At the moment SSD's and RAM have become quite expensive with all the competition and interest in AI. Usually with a hot commodities market we see something like expanding production to capitalize on high prices. Then as more competition brings an over supply of goods, prices come down again.
With AI this could be different as competition between companies for as much RAM and compute as possible might create a floor continuing to price out everyday consumers.
Bringing this back to how it affects bitcoin, you currently need at least 8GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD. Do you think we see a node in 2030 costing say less than $200?
$200 is actually the price now in many places.
Unlikely. A 2TB SSD alone costs about 450 USD right now. While I think that hardware prices will eventually cool down, keep in mind that pricing things in USD inevitably causes prices to rise over time.
I think that running a Bitcoin node will cost more than $200 a year in 2030. It already costs more than that this year, unfortunately.
lol my raspberry pi 4 is still chugging along for just power costs
Hilarious, you make me laugh! What a day.
Well if you throw hardware away every other year, then yeah, he's right!
The hardware cost projection is only half the picture, the harder question is what the social cost looks like if running a node becomes a technically demanding or expensive act reserved for a smaller group. The 2030 node runner might look less like a curious hobbyist and more like someone with a very specific reason to care. That shift in who runs nodes matters as much as the dollar figure.