yeah ok....but ya don't really need to download and run the bitcoin client at all really do you...
Ya don't need a local wallet.
You can use an online version of a wallet like coinbase or similar... right?
and as you say, mine from a pool and then arrange to have bounty sent straight to the online wallet address.
That would work, but it is a bit risky. When you use an online wallet like that you are turning complete control of your bitcoins to someone else, and hoping that they'll honor any requests you make in the future to access those bitcoins.
You only really [u]need[/u] the local Bitcoin client running ( or even installed for that matter) if you intend to mine solo ...OR am i missing some critical piece of information here ?
Well you're ignoring issues related to risk and control of your bitcoins, but basically you're right.
I agree .... re-syncing the block chain every couple of days is bloody annoying and if what we are saying here is correct ...a waste of time
There are lightweight clients you can look into that don't require you to maintain the blockchain, but that still give you full control over your bitcoins.
Look into Electrum, MultiBit, and
https://blockchain.info/walletHowever, I wonder what would happen if nobody downloaded the application and nobody used it to complete transactions anymore??
Transactions might take longer to propgate through the network since there would be less peers to relay. The influence necessary to make changes to the core behavior of bitcoin would be reduced as well (every full node peer enforces the core behavior of bitcoin even if they are not mining).
Would that mean that mining efforts would start to come up empty handed ?
They'd still get the block subsidy, but there wouldn't be any transaction fees to collect. At the moment, the block subsidy is more than 90% of mining income, so it wouldn't hurt the miners much. In the future the subsidy will be reduced and eventually (decades from now) miners will depend on transaction fees for revenue.
...would there be no more blocks to solve if the base system transactions just stopped?
Miners create blocks, and there is always one transaction available (the one that pays the block subsidy to the miner). After 2140, when the block subsidy becomes 0, miners would lose the incentive to mine if nobody is engaging in any transactions. On the other hand, if bitcoin isn't being used for lots of transactions by 2140, it will have long since died out entirely.
Isnt that what the algorithm in the bitcoin client is doing ...verifying transactions across the network?
The algorithm is simply calculating a SHA-256 hash of a block header. The block header has a "merkle root" generated from the list of transactions that the miner chooses to include in the block, so the miner generally needs at least one transaction to create that "merkle root". Fortunately the protocol provides every miner with 1 transaction that they use to pay themselves the block subsidy. Any transactions that the miner includes after that are entirely voluntary on the part of the miner.
