Quote from: Reset779 on March 12, 2018, 10:40:23 PM

Wow, with 0.22% every hour... I can see this as being a huge barrier to BTC adoption by normal people.

It's probably why people resort to using hardware wallets, like Trezor, or online web wallets.

But, I guess in the same token... if Bitcoin is to be used as a banking alternative, with utmost security... then it only makes sense that high tech specs are required by someone's computer in order to integrate the "banking system" with their computer. Minimum of 150 GB lol.

I guess that means in the future you'll have a computer that's solely for bitcoin purposes, which is more secure in the long run.

I agree with the others, it's not about the nodes, but rather your computer's specs. It's 150 GB that your hard drive has to validate via processors and such. Not going to be a lightning fast process... but once it's done, you'll finally have bitcoin core running and you can make cold wallets and everything.

I don't even have Core installed on my computer. For normal use I have electrum, and for cold storage I have hardware wallets to store my coins.

Most people will opt to use Electrum anyways, since the regular Joe who looks into BTC will want fast sync times and won't need all the features of Core. Electrum's secure enough for regular use if you use an encrypted wallet and don't go waltzing around pasting your private key or getting viruses on your computer. If you want to securely store your coins or seldom use your coins, a hardware wallet is best. For just secure storage, a paper wallet is a good and cheap option (treat paper wallets as one-use items).

Both Core and SPV both have their benefits and downsides, but if you use the right precautions an SPV wallet is just fine for use. Security-wise, a good implementation like Electrum makes an attack difficult.