Thinking of downloading Bitcoin Core

[calkob]

Hi all i got a new pc recently and was thinking of downloading bitcoin core, whats the pro's and con's?

[1Referee]

What can be seen as a benefit for some people, is being considered not to be a benefit by other people. I personally find it a benefit that you have the entire blockchain in your pc. It allows me to run a full node to support the network. But for some people it is too time consuming as it may take 1 to 3 days to download the full blockchain. It is strongly depending on the nodes you are connected with. The wallet does start quite slow from time to time if you replace wallet files frequently.

If you don't like that, you can choose to go with a light weight wallet that doesn't need you to download the full blockchain. Electrum and Multibit are good alternatives.

[ranochigo]

Hi all i got a new pc recently and was thinking of downloading bitcoin core, whats the pro's and con's?

Bitcoin Core helps to support the network, whether you open port 8333 or not. It still helps to enforce the network rules.

Bitcoin Core itself is a trustless client which does not trust any other person other than itself. If a miner mines an invalid block which does not follow the network rules, Bitcoin Core will reject it and SPV clients would happily accept it till a longer chain emerges. Bitcoin Core has various tools for developers, the RPC interface etc. It's great for payment system.

Bitcoin Core takes a huge amount of memory space. It keeps a copy of the entire blockchain which is more than 55GB at the moment. It is projected to grow even more if the block size increase. This also means that you need to have lots of free space for it. I don't run it since I only have a 128GB built in SSD. Bitcoin Core misses out on features such as hierarchical deterministic seeds. HD wallets have a seed which the address generates from. This only require the users to make one and only backup in their lifetime (of course you need several copies). With Bitcoin Core, you need to backup every 100 transactions or so since it pregenerates 100 address everytime and uses a change address for every transaction.

[QQ88]

I have the same thinking when I first touch Bitcoin! But after a while, I found core wallet is consuming a lot of resource and I cannot open syn the wallet 24/7! I don't like the waiting time of synchronizing when I rush to spend the Bitcoin!

[Jeremycoin]

Hi all i got a new pc recently and was thinking of downloading bitcoin core, whats the pro's and con's?

The first thing you have to know is, the Blockchain has a very very big size and keep going up 'til now.

[Vivlore]

Hi all i got a new pc recently and was thinking of downloading bitcoin core, whats the pro's and con's?

The pro is you keep a copy of the blockchain. You care contribute to the security of bitcoin world. The con is you have to wait for a few days/weeks to see your first fraction of bitcoin.

[Rude Boy]

Hi all i got a new pc recently and was thinking of downloading bitcoin core, whats the pro's and con's?

Be mind, you're going to download whole blockchain worth of 40+ GBs of data and HDD space for sync. and counting.

[Amph]

if you have a good desktop with powerful cpu and ssd, there are no con to core, it offer more security than spv client and it has everything you need minus some fuctions that you can integrate later via armory

[|Ocean|]

One question i want to ask here , if i download bitcoin core and run it 24x7 them will i get something , say bitcoins by network to run it?

[Denker]

Hi all i got a new pc recently and was thinking of downloading bitcoin core, whats the pro's and con's?

Bitcoin core is very good client and herefore also a very good wallet.Easy to use imo.
When you download it you will have the full blockchain on your computer.This gives you the opportunity to run a network node and support the network.This is always welcome.
But the blockchain is quite large (+30GB) and if you haven't run it a few days it will take some while to sync depending on your bandwith.

[Denker]

One question i want to ask here , if i download bitcoin core and run it 24x7 them will i get something , say bitcoins by network to run it?

No right now you will not get rewarded by supporting via a node.
You only get rewarded if you mine.And today the difficulty is that high that as a home miner you have no chance to compete against the big farms.The only thing you can do is joining a pool.

[ranochigo]

^Can't you link the posts altogether?

One question i want to ask here , if i download bitcoin core and run it 24x7 them will i get something , say bitcoins by network to run it?

Bitcoin Core is essential for the survivial of Bitcoin, full nodes basically forms the backbone of Bitcoin. There is no reward scheme in the protocol which rewards the node. However, the number of nodes is decreasing. Hence, Bitnodes have a program which runs for a limited time and basically rewards nodes randomly. You can find out more information here: https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/incentive/. Currently, the possible reward for the winner is $10. You need to have a "PIX" score of more than 8 to qualify. Here is the algorithm for calculating it: https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/leaderboard/, just scroll down. By running a full node with port 8333 opened, peers will connect to you and download blocks from you. It will result in a higher bandwidth usage.

I'm thinking of running a full node on a dedicated server. It costs a lot but it helps the network.

Edit: Some punctuation and grammar errors corrected.

[gkv9]

One question i want to ask here , if i download bitcoin core and run it 24x7 them will i get something , say bitcoins by network to run it?

No right now you will not get rewarded by supporting via a node.
You only get rewarded if you mine.And today the difficulty is that high that as a home miner you have no chance to compete against the big farms.The only thing you can do is joining a pool.

Even those pools won't reward a lot if compared to what these big farms have been making...
You will need to invest a lot if you want to earn bitcoins through mining...

[maokoto]

Advantage: help to support the network. Which is a kind of "altruistic" advantage

Disadvantage: time consuming, space not used for other things, harder work on your hd (which lowers its life span), slowing your machine on the operation...

[|Ocean|]

^Can't you link the posts altogether?

One question i want to ask here , if i download bitcoin core and run it 24x7 them will i get something , say bitcoins by network to run it?

Bitcoin Core is essential for the survivial of Bitcoin, full nodes basically forms the backbone of Bitcoin. There is no reward scheme in the protocol which rewards the node However, he number of nodes is decreasing. Hence Bitnodes have a program which runs for a limited time and basically rewards nodes randomly. You can find out more information here: https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/incentive/. Currently, the possible reward for the winner is $10. You need to have a score of more than 8 to qualify. Here is the algronithm for calculating it: https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/leaderboard/, just scroll down. By running a full node with port 8333 opened, peers will connect to you and download blocks from you. It will result in a higher bandwidth usage.

I'm thinking of running a full node on a dedicated server. It costs a lot but it helps the network.

Thank for explaining in brief.
I was thing of the same but one person in above comment said that It would take weeks to get fraction of bitcoin, so I thought to ask here.
Thank you guys.

[calkob]

Thanks everyone for the replies, i think ill give it ago, i have a new i7 with 3TB of unused hd, and my broadband is unlimited..... so i can try it out and see. 

im not even looking to use the wallet anyway as i have all my bitcoin in paper wallets.  so that isnt an issue.  bitnodes sounds interesting i might look into that.


 

[simon28]

You can speed up the bitcoin core sync time by downloading the whole blockchain in a bootstrap.dat file, then letting your bitcoin wallet work on that. It still takes a long time to sync but it's faster than waiting for the data from nodes. You can download the bootstrap.dat file from this link.

http://www.satoshis.guru/blockchain-downloads/

[Rubberduckie]

On my main desktop I have bitcoin core and support the network.
On my laptop I use electrum for fast transactions and easy
sync. So I suggest using both as long as core wont bog down
your computer. Assuming you have a good comp since its new.

[Meuh6879]

Hi all i got a new pc recently and was thinking of downloading bitcoin core, whats the pro's and con's?

pro :
- emit your own transactions
- can keep wallet file as cold storage (keep my money safe)

con :
- need actually 55Go to store
- need 2-4ko/s of Upload
- need to trust the "PC" ... system operator

[Carlton Banks]

You can speed up the bitcoin core sync time by downloading the whole blockchain in a bootstrap.dat file, then letting your bitcoin wallet work on that. It still takes a long time to sync but it's faster than waiting for the data from nodes. You can download the bootstrap.dat file from this link.

http://www.satoshis.guru/blockchain-downloads/

I would urge anyone thinking about doing this to think twice. The bootstrap.dat linked from the website could actually be some kind of attack, although I don't know exactly how the file gets used so I can't tell you what the vector might be.

Anyway, since 0.10, the bootstrap.dat method is basically obsolete. It is not faster than downloading directly over the Bitcoin network, so it serves no purpose.