> To be able to handle its size and keep its integrity, special entities have to keep it running for the layman to use. Nobody can carry terabytes of "blockchain" around all the time. (...) As a result you are now even more dependent on these entities than ever before.
And yet here I am verifying the entire Bitcoin blockchain on an old crappy Toshiba netbook with a normal Internet connection and an old hard-drive. I use this one weird trick and big entities hate me: I have my node configured to prune already verified blocks, it only needs about 20GB of disk to store the last few months.
By the way, if you want to archive it all, a 1TB HDD can store roughly 10 years of completely full 2MB blocks. You can get one of those for less than $40, or $4/year.
And yet here I am verifying the entire Bitcoin blockchain on an old crappy Toshiba netbook with a normal Internet connection and an old hard-drive. I use this one weird trick and big entities hate me: I have my node configured to prune already verified blocks, it only needs about 20GB of disk to store the last few months.
By the way, if you want to archive it all, a 1TB HDD can store roughly 10 years of completely full 2MB blocks. You can get one of those for less than $40, or $4/year.