[bitcoin-dev] Forget dormant UTXOs without confiscating bitcoin

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 8:13 AM, Chris Priest <cp368202 at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> Lets say it's 2050 and I want to sweep a paper wallet I created in
> 2013. I can't just make the TX and send it to the network, I have to
> first contact an "archive node" to get the UTXO data in order to make
> the TX. How is this better than how the system works today?

You already are in that boat. If your paper wallet has only the
private key (as 100% of them do today). You'll have no idea what coins
have been assigned to it, or what their TXids are. You'll need to
contact a public index (which isn't a service existing nodes provide)
or synchronize the full blockchain history to find it. Both are also
sufficient for jl2012's (/Petertodd's STXO), they'd only be providing
you with somewhat more data.  If instead, you insist that you'd
already be running a full node and not have to wait for the sync, then
again you'd also be your own archive. In none of these cases do you
lose anything.