Changes in Bitcoin Client

[lord bookington]

I was planning on saving a wallet.dat file to a memory stick and sending bitcoins to its corresponding address, so that sometime in the future I can copy this old wallet.dat file back into a new client to recover my coins. Will this be possible in future versions of the bitcoin client? Will the original version (the one available for download now) go out of date and stop working on the bitcoin network some time in the future, making it impossible to copy my wallet.dat into it to recover my coins?
 

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[JoelKatz]

I don't think anyone can say for sure. An export method for private keys into a format guaranteed to remain stable for the extremely long-term would be a good idea.

[Jaime Frontero]

I don't think anyone can say for sure. An export method for private keys into a format guaranteed to remain stable for the extremely long-term would be a good idea.

indeed it would.

in the meantime, one can update the Bitcoin client off the internet.  from version to version, that should work ok.

[FreeMoney]

If the client eventually changes so much that it can't read old wallets there will be a converter because lots of people will need it. If your coins were actually not valid on some client in the future then that client isn't really Bitcoin. Nothing to worry about imo.

[Phil21]

If the client eventually changes so much that it can't read old wallets there will be a converter because lots of people will need it. If your coins were actually not valid on some client in the future then that client isn't really Bitcoin. Nothing to worry about imo.

This   Nothing to worry about, you'll be safe until either you or bitcoin dies... Whichever comes first

[lord bookington]

thanks!