How to uninstall Bitcoin Core and remove data

Question

I recently installed Bitcoin Core on my Ubuntu 16.04 system. It's taking up too much disk space. How do I completely uninstall the software and remove data to free up my hard drive space?

Answer 1

Remove bitcoin:

1. sudo apt-get remove bitcoind

Alternatively, you could just disable bitcoind from starting at startup:

1. sudo systemctl disable bitcoind

Remove extra files:

If you remove your .bitcoin directory, you are removing your wallets/addresses and access to any BTC in those wallets, as well as the blockchain history.

When you run bitcoind, it typically creates a .bitcoin directory in the home directory of the running user. Depending on your setup, this could be a user named bitcoin, or be your user.

1. rm -rf /path/to/.bitcoind/

If you're not sure where this path is, you could run the following commands to help find it:

1. sudo updatedb
2. sudo locate .bitcoind

More specifically, the blocks take up a lot of space and are found in .bitcoind/blocks/.

Answer 2

In my version of Ubuntu (18.1) the files are located in .bitcoin and not in .bitcoind so use these commands:

1. rm -rf /path/to/.bitcoin/
2. sudo locate .bitcoin