3 ms·

Hmm, currently the block size seems still manageable to me (80GB). Also you can turn on pruning so you need to store only the amount you want, and you can still

Hmm, currently the block size seems still manageable to me (80GB). Also you can turn on pruning so you need to store only the amount you want, and you can still use all the major use cases. You don't need to mine bitcoin to use it. It is still very cheap to use bitcoin still as an independent node. You can use those gateways to make your life a bit easier, but from cost perspective I think they are not needed.

dogma1138 10y ago
These things are eventually going to exponentially increase, if Bitcoin gets to even 1% of the global payment cards daily transaction rate you aren't going to be running nodes on your own. Now you can still get into running a node and even doing mining however as time passes the barrier to entry increases exponentially and considerably faster than the capacity of individual hardware so you can't even really catch up.
- wongarsu 10y ago
  >These things are eventually going to exponentially increase While bandwidth and storage costs exponentially decrease. Handling the entirety of VISA's volume with bitcoin transactions would require at least a 4Mbit/s connection (about double for peak times). That's not exactly out of reach of normal consumers. In that scenario the blockchain would grow bigger by 40Gb each day, or 15Tb per year. If you want to store that all, with current hard drive prices that would be $40 per month for new hard drives. Of course if you're not interested in looking up other people's random transactions, most of the data can be pruned as soon as the coins are spent elsewhere, giving you barely any blockchain size increase. And all of those resources get cheaper all the time. Resource requirements aren't a fundamental problem for bitcoin. The block size that limits it to ~0.3% of VISA's volume, and the mining system that favours a near-monopoly for the person with the lowest operating costs are far bigger problems.
- louprado 10y ago
  "If Bitcoin gets to even 1% of the global payment cards daily" Visa alone processes between 2000 and 10000 transactions a second. Bitcoin is architected to handle 7 transactions per second. From my understanding this limitation can not be overcome by adding more miners, it is by design.
uncletammy 10y ago
I think you mean "blockchain" rather than "block size".

dogma1138 10y ago

These things are eventually going to exponentially increase, if Bitcoin gets to even 1% of the global payment cards daily transaction rate you aren't going to be running nodes on your own. Now you can still get into running a node and even doing mining however as time passes the barrier to entry increases exponentially and considerably faster than the capacity of individual hardware so you can't even really catch up.

wongarsu 10y ago
>These things are eventually going to exponentially increase While bandwidth and storage costs exponentially decrease. Handling the entirety of VISA's volume with bitcoin transactions would require at least a 4Mbit/s connection (about double for peak times). That's not exactly out of reach of normal consumers. In that scenario the blockchain would grow bigger by 40Gb each day, or 15Tb per year. If you want to store that all, with current hard drive prices that would be $40 per month for new hard drives. Of course if you're not interested in looking up other people's random transactions, most of the data can be pruned as soon as the coins are spent elsewhere, giving you barely any blockchain size increase. And all of those resources get cheaper all the time. Resource requirements aren't a fundamental problem for bitcoin. The block size that limits it to ~0.3% of VISA's volume, and the mining system that favours a near-monopoly for the person with the lowest operating costs are far bigger problems.
louprado 10y ago
"If Bitcoin gets to even 1% of the global payment cards daily" Visa alone processes between 2000 and 10000 transactions a second. Bitcoin is architected to handle 7 transactions per second. From my understanding this limitation can not be overcome by adding more miners, it is by design.

uncletammy 10y ago

I think you mean "blockchain" rather than "block size".