage

for instance the 14 years of blockchain is actually closer to 0.65mb per block average
meaning even handing 10 blocks a second. in octuple the file saving(im going extreme now)
is still only 48mb a second.. far below standard storage media capability and still able to sync within 24 hours

yes lopp was showing how core can sync in 7 hours ..

my point is the other type of people saying bitcoin cant function, hard drives are bad, bitcoin bad, bitcoin takes weeks.. needed to be debunked. but fairly so they cant come back crying with new absent theories

and so, even on the most cheap boring hard drive a sync can be done with no storage device burnout in way under 24 hours, no special equipment or expense needed. (as lopp also shows)

but i didnt want to be stating the overly efficient numbers i was trying to be fair to all parties by not being the optimistic "7 hours" guy

you cant stop it permanently.. but you can temporarily

december seen artificial holding down of the price
yep whales managed to create a resistance line to keep the price below $17k in december and below $23k last week..
it is possible to manipulate the market temporarily. as long as they stay funded and keep their trade bots arbitraging the spot markets eating up any orders that try to buy above the set levels of the whale bots

yep when on a 6 month period you see multiple straightish lines. thats manipulation

but to do it permanently.. well that involves fixing all countries labour rates where everyone on planet works for the same rough income amount to align countries into a small window of variance where things like electric and consumer price index all align too thus everyone on planet sees goods and assets within the same value:premium narrow window of affordability and cost average(not going to happen)

so your saying there are 1000 countries in the world(facepalm) and only 1 CBDC in development (facepalm)
its more like 200 countries and about 20 that are in beta (thus 90% not in beta)
about 50 are in alpha and the rest are just whitepaper theory

maths, its great

but i do agree you and others should read more.. but.. ALSO make comparisons. see the variances, see the possible directions. dont be picky, explore the wide picture landscape

volatility is because there is a wide sentiment of peoples desires and needs and costs

EG if it costs someone in norway just $16k this week to mine bitcoin and someone in hawaii upto $90k to mine it
that sets the wide window of value vs premium where everyone on the planet has their own set "price" they are willing to either buy or sell between

right now its a great price for people in japan and hawaii and other islanders to buy rather then mine, and not so great price for norway to sell or buy. if they can mine it cheaper.

the only true way to calm a real international currency is if everyone on the planet were working and living at the same rate of fiat expense where everyones notion of value and premium were in a more small window.. ..  but thats not how the world forex markets work thus not gonna happen in a world reaching internet currency either

but here is the thing
in fiat when you see that milk and bread can swing from $0.90 to $2.50 depending on location too.. is fiat really "stable", or have we just got used to the changing offers by using words like Sale" "discount" "roll back" "pocket the difference" "convenience" (premium)

ok some people are saying about data rate of read/writes

so lets say we have 773377 blocks.. and over the 14 years average block is about 1mb (remember we had hundreds of thousands of blocks under 1mb in early days

now lets say we put a sync time of 24 hours
24 hours is
1440 minutes which is
86400 seconds

which is 8.95 blocks per second ..so about 9mb a second (rounded)

so when saying 'but ssd is more then platter', 'but both are less than tape'..
..it doesnt really matter much because ultimately if you take away the download time and the validation time..
 it takes the amount of data per second to read/write, less time... meaning there is alot of idle time between writes in that 9mb/sec
so because there are plenty of gaps between writes per block every ~0.1sec.. (due to the other tasks happening unrelated to writes happening between each block) there is no harm or over use of a data store even if said data store is cheap