What will happen with Bitcoin as the blockchain increases in size over time?

[Abiky]

main fake doomsday

"today bitcoins 7 years of world wide borderless transactions of millions of people is huge"
"file storage will need data centres in the next dacade"
"file storage wont grow fast enough to cope"

..
yea todays accumulation of 7 years bitcoin data is the size of........ a fingernail,
grow up and stop crying

That is certainly true, but I have the sense that once SegWit and other scalable solutions like Lightning Network become active, more users will come into Bitcoin, thus increasing the rate of growth of the blockchain.

But as long as storage capacity and network speeds grow in par over time, then it should be nothing to worry about. After all, the main issue that we're facing with Bitcoin nowadays is scalability, and privacy. Just sharing my thoughts   

[franky1]

That is certainly true, but I have the sense that once SegWit and other scalable solutions like Lightning Network become active, more users will come into Bitcoin, thus increasing the rate of growth of the blockchain.

But as long as storage capacity and network speeds grow in par over time, then it should be nothing to worry about. After all, the main issue that we're facing with Bitcoin nowadays is scalability, and privacy. Just sharing my thoughts  

segwit is not offering much more then we are already getting
their estimates are ONLY if 100% of users use segwit tx's

all this doomsday crap like 2mb is bad.. then suddenly core say 4mb is acceptable, yet still keeping legacy tx's at 1mb... is just bait and switch crap to delay real scaling to sell people on the idea that bitcoin onchain and LN will cost people alot to use.

rather than actually scale bitcoin they are trying to push people down a small thin straw and syphon people away from the permissionless onchain mechanism we know and love.

[Abiky]

segwit is not offering much more then we are already getting
their estimates are ONLY if 100% of users use segwit tx's

all this doomsday crap like 2mb is bad.. then suddenly core say 4mb is acceptable, yet still keeping legacy tx's at 1mb... is just bait and switch crap to delay real scaling to sell people on the idea that bitcoin onchain and LN will cost people alot to use.

rather than actually scale bitcoin they are trying to push people down a small thin straw and syphon people away from the permissionless onchain mechanism we know and love.

Well if storage capacity and network speed growth goes in par over the next years, then there should be nothing to worry about. Still, the more the blockchain grows, the longer it will take for a node to fully sync, thus limiting any average person to get started away and support the Bitcoin network without any incentive involved.

Nevertheless, I hope that the Bitcoin blockchain would continue to grow, and maintain itself for years to come by. I'm looking forward for more scalable solutions to become a reality, to increase Bitcoin transactions speeds and capacity, making it the largest network in the cryptocurrency space. Just my thoughts. 

[franky1]

segwit is not offering much more then we are already getting
their estimates are ONLY if 100% of users use segwit tx's

all this doomsday crap like 2mb is bad.. then suddenly core say 4mb is acceptable, yet still keeping legacy tx's at 1mb... is just bait and switch crap to delay real scaling to sell people on the idea that bitcoin onchain and LN will cost people alot to use.

rather than actually scale bitcoin they are trying to push people down a small thin straw and syphon people away from the permissionless onchain mechanism we know and love.

Well if storage capacity and network speed growth goes in par over the next years(1), then there should be nothing to worry about. Still, the more the blockchain grows, the longer it will take for a node to fully sync (2), thus limiting any average person to get started(3) away and support the Bitcoin network without any incentive involved(4).

Nevertheless, I hope that the Bitcoin blockchain would continue to grow, and maintain itself for years to come by. I'm looking forward for more scalable solutions to become a reality, to increase Bitcoin transactions speeds and capacity, making it the largest network in the cryptocurrency space. Just my thoughts.  

1) thats not going to be a problem,
storage
we already know 4tb hard drives are available, they are not specialist equipment only available to the elite. they are consumer level availability so no concern. knowing average consumers upgrade their computer every 4 years means that 4tb can handle ~18mb blocks. so knowing this next year we are only gonna get 2-4mb blocks and then waste another year or 3 debating what to do after 2-4mb.. we wont reach 18mb blocks thus 4tb hard drives are more then what is needed. and in 4 years bigger hard drives will be available.
eg 20 years ago 4gb hard drives were the max consumer level, now its 4tb. in 20 years it will be alot more. so no worries
bandwidth
telecommunications companies have a 5 year plan/roadmap. cellular companies have 5G as their plan and landline have fibre as their plan. the maths also shows they both will outpace what we will need for bitcoin. afterall playing an online game while live streaming it and teamspeaking to team mates is the norm and requires more bandwidth than bitcoin. yet we dont see twitch, activision, crying and refusing to run services. they are happily running for millions of people. yet funnily core are refusing and using fake stats to hold off.. remember their 2mb is bad.. but now suddenly 4mb is good. even the pools are telling core to shut up an stop using the 'chinese firewall' as an excuse, because the firewall is not a probem.

2) fully syncing
that can be solved easily. torrents, pre-setup hard drives(you copy the blockdata from old hard drive to new hard drive then only sync the last few days you wasted setting up new pc)

3) supporting the network
as for limiting an average person??
not a problem either.
what pee's the average person off is not the download time because thats a background thing. what pee's them off is how core is not fully functional until its fully synced. by this i mean it doesnt display live balance and doesnt like to make transactions while not synced.
thus people blame the sync time, rather then blame how core set up the GUI interface to function only after syncing
 this can be solved by core requesting data about the users imported keys first and then allow the user to actually make transactions, and then grab the historic data after. thus users are not waiting for it to sync first. EG run in lite mode until synced. rather than waiting to sync to then get users to choose full or lite mode. its easy to program and not a bitcoin issue but rather a core decision they can make to enhance their GUI (user interface) side of core.

4) the incentive exists.
its called securing your own funds by not relying on third party services. there does not need to be a financial payment incentive. also having 2 million full nodes running actually counteracts the equilibrium of security by requiring more connections which requires more hops/delays in getting to everyone in a reasonable time. so 10k nodes is safer and healthier than 2 million. as long as those 10k are not sybil nodes (fake/running from a clustered single location(amazon aws))