Re: Can I just run a pruned node without downloading historical data?
If someone is selling HDDs with the blockchain pre-loaded, there is the risk to the buyer that the seller has put some kind of malware on the HDD designed to steal the buyer's private keys.
That's true, I agree! While I fully agree this poses some risk, I don't think many people will (or should) actually use the wallet in Bitcoin Core. The goal would mostly be to have a better node distribution. The ones that can run Electrum as well, might serve thousands of local Bitcoin users who all hold their private keys on their own devices.I suggested upthread that blocks contain a hash of the UTXO set. This could potentially be done via a softfork, for example by requiring coinbase transactions to have a OP_RETURN transaction with this hash. Nodes must already store the current UTXO set in order to check if a particular transaction is valid or not.
In my opinion, this is a more significant change than you might think. Lots of nodes might decide to use this method, leaving only a small number of nodes holding the entire blockchain. While with a perfect implementation of your above suggested idea, it might not be an issue if one day nobody has the whole blockchain anymore, I believe such a big change (and possible risk) can't be justified since HDDs are so, so cheap.I am not sure where you live, or how big your family is. My guess is that a big chunk of your data usage is from various streaming services. Streaming a video in 720p (HD) uses about 0.9 GB per hour, and streaming in 2k (higher quality HD) uses about 3 GB per hour. That works out to about 2.7 hours of 720p per day (assuming a family of four), or around 50 minutes of streaming per day at 2k. I don't think spending 2-3 hours/day watching Netflix is something I would want to be spending my time doing, but I also don't think it would be totally unreasonable.
I don't think there are a lot of people in third-world countries spending $14/month on Netflix though.
I don't like to share too much personal information; in fact I don't even know myself what constitutes how much data usage. I'm not a Netflix subscriber though. I would like to watch more movies but I never have the time. However, there are many more data hogs apart from Netflix binge-watching. Non-exhaustive, generic list: video calls / meetings (they were a thing before COVID I don't think there are a lot of people in third-world countries spending $14/month on Netflix though.
), software updates, cloud backups, working via VNC, simply large file downloads like ISOs, watching documentaries, high-bitrate audio streaming, downloading games (modern games can easily hit 100GB each), playing those games, cloud-connected security cameras - just to name a few. I don't know how much this list applies to developing countries or how much their average bandwidth usage is, though, to be honest.