Topic: Bitcoin will probably be dead within 6 years. (Read 10242 times)

Yes,  I read it.  There must of been a user or two on my ignore list preventing me from seeing all the posts in their entirety or I overlooked it. I thought it was a crazy post.   Lol

He stated that a 10x increase it's impossible already , and he pointed that fact already. Did you read his entire post?

30 billion!?   Lol......how many people do you think there is here on earth?  


Hint.....your WAY off!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

"Bitcoin will probably be dead within 6 years."

In 6 years, devs will come up with solution on how to trim blockchain. As simple as that.

Exact same issue here. 0-100kb/s generally, with some days having odd 300-400kb/s times. Luckily, near a highway. 4G is supposed to be coming around fairly soon. Though... I've been hearing that for about a year. I don't think many people realize just how many people in the rural US (which is most of the US) are stuck with dial-up, satellite, or 3G (*maybe* 4G, though it's about as likely there's only "2.5G" or just no mobile data solution) if they're a bit more up-to-date on the whole "technology craze." Dial-up's no longer usable in this media-heavy Internet, and satellite's too expensive for most (on top of being extremely restrictive), so there're tens of millions in the US without Internet at all. Being in a rural area doesn't just make Bitcoin difficult to use, but the whole Internet is slow and frequently returning time-out errors. Most people just aren't going to deal with that. The Internet obviously didn't die from becoming increasingly bandwidth-demanding, but web developers and designers are very conscious about minimizing data required. The increase rate of bandwidth-demand is many factors lower than that of Bitcoin.

I don't think that's a Bitcoin-killing problem on its own, but I think Bitcoin's way ahead of its time, and I seriously doubt infrastructure's ability to catch up (in most places, it's already heavily-strained). FiOS has been around for, what, ten years? It's deployed only in the largest of cities, and many large cities still lack it. Even then, we're talking 300mb/s absolute max. Max speeds actually offered are ~37.5mb/s down. With a 200GB blockchain, we're talking about an absolute minimum download speed of ~1 1/2 hours. By that time, FiOS will probably be available in all major cities. By the time it's available in minor cities, we're probably talking a 20TB blockchain (unless there's a push against increasing the block size limit, instead finally allowing transaction fees to increase). At that point, the absolute minimum download speed is almost a week. A cable connection would be Hellish (>18 days on the fastest of cable connections, which'll probably be more common by that time), and the fastest DSL connections simply couldn't keep up. The only reasonable way to transfer the blockchain would be physically mailing external hard drives.

No matter what % of data can be pruned - unless that's >95% or the % increases with time up to 99.99999%+, full nodes are going to become more centralized, and they're going to be only in major cities, and they'll be extremely expensive to maintain, which isn't something Bitcoin's prepared to deal with. Bitcoin's been exploding in popularity, but the number of nodes isn't keeping up. Proportional to price, the number of full nodes on the network is spiraling downward, though it's still currently in pretty darn good shape (~190K active full nodes, which has slipped from ~250K active full nodes at the end of November). In September (keeping in mind, lite clients were just as well-known back them), price was ~$150 with ~100K full nodes - so ~667 nodes per $ in price. With price at ~$900, we have those 190K full nodes - so ~211 nodes per $ in price.

ETA: I'm not trying to suggest there's currently any immediate threat to the integrity of Bitcoin. Even 10K nodes wouldn't be particularly worrying, unless the trend continues downward from that point. I think the situation's definitely worth monitoring, though.

Im already in this boat. I live in the sticks with wireless EVDO (think 3G) for internet.. no cable or DSL out here. its currently capped at 10 GB per month. luckily Im grandfathered in from 2007 with unlimited bandwidth but others on EVDO or satellite may be out of luck, they wouldnt even be able to pull the current blockchain in one shot.

In some kind of shape, yes.  But most likely it will be in the shape of another alt coin.  But if it does survive and become THE cryto coin, and survives 100 years from now, only the most elite will own even 1 BTC by then.

i am sure btc will evolve soon, and will be here even 100 yrs from now in some kind of shape

Um... a year and a half ago, the blockchain size was ~1GB. It's currently over 12GB. https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

Once max block size is being frequently touched, the limits will be raised again. The blockchain size is already an issue, and running a full node in areas where bandwidth is capped is practically impossible. Satellite ISP, for example, has a ~40GB cap in the US. The blockchain will exceed that size in around a year, possibly less - and that doesn't include the much higher amount of bandwidth consumed relaying transactions and blocks. It's increasingly the case that you can't run a full node unless you live in a city in a country where bandwidth caps aren't allowed by consumers (or maybe the government).

im not worried about block chain sizes.

1.5 years ago the block chain was 8GB. now its 11.. not sure where the OP is getting 10 fold per year from but he is simply wrong in every way imaginable.

at the moment an average of under half of each block is full. in most cases its only 10-20%. if you do your maths of 1mb block per 10 minutes

(6 per hour, 144 per day, 52,500 per year) that is the maximum growth per year if EVERY block was filled right to the top.

52GB per year means in 10 years thats half a terrabyte. wow that only $90 for hard drive at todays prices or even cheaper in a couple years.

so i see atleast 10 years time the maximum storage usage of the block chain is half a terrabyte.

hang on thats 10 years away, i remember just 10 year ago complaining that a 2GB game was extreme.. now look at the new COD:ghosts 30GB.. and no one complains.

this is more evidence that in 10 years hard drives of multiple terrabytes will be cheap, that internet speeds will be alot faster today and no one will complain..

the people that worry about the future are the same people that worry about alien invasions, or that miners in the year 2140 wil revolt and cease mining as there is no more block reward. my reply to them is. stop day dreaming about a future thats too far away to be a problem and probably wont affect you anyways

When Bitcoin becomes an integral part of global commerce, it'll be in everyone's interest to maintain its integrity. Maybe companies like Coinbase would launch a few thousand microsatellites into orbit to run full nodes. I don't know.

What I do know is that there is no future in which the average Joe consumer is "being their own bank" by holding their savings in a cold wallet on some old dusty netbook running Ubuntu, so I doubt most people will be running full nodes either. The option exists, which is the important part, but if Bitcoin is to succeed, we can't expect the whole of society to suddenly become tech savvy.

So yeah, companies with a stake in Bitcoin will make sure these things are taken care of. Maybe it'll be part of Bitcoin insurance or a bank fee? You pay a certain amount of money and part of that goes to running a full node on your behalf.

It is possible, but bitcoin is a pretty historic idea, so maybe it will still hold value after who knows how many years! o_0

Along with hard drive space, internet speeds are increasing at a more and more rapid rate everyday.

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..

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.


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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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