which can be as big as up to 4 bytes and can be as big as 2,147,483,647.
Can someone actually point out where this hard limit on the max block number is and why it would take a hard fork to actually fix it?
Block headers contain the "Time" field, which is a 4 byte (32 bit) integer and represents the Unix time at which the block is being hashed, within the limit of the median time of the 11 previous blocks and the network adjusted time plus 2 hours.
When that 32 bit number hits capacity - which is actually double what pooya87 has said at 4,294,967,295 (I'll discuss why in a second) - then it will be impossible to hash a block which fulfills the criteria for an acceptable timestamp I laid out just above. As a result, all blocks will be rejected as invalid. This is a limit on time and will be hit on February 7th 2106, rather than a limit on block numbers.
The reason that the 32 bit number is double what pooya87 stated is because the timestamp is an
unsigned integer ranging from 0 to 4,294,967,295, as opposed to a
signed integer ranging from -2,147,483,647 to 2,147,483,647. It is essentially the
Year 2038 problem, but offset by an additional 68 years. So instead of happening 68 years after 1970, bitcoin will be affected an additional 68 years later in 2106.