[qntm]

Does everybody in the world who uses Bitcoins also keep a copy of the global transaction record? Isn't that going to become colossal very quickly?

[A554551N4710N]

yes, which is a major problem... hopefully one which they can release an update to rectify

[joe_the_user]

But first you'd have to figure-out how to solve the problem.

"Everyone" keeps a record to keep everyone else honest. If only some people kept records, they'd become the authorities and this would stand in the way of the system being decentralized.

[minikomi]

Is it not possible to periodically start fresh, from an agreed upon point?

[joe_the_user]

I am not sure how you would do it. As I understand it, the bitcoin distributed hash approach relies on transactions being "verifiable" to avoid the process of actively and complete verifying everything. But any "restart" would have to actually do this active verification. Still, perhaps someone who knows could describe how this could work.

Further, even a restart would involve everyone in the world having a record of how much money everyone else in the world had.

Anyway, the mind boggles thinking about how this could possibly work.