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>You can locate, download, install, and set up a crypto wallet I was under the impression you had to download the blockchain for e.g. bitcoin before you could

>You can locate, download, install, and set up a crypto wallet I was under the impression you had to download the blockchain for e.g. bitcoin before you could engage in transactions. Which is something like 350 GB at this point. And then do some processing that takes a while. Surely this takes a lot more than two minutes. If you didn't do that, do you really have a crypto wallet?

toolz 5y ago
you don't have to be a synced, full node to have a wallet that you alone have full control over So to answer your question, yes I actually own the wallet and no it didn't take more than a minute at most for many different coins
- perl4ever 5y ago
  If you're not a "full node" then you have to trust them, don't you? The whole trustless thing goes out the window. So I'm not sure about that "full control" thing.
  - toolz 5y ago
    no, you don't have to be a full node to have complete control of your wallet because of asymmetric cryptography. You hold the private key to your wallet and without that private key no one can spend your funds. It's not terribly different than if you were to encrypt some file and put it out on the cloud and delete it locally - as long as you have access to the cloud, you are the only one who can make sense of that file with your decryption key. The distributed network of the blockchain is what ensures you'll have access to a node because most crypto coins have very distributed nodes.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      But which chain? From what I read, it's very important to distinguish between the true chain which full nodes can come to consensus on based on proof of work, and a possible attacker chain which is longer, but low effort. https://cryptoservices.github.io/blockchain/consensus/2019/05/21/bitcoin-length-weight-confusion.html https://cryptoservices.github.io/blockchain/consensus/2019/0... And I believe I've read that, when you aren't running a full node, you have to just assume the longest chain is the right one. I mean, all that data is the chain, right? If you don't process it, you have to assume other nodes are trustworthy. What you are saying about complete control sounds to me like if I said I have complete control over my bank account, in the sense nobody can guess my password, but maybe the bank is fake and I'm not even trying to check.

toolz 5y ago

you don't have to be a synced, full node to have a wallet that you alone have full control over So to answer your question, yes I actually own the wallet and no it didn't take more than a minute at most for many different coins

perl4ever 5y ago
If you're not a "full node" then you have to trust them, don't you? The whole trustless thing goes out the window. So I'm not sure about that "full control" thing.
- toolz 5y ago
  no, you don't have to be a full node to have complete control of your wallet because of asymmetric cryptography. You hold the private key to your wallet and without that private key no one can spend your funds. It's not terribly different than if you were to encrypt some file and put it out on the cloud and delete it locally - as long as you have access to the cloud, you are the only one who can make sense of that file with your decryption key. The distributed network of the blockchain is what ensures you'll have access to a node because most crypto coins have very distributed nodes.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    But which chain? From what I read, it's very important to distinguish between the true chain which full nodes can come to consensus on based on proof of work, and a possible attacker chain which is longer, but low effort. https://cryptoservices.github.io/blockchain/consensus/2019/05/21/bitcoin-length-weight-confusion.html https://cryptoservices.github.io/blockchain/consensus/2019/0... And I believe I've read that, when you aren't running a full node, you have to just assume the longest chain is the right one. I mean, all that data is the chain, right? If you don't process it, you have to assume other nodes are trustworthy. What you are saying about complete control sounds to me like if I said I have complete control over my bank account, in the sense nobody can guess my password, but maybe the bank is fake and I'm not even trying to check.