Is a local PC wallet viable with the growing size of the blockchain?

[C1D]

Hello,
Please excuse me if this has been asked before. I'm currently deciding on leaving blockchain.info as I've decided to venture deeper into the bitcoin world by creating my own PC wallet, but I have an important question. As the blockchain will continue to expand is it viable to be running a listener on the network. What i mean is that; is/or will the blockchain become larger than I can hold on my PC? Is it best to stick with a web wallet so I don't waste PC space and Bandwidth by downloading the blockchain.
Thank You,
@_C1D

[Dabs]

Do you play Starcraft 2? How many gigs is the installation? Do you play any recent 2012 to 2013 games that require high end graphics cards? How many gigs is the installation? How many gigs are the saved games?

Do you do any kind of graphics or movie work? How many gigs is the software, and how many gigs are all the data, pictures, videos?

[C1D]

I see what you mean, how much GB is the blockchain currently?

[Point at Infinity]

The blockchain is currently about 6.5 GB (see the chart).

The bitcoin protocol doesn't require everyone to keep the full blockchain, however. It would be enough to keep an index of unspent transactions which is still less than 200 MB. Bitcoin version 0.8 only saves the block files to be able to seed new nodes joining the network.

[C1D]

Hey,
Thanks for that

[webchris]

I have my own wallet on my PC and have no problems with the size. I would say, the only thing I see as a downside is that you really need to leave your wallet open all the time. If you only open it to use it, you have to wait a while for it to update in between uses before you see incoming transactions.

[jokercoin]

Well as bitcoin increases in popularity, won't the blockchain size eventually become impractical to download on your computer? Sure, it's comparable to video games and high def movies now. But if bitcoin is something that's going to stick around for a while and continue increasing in popularity, how many more years will this be practical for?

[nuggium]

Haven't loaded my wallet in a while. It has been syncing for the last 18hrs and still hasn't finished

[mcb18]

You might also look into an alternative wallet app like MultiBit, which doesn't download the full blockchain.  I'm not sure what (if any?) disadvantages this might have for the end user, but it certainly takes up less space.

[Dabs]

I'm guessing, in the future, like a few years from now, the block chain may be 20 to 30 gigabytes due to all the transactions. One of the devs makes a torrent of the block chain every few months, to save download time on new installations.

But, a few years from now, when the size is indeed 20 to 30 or even 100 gigabytes, how big do you think the typical hard drive is? Going down memory lane, I remember 10 megabyte hard drives many many years ago. I even have a working 1 gigabyte IDE hard drive somewhere in my office (retired, replaced with a 300+ gig drive.)

Heck, my phone had more ram in it than this other computer had hard drive space in my other office that died last month. We literally ran it until it wouldn't. It was an IBM.

[heartuu2013]

I hope that is ture

[cp1]

You don't need to download the blockchain with electrum either.

But make sure your computer is secure!!!