In principle, in order for your client to know for a fact that you have some number of bitcoins, it must trace the entire block hash from its creation to the creation of those bitcoins to the block containing the transaction that gave those coins to you. The current client actually does all of this. So if the bitcoins were transferred to you, they will show up when your client catches up. If they don't show up, the transaction could still be unverified. You can check for the complete transaction now using block explorer. The larger the transaction fee and the larger the transaction the sooner it shows up.
You need not be running a client to receive bitcoins. You needn't do anything special to receive bitcoins -- it's the sending that's the active process. Your client will detect them when it catches up to the block that included the transaction.
Topic: Can I receive bit coin as soon as I download a wallet? (Read 2298 times)
It's sad that the 0.01 from the faucet is only enough to cover a single transaction fee. All that hard work (of typing into a box) for nothing!
Use the latest client version 0.3.23, it reduced the minimum transaction fee to 1/20th of the previous value.
It was a joke, but good to know!
It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
Not really, because at this point the client will still verify all the blocks upon first start, regardless of where the blockchain came from. In the future, there are likely to be clients that come with a blockchain already in it and trust this included blockchain, but that would require trust in the client developers.
At least, this is what I see happening if there is wider acceptance and use of bitcoins.
This needs to happen within 1 year given current transaction rates. Blocks have increased in size now that real transactions are being done and a small fraction of blocks (the new blocks) are taking up increasingly larger percentages of the total block size. Unless bitcoin is deserted, in 1 year it will take over 1 GB to download all of the blocks. No new users will participate if it takes 1 GB download just to start.
The clock is ticking and what you describe needs to happen now.
Unless bitcoin is deserted, in 1 year it will take over 1 GB to download all of the blocks. No new users will participate if it takes 1 GB download just to start.
The clock is ticking and what you describe needs to happen now.
The clock is ticking and what you describe needs to happen now.
Do you really think so? I download files larger than that via bittorrent for a few hours entertainment.
It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
Not really, because at this point the client will still verify all the blocks upon first start, regardless of where the blockchain came from. In the future, there are likely to be clients that come with a blockchain already in it and trust this included blockchain, but that would require trust in the client developers.
At least, this is what I see happening if there is wider acceptance and use of bitcoins.
This needs to happen within 1 year given current transaction rates. Blocks have increased in size now that real transactions are being done and a small fraction of blocks (the new blocks) are taking up increasingly larger percentages of the total block size. Unless bitcoin is deserted, in 1 year it will take over 1 GB to download all of the blocks. No new users will participate if it takes 1 GB download just to start.
The clock is ticking and what you describe needs to happen now.
Do you restart your client often? The debug.log is just a logfile that is recording events that your client considers notable, such as restarting. You can delete that without a hickup, and the client will just start another upon the next restart. blk0001.dat is the actual blockchain while blkindex.dat is the file that your client uses to quickly find a particular transaction within all those blocks. I would still recommend that you backup your wallet.dat file before deleting anything, though.
According to my process listing (I'm running this under Debian by the way) the client has been running 179 hours, about 7.5 days when I installed it. I just left it open and running on another desktop. I just closed it out and restarted it and it cleaned up about 800MB of data from the database directory. I opened up the debug.log and it appears to be a listing of all IRC traffic that the client generates. Perhaps the next client release can clean up this file as well when the client shuts down?
The debug log exists for development reasons, and having the client automaticly delete the log upon exit would be self-defeating. I suppose that a startup batch script that destroys the existing debug.log file upon restart wouldn't be too dangerous. Or you could use the -noirc switch to disable the irc bootstrapping altogether. You only need it upon the initial startup of a fresh install, or if you wipe out your database. You don't really need it at all, it just makes finding the ip addresses of the first few connections easier. After that, node discovery is done via the p2p network itself. I always use -noirc. You need to do it if you are using tor or I2P, otherwise the irc code will just leak out your ip address anyway.
Do you restart your client often? The debug.log is just a logfile that is recording events that your client considers notable, such as restarting. You can delete that without a hickup, and the client will just start another upon the next restart. blk0001.dat is the actual blockchain while blkindex.dat is the file that your client uses to quickly find a particular transaction within all those blocks. I would still recommend that you backup your wallet.dat file before deleting anything, though.
According to my process listing (I'm running this under Debian by the way) the client has been running 179 hours, about 7.5 days when I installed it. I just left it open and running on another desktop. I just closed it out and restarted it and it cleaned up about 800MB of data from the database directory. I opened up the debug.log and it appears to be a listing of all IRC traffic that the client generates. Perhaps the next client release can clean up this file as well when the client shuts down?
It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
Not really, because at this point the client will still verify all the blocks upon first start, regardless of where the blockchain came from. In the future, there are likely to be clients that come with a blockchain already in it and trust this included blockchain, but that would require trust in the client developers.
At least, this is what I see happening if there is wider acceptance and use of bitcoins.
It's sad that the 0.01 from the faucet is only enough to cover a single transaction fee. All that hard work (of typing into a box) for nothing!
Use the latest client version 0.3.23, it reduced the minimum transaction fee to 1/20th of the previous value.
If they do decide to include the database they better hope it compresses well. My data directory for bitcoin is at 1.8GB and growing. That's only with 131340 blocks AND an empty wallet that has not yet made any transactions. Who knows how big it will be in five years 
That's odd. Mine is a bit under 450 MB, and that includes some relatively large logfiles as well.
Here's what I have in the bitcoin directory:
debug.log 595 MB
blk0001.dat 262 MB
blkindex.dat 128 MB
10 other files for 28 MB
In the database directory under the bitcoin directory there are 89 files of 9.5 MB each for a total of 845 MB. Grand Total of all files: 1.858 GB
Do you restart your client often? The debug.log is just a logfile that is recording events that your client considers notable, such as restarting. You can delete that without a hickup, and the client will just start another upon the next restart. blk0001.dat is the actual blockchain while blkindex.dat is the file that your client uses to quickly find a particular transaction within all those blocks. I would still recommend that you backup your wallet.dat file before deleting anything, though.
If they do decide to include the database they better hope it compresses well. My data directory for bitcoin is at 1.8GB and growing. That's only with 131340 blocks AND an empty wallet that has not yet made any transactions. Who knows how big it will be in five years
That's odd. Mine is a bit under 450 MB, and that includes some relatively large logfiles as well.
Here's what I have in the bitcoin directory:
debug.log 595 MB
blk0001.dat 262 MB
blkindex.dat 128 MB
10 other files for 28 MB
In the database directory under the bitcoin directory there are 89 files of 9.5 MB each for a total of 845 MB. Grand Total of all files: 1.858 GB
It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
Not really, because at this point the client will still verify all the blocks upon first start, regardless of where the blockchain came from. In the future, there are likely to be clients that come with a blockchain already in it and trust this included blockchain, but that would require trust in the client developers.
If they do decide to include the database they better hope it compresses well. My data directory for bitcoin is at 1.8GB and growing. That's only with 131340 blocks AND an empty wallet that has not yet made any transactions. Who knows how big it will be in five years
That's odd. Mine is a bit under 450 MB, and that includes some relatively large logfiles as well.
It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
Not really, because at this point the client will still verify all the blocks upon first start, regardless of where the blockchain came from. In the future, there are likely to be clients that come with a blockchain already in it and trust this included blockchain, but that would require trust in the client developers.
It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
It's sad that the 0.01 from the faucet is only enough to cover a single transaction fee. All that hard work (of typing into a box) for nothing!
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
If they do decide to include the database they better hope it compresses well. My data directory for bitcoin is at 1.8GB and growing. That's only with 131340 blocks AND an empty wallet that has not yet made any transactions. Who knows how big it will be in five years
The other option involves pruning of the blockchain's spent transactions, which is already in the protocol, but not yet safely implimented into the client. That is why transactions are stored in a merkle hash tree instead of just a flat file with all the transactions hashed once. The merkle hash tree permits spent transactions to be deleted from the local blockchain without disrupting the verification of other transactions in the same block yet unspent. The only part of the blockchain that must continue to exist is the headers, which weigh in at 80 bytes exactly for each block. Roughly 4 megs per year.
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
If they do decide to include the database they better hope it compresses well. My data directory for bitcoin is at 1.8GB and growing. That's only with 131340 blocks AND an empty wallet that has not yet made any transactions. Who knows how big it will be in five years
It did take me 12 hours to download all the blocks though. Isn't this going to become a huge issue for new users a couple of years from now when it takes days to download all the blocks? What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?
There are other option available in the future. Including, but not limited to, simply including a recent copy of the blockchain in each new client release to be downloaded directly rather than over the p2p network and verified by each client upon first start. It's the verification process that takes most of the time, not the actual downloading.
What if BTC is still around 100 years from now? How long will it take then?
Just a few seconds because you will have insanely high downloadspeeds in 100 years
Jump to: