Bitcoin will probably be dead within 6 years.

[Coinbanker]

Thank you Elwar,

[pening]

Oh please, kids download dozens of movies nowadays that are bigger than 10Gigs, each and every day. It's a non-issue and will be resolved by growing diskspace and the reduction of blockchain data to a necessary amount. Please come back with this subject when the blockchain is 100TB and 100TB harddisks haven't been invented.

Yeah, kids who have time to download and watch multi-gigs of movies.  And don't have to worry about bandwidth or disk space, in other words techie kids.  to the other 99% of the population it might be an issue.  I myself balked at the idea of having to download all that (restricted bandwidth and taking up space on my small SSD) 9 mths ago so abandoned the reference client.  fortunately l i found Multibit otherwise i may have stayed away. 

In other words do not assume that because its not an issue to you that it wont be an issue to others.  That attitude in general will lead to wider public not accepting and adopting the technology, just how they haven't accepted desktop Linux despite all the advantages.  When a friend version came along, in the form of Android, they happily lapped it up.  Technical issues must be out of sight for the vast majority of the public, they don't want to deal with that stuff.

[disclaimer201]

Let me put it this way. If someone wants to use bitcoins for long-term storage of value they should be interested in the technical side of things. After all, they might put a lot of money into it. If we are talking about spending some coins for a coffee paid with a qr code, an altcoin and an android wallet will do. People will never use Bitcoin to buy anything smaller than a car or a house, or a yacht. It is not for everyone, just like gold is held only by 1-2 % of the population. You will never carry gold around to buy a t-shirt. But you will have to buy a computer with a fairly large harddisk and install the client. If you can't or don't want to have to deal with, Bitcoin is not for you. On that note, DGC might be for you. It has a wonderful android wallet. :-)

[tvbcof]

Let me put it this way. If someone wants to use bitcoins for long-term storage of value they should be interested in the technical side of things. After all, they might put a lot of money into it. If we are talking about spending some coins for a coffee paid with a qr code, an altcoin and an android wallet will do. People will never use Bitcoin to buy anything smaller than a car or a house, or a yacht. It is not for everyone, just like gold is held only by 1-2 % of the population. You will never carry gold around to buy a t-shirt. But you will have to buy a computer with a fairly large harddisk and install the client. If you can't or don't want to have to deal with, Bitcoin is not for you. On that note, DGC might be for you. It has a wonderful android wallet. :-)

I'm fairly confident that a no-bullshit trusted cypto-currency will develop.  Trust, to me and probably others like me, means that it's function is not dependent on large corporations but rather is highly distributed and autonomous.  If Bitcoin proper does not develop into such a thing than something else will, and will probably leave some of Bitcoin's design deficiencies behind.  I'd prefer that Bitcoin is the one which takes on this role since I already have a boat-load of them, but it might actually be better if Bitcoin ends up trying to be everyone's coffee money (where it is even less competitive than as a reserve currency) and ends it's life as simply the match that got the fire started.

[kwoody]

in 1.5 years anybody involved with bitcoin to the point that they're willing to operate as a node, will likely be able to afford vast amounts of space. I spent 0.4 on a 500gb ssd and the current blockchain doesn't even put a dent in it. while conventional hard disks aren't growing very large in size as time goes on (i think largest commercial drive right now is 4 or 5TB?), the size of ssd's are growing rapidly. just a couple years ago ssds were available in pretty much 3 sizes. 32gb/64gb/128gb, now there are 2tb+ ssds. in 6 years, bitcoin will either fail or the only nodes necessary to run will be mining pools, the operators of which have made fortunes by now with the 3%ish they've been taking all these years, along with tx fee bonuses. it's also 6 years to figure out a solution to the issue, such as p2p distribution as others have mentioned.

[Interized]

OP assumes everyone who uses currency wants to educate them self further of how money works.

OP is dead wrong.

Bitcoin will continue because we have the option.

New comers do not need to download the block chain, that defeats the purpose of BTC.

It is about OPTIONS.

[Interized]

Currently the database seems to 10 fold each 1.5 years or so.

11 GB today.
100 GB 1.5 years from now
1 TB 3 years from now
10 TB 4.5 years from now.
100 TB 6 years from now.
1 PB 7.5 years from now.
10 PB 9 years from now.
100 PB 10.5 years from now.

Nobody can predict the future, though there are some trends.

Harddisk size will probably not keep up with the database size.
Raid systems will also fall short a few years later.

Average hard drive today 500GB-1TB+
10-100TB 1.5 years from now
etc

Nobody can predict the future, though there are some trends.

[DeluxBoy]

This is indeed somewhat of a problem.  
I keep my btc in blockchain.info because I don't have that many to make it worth downloading the local wallet.

[Interized]

This is indeed somewhat of a problem.  
I keep my btc in blockchain.info because I don't have that many to make it worth downloading the local wallet.

Do you need to download all of the internet too? It can easily be looked up and a 1TB HD is cheap.

[wumpus]

This is indeed somewhat of a problem.  
I keep my btc in blockchain.info because I don't have that many to make it worth downloading the local wallet.

Then use a SPV wallet such as multibit instead of running a full node. It isn't by accident that is the default wallet that is recommended on bitcoin.org.

Storing the block chain only matters to people that want to run a full node.

[prezbo]

So, 3 pages and no one mentions that blocks are limited in size? Once blocks are full there is no 10-fold size increase anymore.

[Interized]

Wow , 3 pages of a thread that shouldn't have existed if the Op would have read the Bitcoin wiki.

I am so disappointed by the amount of people who replied to this thread who did not give the obvious answer by Satoshi himself when he created Bitcoin addressing this very issue.

It is possible to verify payments without running a full network node. A user only needs to keep
a copy of the block headers of the longest proof-of-work chain, which he can get by querying
network nodes until he's convinced he has the longest chain, and obtain the Merkle branch
linking the transaction to the block it's timestamped in. He can't check the transaction for
himself, but by linking it to a place in the chain, he can see that a network node has accepted it,
and blocks added after it further confirm the network has accepted it.

As such, the verification is reliable as long as honest nodes control the network, but is more
vulnerable if the network is overpowered by an attacker. While network nodes can verify
transactions for themselves, the simplified method can be fooled by an attacker's fabricated
transactions for as long as the attacker can continue to overpower the network. One strategy to
protect against this would be to accept alerts from network nodes when they detect an invalid
block, prompting the user's software to download the full block and alerted transactions to
confirm the inconsistency. Businesses that receive frequent payments will probably still want to
run their own nodes for more independent security and quicker verification.

I invite all readers and posters of this thread to read about this thing called Bitcoin:
http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

This was my thoughts exactly, why on earth does this thread continue?

[Bytas]

Why do newcomers need to download the blockchain? Its a public ledger available online, its not necessary for 99.9% of the bitcoin community to ever download locally.

From what I understand, it's something like a torrent, only more valuable because everyone's bitcoin balance is at stake. If one copy exists, someone can modify it and nobody will know the difference. If thousands of copies exist, the doctored version can easily be identified.

Having to download 10 gigabytes of pseudorandom shit isn't very appealing to newcomers, but it's necessary if you wish to use the official wallet software. If you're not using the official client, and especially if you're using an "e-wallet," best of luck. Might as well give an envelope stuffed with cash to a homeless stranger and ask them politely to keep it safe for you.

To answer the thread, bitcoin will not last long if the price continues to increase as it has been. No matter how many people say, "Oh, it's divisible to 8 decimal places," the fact remains that getting 0.00000001 of something is thoroughly disheartening.

Oh please, kids download dozens of movies nowadays that are bigger than 10Gigs, each and every day. It's a non-issue and will be resolved by growing diskspace and the reduction of blockchain data to a necessary amount. Please come back with this subject when the blockchain is 100TB and 100TB harddisks haven't been invented.

Well that's a pile of horsecrap.
How can you even compare downloading a movie (which you download to watch, then are free to delete), to having to Sync for about 8 to 10 hours before you can start using bitcoin, then being stuck with an ever growing piece of data on your harddrive that you can't delete, because then you wouldn't be able to use bitcoin?
blockchain  pruning is something that has been around for ages now and it still hasn't happened yet....

[Gabi]

Average hard drive today 500GB-1TB+

Do you live in prehistory? You can buy a 4TB one for 150$ or so 

[bryant.coleman]

Do you live in prehistory? You can buy a 4TB one for 150$ or so 

Where do you live? In my place it is quite hard to get a decent 4TB hard disk for $150. The going rate for a Seagate 4 TB is $300 in local currency.

[zimmah]

Yeah, like satoshi never tought of this.

They are already working on a solution for this... Seriously if you think you're so clever that you found a flaw that no one else found, at least use the search function.

Can't believe there's still so many noob questions even though you're locked in noob prison for 4 hours before you can even post here.

[BTCisthefuture]

Although I currently wouldn't trust e-wallets that will store your bitcoins for you... I would imagine in the coming years there will be sites/services that offer the same level of safety and or insurance that online banking/finincal sites offer. The average non techy person out there prefers to store their money/savings in things like banks ,  most people put their money in the back instead of keeping wads of cash under their mattress.  I don't see why bitcoin would be any different.  So the oppturnity for a company (or even banks)  to start offering insurance and the ability to keep peoples money safely stored is huge,  and I do believe there are already quite a few people in silicon valley and the banking industry trying to work on such things.

In summary , as bitcoin expands past it's current user base now and moves more into the everyday mainstream lives of the average person  I really don't think many people will be storing their own bitcoins. They will be using other companies/service providers that offer some sort of insurance like a bank does.

[Interized]

Average hard drive today 500GB-1TB+

Do you live in prehistory? You can buy a 4TB one for 150$ or so 

I said average, 4TB is no where near average user computer space.

[Kluge]

So, 3 pages and no one mentions that blocks are limited in size? Once blocks are full there is no 10-fold size increase anymore.

The devs say it's a matter of when, not if the block size is increased again. I say "again" because it's been increased multiple times in the past couple years.

There actually doesn't seem to be any point to the max block size (given it's raised as soon as regular volume frequently bumps into it) except perhaps the worry that someone will create a 100GB block for giggles.


--


Bitpay and Coinbase are far more tempting options for merchants than running a node themselves (merchants used to run their own nodes as Satoshi seemed to suggest, then lost a lot of coins because they didn't have the know-how and time to secure it). So maybe we'll have ~5 online wallets, ~40 exchanges, and ~10 major merchants/processors running their own node on a giant array of hard drives and a direct connection into "the Internet." There is no subsidy for running a full node. You'll pretty much have to do it out of charity unless you can't afford to trust anyone else. For most of us, though, the problem will be that we can't afford to trust no one, which is kinda what Bitcoin set out to solve. 55 total full nodes operating is a garbage set-up. Even if 90% of the blockchain could be reliably pruned, we're going to be at this same point within a couple years - and then what?

I think the real issue with the blockchain, and I think the first coin to solve this issue is going to be that Bitcoin 2.0, is that unlike providing Internet service, there's no way to charge for blockchain service right now. Paying miners really only solves half the problem, though it's the much more immediate problem.

[vpitcher07]

I'm not so worried about the size once it's on the harddisk. What concerns me is the bandwidth requirements to download it. Does internet bandwidth follow something similar to moore's law? I don't think it does as i've seen 1MBps for the same price for a rather long time. At least where i live..