Block chain size/storage and slow downloads for new users

[giszmo]

Just use a online wallet, blockchain, coinbase etc.

… and get your money stolen or get LE easy access? Come on, the bitcoin idea is be your own bank. No third party risk should be acceptable for the more security aware people.

[jgarzik]

… and get your money stolen or get LE easy access? Come on, the bitcoin idea is be your own bank. No third party risk should be acceptable for the more security aware people.

Indeed.

Bitcoin is decentralized... the antithesis of bitcoin is really centralized websites and authorities.

[tvbcof]

… and get your money stolen or get LE easy access? Come on, the bitcoin idea is be your own bank. No third party risk should be acceptable for the more security aware people.

Indeed.

Bitcoin is decentralized... the antithesis of bitcoin is really centralized websites and authorities.

An issue which most people probably fail to consider is that there is a vast difference in the needs that the different participants in the ecosystem have.

For many of us, the cost of a bag of Doritos and some pot represent a fair fraction of our net worth.  (Ya, been there, done that.)

Others need a safe place to store blocks of value in the above $100k range.  A small fraction of our net worth can keep us going for years and a theft of it (say, from something like the Instawallet failure) would be infuriating but would impact our financial statement only in a negligible way.

For my part I consider Bitcoin to be a superior solution to such things as bank deposits and IRAs for protection against certain types of risk.  Currently at least.  Critically, I also consider a financial service provider to have the same sort of protections that I have by utilizing Bitcoin as a store of value in their operation, so even if I am not in full control or the certain fraction of my net worth that I may have on deposit with an off-chain provider, I am still enjoying some of the benefits that Bitcoin offers even for that...or would be if Bitcoin retains it's broadly distributed peer-2-peer nature at it's core infrastructure level.

It may sound dickish, but I don't see low net worth people as really needing an extreme heavy weight and solid financial solution (like high precision per-purchase representation in a globally distributed and mission critical ledger) very badly.  Sure, it would be great, but if it kills the more critical aspects of the solution via growth which forces the infrastructure into the waiting arms of the big players, it is something which can be and should be sacrificed.

Plenty here in the community believe that the path forward involves it supporting exclusively a flourishing exchange economy and are ambivalent, and often hostile, to the idea of Bitcoin as a store of wealth.  I would hope that the minority who take an active role in the actual engineering of the solution are a bit less absolutist and a bit more pragmatic than the more rabidly philosophical participants (cough..Jeff of BitPay...cough.)

[qtronix]

yes its to big, it takes forever to download.

[PrintMule]

Just use a online wallet, blockchain, coinbase etc.

… and get your money stolen or get LE easy access? Come on, the bitcoin idea is be your own bank. No third party risk should be acceptable for the more security aware people.

Imagine if all big online wallets are destroyed or taken by government.

What will become of btc?

How many coins, that are currently in circulation are stored on the cloud? 10% 20% 50% ?

With these talks of regulation - if they implement it, they will surely go all-in to force it on these online wallets and(!) exchanges.

[tvbcof]

Just use a online wallet, blockchain, coinbase etc.

… and get your money stolen or get LE easy access? Come on, the bitcoin idea is be your own bank. No third party risk should be acceptable for the more security aware people.

Imagine if all big online wallets are destroyed or taken by government.

What will become of btc?

How many coins, that are currently in circulation are stored on the cloud? 10% 20% 50% ?

With these talks of regulation - if they implement it, they will surely go all-in to force it on these online wallets and(!) exchanges.

If the service used UCE (User Controlled Encryption) then the results of a service takeover attack would (or could) be minimal.  The attacker could not obtain the BTC, and the user could, with effort, re-claim it.  In my understanding of things, blockchain.info wallet is basically of this type.

Interestingly, cloud storage and many other forms of data transmission and storage (e.g., messaging) are trivially and easily protected by these methods.  Brazil is on some kick to 'keep data local'.  This is absurd.  Data managed by UCE can be stored and transmitted across untrusted mediums safely and trivially.  There is a media blackout on mega.co.nz at this time, but the service they provide seems to be working well (and they take Bitcoin!)  I'm looking forward further developments by that organization.

In my opinion, a resistance to using UCE is attributable to about one thing and one thing only.  Namely, the provisioner of the service wants to, or needs to, have the option to compromise the data.

[giszmo]

Just use a online wallet, blockchain, coinbase etc.

… and get your money stolen or get LE easy access? Come on, the bitcoin idea is be your own bank. No third party risk should be acceptable for the more security aware people.

Imagine if all big online wallets are destroyed or taken by government.

What will become of btc?

How many coins, that are currently in circulation are stored on the cloud? 10% 20% 50% ?

With these talks of regulation - if they implement it, they will surely go all-in to force it on these online wallets and(!) exchanges.

If the service used UCE (User Controlled Encryption) then the results of a service takeover attack would (or could) be minimal.  The attacker could not obtain the BTC, and the user could, with effort, re-claim it.  In my understanding of things, blockchain.info wallet is basically of this type.

Interestingly, cloud storage and many other forms of data transmission and storage (e.g., messaging) are trivially and easily protected by these methods.  Brazil is on some kick to 'keep data local'.  This is absurd.  Data managed by UCE can be stored and transmitted across untrusted mediums safely and trivially.  There is a media blackout on mega.co.nz at this time, but the service they provide seems to be working well (and they take Bitcoin!)  I'm looking forward further developments by that organization.

In my opinion, a resistance to using UCE is attributable to about one thing and one thing only.  Namely, the provisioner of the service wants to, or needs to, have the option to compromise the data.

UCE is basically a local wallet. It has less privacy as you log in and it has less security as the server might change its mind and grab your key today.

UCE does not work for services that require to take control over your money. If you want to put your money into the books of an exchange or on a long time bet, it has to be taken out of your control and into the control of the website. If you don't want to pay for the blockchain every time you change your mind on your bids, you have to also grant the service control over your wallet, making UCE impossible.

Basically UCE is only an option for a pure wallet app. Anything else needs to be a service with a classical web wallet on top.

[tvbcof]

UCE is basically a local wallet. It has less privacy as you log in and it has less security as the server might change its mind and grab your key today.

UCE does not work for services that require to take control over your money. If you want to put your money into the books of an exchange or on a long time bet, it has to be taken out of your control and into the control of the website. If you don't want to pay for the blockchain every time you change your mind on your bids, you have to also grant the service control over your wallet, making UCE impossible.

Basically UCE is only an option for a pure wallet app. Anything else needs to be a service with a classical web wallet on top.

This is true, but we were discussing wallets fairly specifically.  You points about privacy are good ones.  Theft would take the form of a trojaned JS (or whatever) so it is not trivial and a inputs.io style theft would not be very possible.

I only trust what I can afford to lose to anyone.  A service which is demonstrably more complex to exploit will earn more of my trust and I'd potentially maintain a bigger balance there.  I use exclusively on-line wallet these days because the data rate needed to support a full node exceeds my monthly bandwidth allowance and my secure computer does not run Java.  I'd run something like Multibit (albeit with distaste) if I could compile it myself, but even then I'd still prefer an on-line wallet for spending money.  I don't mind hooking up to a low funded on-line wallet with my Android and Windows machines, and I personally am not terribly bothered by privacy issues for a majority of my activities.

I would prefer methods with a privacy focus out of principle.  As the coinjoin and other methods develop I'll support them for political reasons more than anything.

[giszmo]

UCE is basically a local wallet. It has less privacy as you log in and it has less security as the server might change its mind and grab your key today.

UCE does not work for services that require to take control over your money. If you want to put your money into the books of an exchange or on a long time bet, it has to be taken out of your control and into the control of the website. If you don't want to pay for the blockchain every time you change your mind on your bids, you have to also grant the service control over your wallet, making UCE impossible.

Basically UCE is only an option for a pure wallet app. Anything else needs to be a service with a classical web wallet on top.

This is true, but we were discussing wallets fairly specifically.  You points about privacy are good ones.  Theft would take the form of a trojaned JS (or whatever) so it is not trivial and a inputs.io style theft would not be very possible.

I only trust what I can afford to lose to anyone.  A service which is demonstrably more complex to exploit will earn more of my trust and I'd potentially maintain a bigger balance there.  I use exclusively on-line wallet these days because the data rate needed to support a full node exceeds my monthly bandwidth allowance and my secure computer does not run Java.  I'd run something like Multibit (albeit with distaste) if I could compile it myself, but even then I'd still prefer an on-line wallet for spending money.  I don't mind hooking up to a low funded on-line wallet with my Android and Windows machines, and I personally am not terribly bothered by privacy issues for a majority of my activities.

I would prefer methods with a privacy focus out of principle.  As the coinjoin and other methods develop I'll support them for political reasons more than anything.

I was not very privacy aware when using bitcoin spinner on my android until a trading partner asked me about my trading history as the one address I had been using for 2 years was showing volumes well beyond my peak holdings in my secure wallet. That was when it dawned on me that whenever I would be out on the street with a loaded wallet, all of these former trade partners would be able to know exactly how well I charged my android wallet. Financial privacy matters. Trust me.

[Coelacanth]

This will be solved in version 0.9 of bitcoin-qt with only need to download headers. Downloading entire chain will be optional.

[zaatar]

This will be solved in version 0.9 of bitcoin-qt with only need to download headers. Downloading entire chain will be optional.

Is there an expected release date for .9?

Thanks and thanks for all the updates... very helpful reading.

[jgarzik]

Is there an expected release date for .9?

No.  Maybe a couple of months?

[Dabs]

Hi Def Movies. Bleeding Edge Games. They are all larger than the blockchain. For now.

[Scepto]

Thanks for this Mike. Even though I have been using the BitCoin-QT client for a few months now, I was always wondering how long it would take to download and why all of the blocks were useful.

[giveBTCpls]

So you are saying that even if it's not crucial and you could use other clients that do not require you to download the blockchain big ass file, the ideal and most secure scenareo is still using Bitcoin-QT with said big file downloaded and up to date??

[solex]

So you are saying that even if it's not crucial and you could use other clients that do not require you to download the blockchain big ass file, the ideal and most secure scenareo is still using Bitcoin-QT with said big file downloaded and up to date??

Anyone who can run the reference software, and leave it running full time, is helping maintain the health of the Bitcoin network. Anyone who doesn't have the hardware, bandwidth, to do so is better off with Multibit or one of the other lightweight wallets. A further advantage of bitcoin-qt is that you can use Armory, the best wallet for securing large holdings. Of course, as the exchange rate increases even small holdings are "large" now  

[bitcoinpsftp]

What I'm trying to understand is how exactly will bitcoin work if everyone starts using bitcon QT with the updated 10gb limit.  What will happen to the old blocks?  Why would anyone store them anymore?  What's the incentive to store a terabyte of blocks (in the future)?  Will this mess up bitcoin?

[solex]

What I'm trying to understand is how exactly will bitcoin work if everyone starts using bitcon QT with the updated 10gb limit.  What will happen to the old blocks?  Why would anyone store them anymore?  What's the incentive to store a terabyte of blocks (in the future)?  Will this mess up bitcoin?

Everyone who owns a bitcoin has an incentive to see the blockchain replicated and stored, because this has the only acceptable proof of their own holding. Terabyte disk storage is very cheap today and storage continues to get cheaper. The cost of helping ensure network health is the delay in initial synchronization and continued bandwidth requirements. People who don't mine, and just invest, should consider spending a small percentage of their bitcoin holding on hardware and bandwidth.

[giveBTCpls]

So I downloaded bootstrap.dat, 9GB+ from the torrent file on the source page, and I put it on my Bitcoin folder, but it's still so far away from completing the download. Am i doing something wrong? because its still 31 weeks behind.
I think im giving up on qt and i'll ulse Multi, I hope it looks the same now that i learned how to use the default client. Can u encrypt wallet.dat with it and so on?

[bitcoinpsftp]

What I'm trying to understand is how exactly will bitcoin work if everyone starts using bitcon QT with the updated 10gb limit.  What will happen to the old blocks?  Why would anyone store them anymore?  What's the incentive to store a terabyte of blocks (in the future)?  Will this mess up bitcoin?

Everyone who owns a bitcoin has an incentive to see the blockchain replicated and stored, because this has the only acceptable proof of their own holding. Terabyte disk storage is very cheap today and storage continues to get cheaper. The cost of helping ensure network health is the delay in initial synchronization and continued bandwidth requirements. People who don't mine, and just invest, should consider spending a small percentage of their bitcoin holding on hardware and bandwidth.

But what if so few people start storing the full block chain, that somebody can mass install a fake one with fake info, thus ruining bitcoin?  I'm not sure this is the greatest thing int he world, sorta compromises a system like bitcoin...  It will just cause fewer people to own the complete blockchain...  Am I wrong on this?