[erlang-questions] bitcoin blockchain

[Joe Armstrong]

Thanks Steve,

The code looks great - nicely written :-)

Next step - download the first 20 blocks and *completely* understand them.

BTW - I have a few really stupid questions:

I guess these have been answered before and elsewhere,
so I'm just like hints as to where to find the answers.

- How did Satoshi Nakamoto (SN) publish/spread the first bitcoins?
- Does a bitcoin user have to download the entire bitcoin chain to do anything?
- How much data does an owner of a bitcoin need to store locally
  (just their Private key and the hash of the bitcoin???)
- How did SN spend the first bitcoins (did he just give them away)
- How much is the residual value of SN's coins
- How does bitcoin scale into the future - can we make cutoff points
  and assume we don't need to go back to the genesis block - ie
  assume the genesis block is number 1,000,000 and not bother to go back
  further

Cheers

/Joe


On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 1:51 AM, Steve Davis
<steven.charles.davis@REDACTED> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
>
> You might find this repo helpful:
>
> https://github.com/solarbit/pool/tree/master/lib
>
> In particular, downloading and parsing old blocks in this:
>
> https://github.com/solarbit/pool/blob/master/lib/solarbit/src/sbt_btc_srv.erl
>
> I have more code related, so if there were something particular missing, let
> me know and I’d be happy to share.
>
> BR,
> /sd