Growing Core blochain size

[Sleepy John]

I'm just a small investor who started saving in Bitcoin Core in 2013,  and there are only a total of 5 receive transactions and no send showing on my Core wallet. Now using Core v0.13.2.0-g0d71914.

It was all fine for the first couple of years,  but I didn't keep my saved blockchain properly updated and at one point it got corrupted and I had to start it again from scratch.  Earlier this year I'd let it slip again to being 1yr & 35 weeks behind, but am now slowly catching up and am only 13 weeks behind.

My problem now is the ever-increasing size of my blocks folder.  It's recently gone over the 100GB mark and today it's 105.7GB.  Not only that, for safety I now feel I need to keep a backup on a physically seperate device so I'm well on the way to using ¼TB of storage.

Will there be any way to limit the amount of storage required as time goes on?  Will blocks always have to go all the way back to 2013,  or could they in future be based on a more recent reference point?

I've never sold any Bitcoin.  Presumably Core won't allow me to sell any until I've completely caught up on the 13 weeks I'm still behind.   Is that correct?

If possible, would appreciate a bit of background from one of you guys here on how all this works.  

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[achow101]

Will there be any way to limit the amount of storage required as time goes on?  Will blocks always have to go all the way back to 2013,  or could they in future be based on a more recent reference point?

You can enable pruning. Pruning means that Core will delete most of the blockchain once it has verified it. It does this on the fly so you won't have the whole thing stored on your disk. It does still require you to download the entire thing, but old blocks are deleted after they are verified and a certain number of newer blocks are found on top of it. With the default pruning setting, the disk space required is reduced to ~5 GB. Note that you will still be consuming the same amount of bandwidth and still wait as long for the blockchain to sync when pruning is enabled. It does not speed that up.

To enable pruning, find the bitcoin.conf or make one in the Bitcoin Core data directory. Then add the following line to it:

Code:

prune=550

When you start Core again, it will prune the blockchain.

I've never sold any Bitcoin.  Presumably Core won't allow me to sell any until I've completely caught up on the 13 weeks I'm still behind.   Is that correct?

Bitcoin Core does not have any functionality to sell Bitcoin. It allows you to send Bitcoin to other people. In order to send, you have to be fully synced.

[Sleepy John]

Thanks Achow.  That advice about pruning has worked a treat!  Items in my Blocks folder now down from 149 to 65, and size down from 109.6GB to an incredible 1.4GB.   This despite having reduced my "behind" weeks from 9 to 5 in the meantime.   Much more manageable

This result kind of makes me wonder why so many old blocks. once verified,  need to be stored in the first place.  Why shouldn't that pruning function be built into CORE main program code as a default standard?   Is there perhaps some security advantage in storing all those old blocks.  that I've missed?

Anyway, great stuff!  Thanks again!

[achow101]

This result kind of makes me wonder why so many old blocks. once verified,  need to be stored in the first place.  Why shouldn't that pruning function be built into CORE main program code as a default standard?   Is there perhaps some security advantage in storing all those old blocks.  that I've missed?

When you prune, you lose some functionality. If the database becomes corrupted, it becomes very painful to fix that as it requires redownloading the entire blockchain. You can't rescan or import other addresses and private keys. Additionally, pruned nodes cannot sync a new node since it cannot provide the entire blockchain. Becaues of these shortcomings of pruning, it is not enabled by default.