Every single transaction that is included in a block is going to be stored on tens of thousands of computers forever;
… until pruning comes along and I'm very very sure it will. storing all the information about addresses with 0$atoshi in them is just waste of disk space.
… also "tens of thousands of computers forever" could be disputed. Bet in 5 years from now, full nodes will be down to less than 10k either because bitcoin became obsolete or too high traffic for most people.
I disagree. Bitcoin blockchain growth will be linear while technological innovation and progress will be exponential. At some point, the Bitcoin block chain will be no bigger deal than a simple word document.
1MB (max block size) * 6 * 24 * 365 = 53GB. That's the maximum growth of the blockchain per year. We already have 3 TB HDD's, so those'll last for 56 years. And in 56 years, we should theoretically have 268 exabyte HDD's, which would last, for all intents and purposes with regards to Bitcoin, indefinitely.
And if you want to talk about bandwidth, it's the same story. I now have 50mbps cable service available to my residence. 5 years ago, I only had 12mbps available. 10 years ago, I only had 768kbps dsl available. So bandwidth is basically following Moore's law as well. In 5 more years, I should have 300mbps service, etc, while the bandwidth requirements of Bitcoin will remain the same, at 53GB/year (or 13kbps).
