Kenshin and McIntosh break down the what, why, and how of running a Bitcoin node. They cover the benefits—privacy, self-validation, and network decentralization—and explore options for both technical and non-technical users.
News and Notes
https://atlas21.com/companies-acquire-nearly-100000-bitcoin-in-a-single-month/
https://atlas21.com/bitcoin-mining-reaches-52-4-sustainable-energy-use-cambridge-study/
https://atlas21.com/russia-considers-launching-a-national-stablecoin/
https://start9.com/
https://umbrel.com/
Stick around to the very end for the v4v track, “Jump Right In” by DJ Yo!
Bitcoin Price at Time of Recording
April 30th, 2025: 94,000 USD | 82,800 EUR
Block Height at Time of Recording
894,640
Episode Page
https://satoshis-plebs.com/episode-207
Music Credits
DJ Yo!
Jump Right In
Website
https://satoshis-plebs.com
Podcasting 2.0 Apps available at http://podcastapps.com and Value4Value information page available here: https://value4value.info
McIntosh can be reached by email at [email protected] and on Twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. His mastodon handle is @[email protected] and his Nostr. Kenshin can be reached on Twitter at @kenshin_ninja or on Nostr. Kenshin’s email is [email protected]. You can also follow the Satoshi’s Plebs podcast account on Nostr. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
We are looking forward to hearing from you!
[00:00:00]
McIntosh:
What is up, Pleb Nation? Today is May, and this is episode 207 of Satoshi's Plebs. I'm McIntosh.
[00:00:09] Kenshin:
I'm Ken Shin. And this episode is, should you run your own node?
[00:00:33] McIntosh:
Alright. Alright, Kenshin. Let's jump right in there. We got a lot to do today. I wanna keep this tight if possible. April 2025 as we record, the price of Bitcoin is 94,000 in US dollars and how many in euros?
[00:00:52] Kenshin:
Around €82,800.
[00:00:55] McIntosh:
And you know what that means? We were wrong. We were? We were. Did we not say we were gonna hit a hundred thousand?
[00:01:04] Kenshin:
Oh, by the April.
[00:01:06] McIntosh:
Oh, it's the April. Oh, gosh. We still got a couple of days. No. That's today. Yeah. That's today. Okay. Well, technically, we're we're not wrong yet, but it's not looking good. It's it's it's been it keeps pushing at this 94, 90 five thousand level, and it doesn't seem to wanna make through. But then it drops, and it pulls right back up. So, eventually, it will. I think we'll see. And as always, not financial advice. And what do we always say, Kenshin? You should be doing what?
[00:01:36] Kenshin:
DCA.
[00:01:37] McIntosh:
Thank you, sir. You're a good man. Dollar cost average. Dollar cost average. Alright. So, price last April 30 was 60,622. So we are up a nice little 55% since that time. Right.
[00:01:56] Kenshin:
And the Bitcoin market cap is 1,900,000,000,000.0 USD, which is the same as last week. The gold market, market cap is 23,000,000,000,000 USD, which is also the same as last week, which brings us to 8.1 percent from gold's market cap.
[00:02:15] McIntosh:
But, Kinshian, I thought Bitcoin was volatile. Yeah. We've been stayed the same.
[00:02:21] Kenshin:
Yeah. Everything is exactly the same as last week. Weird. Yeah. Alright.
[00:02:26] McIntosh:
So as we record, we've got a block height of eight nine four six four zero. It does look like we're gonna have a nice difficulty adjustment of minus of 5% or so. Right now, minus 5.48%, and that's happening on May. So, insert Star Wars jokes there, and we'll move on. And, of course, our last update was 1.42% up. So it's a welcome, drop, I think.
[00:02:57] Kenshin:
Yep. And the fees are around four sets per v byte right now, and there are 90 megabytes of unprocessed transactions in the mempool and around 14,000 transactions waiting in the queue.
[00:03:12] McIntosh:
So So we're a little backed up. I think there's some things going on there. I don't know. Maybe you and I wouldn't approve of. I don't know. Whatever. It is what it is. And maybe we'll talk about that a little bit with today's topic. I don't know. We'll see. So what's up with you?
[00:03:31] Kenshin:
Well, it's, it's May the first, and, thankfully, it's on Thursday, May. So I'm taking Friday off, which means I have a long weekend, a nice long weekend. Oh, coming up. Yeah. Coming up. Well, this podcast is out. It's Friday already. So Well, true.
[00:03:53] McIntosh:
So when you're listening to this podcast, Kenshin is going to be doing what?
[00:03:58] Kenshin:
Enjoying my free time at home.
[00:04:00] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:04:01] Kenshin:
Tinkering with my Python scripts, I think.
[00:04:05] McIntosh:
Oh, okay.
[00:04:07] Kenshin:
Well, as well, actually, now that it's spring now here, we have a lot of garden work. So that's another thing I've been doing and I will be doing this weekend, I think. So Yeah. Taking care of the grass and stuff like that.
[00:04:22] McIntosh:
Very cool. So you say it's spring. Does that mean you only have one more snowstorm?
[00:04:27] Kenshin:
Yeah. It could. It could happen. No. Not anymore. I don't think so.
[00:04:33] McIntosh:
You never know. Yeah.
[00:04:35] Kenshin:
You never know. Never know. Alright. We have removed the winter tires now, so that would be bad. How about you, McIntosh? Well,
[00:04:47] McIntosh:
maybe not as much fun as you've been having or going to have, but, I did get Prometheus and Grafana set up for our Satoshis Plebs servers.
[00:04:58] Kenshin:
I saw that. Yeah. Nice.
[00:05:00] McIntosh:
So for those of you who aren't familiar, it's basically a metrics and alerting package so that we can kind of see how our servers are doing if they need to be modified, upgraded, whatever, because maybe they're not performing as well as we would like, this kind of thing. And I did get that set up. It actually was not as bad as I thought. And so I already have a number of graphs set up for, like, CPU and memory usage and disk space, which, of course, that's important. We don't wanna run out of disk space on our lightning node. I plan on from here doing some more specific, graphs and whatever for, like, our Bitcoin node and our Lightning node so that we can see what the block height is. I'm hoping we can track our, maybe our what's like, our wallet balance for the lightning node. I wanna kinda know where things are there, that kind of thing. So looking forward to that. And then I did wanna kinda throw this out. I guess maybe it goes along with your springtime getting out in the garden, this kind of thing.
So it's a little warmer where I live. There's no chance of a snowstorm here. And so our grass has been growing. And for a long time, I've kind of put off getting a new lawnmower, kind of upgrading my lawnmower. We we had a riding lawnmower previously, but it, it had a lot of issues. It was actually really old, to be honest. And so, like, it seemed like the last year or so, basically, every other time I I used it, it would kinda break. And then I had to haul it off to the shop, and it would cost a lot of money.
[00:06:56] Kenshin:
I I don't like those. I have one as well and keeps the belt keeps slipping. Right. Things like actually, that was one of the things that would happen, ironically.
[00:07:05] McIntosh:
But yeah. So we sold that, and I picked up a new model. And McIntosh likes power and engines and stuff like that. I can't help it.
[00:07:18] Kenshin:
Are you like Jeremy Clarkson? Do you know him? Oh, yeah. No.
[00:07:23] McIntosh:
I so I'm not a Jeremy Clarkson fan. Now I what the the what is the other guy? There's three guys. It's, James May, Jeremy Clarkson, and who's the third guy? Hammond. So I gotta be honest. I'm a little more like Richard. Have you seen the episode where he drove the Dodge Challenger? Like, that would be me. In US If you've when they have this trip. Yeah. If you've not seen that episode, you should look it up. It's crazy. I do love power, superchargers, fun stuff like that. So, anyways, we bought this. It's called a zero turn mower. It's and it's it's got a decent size engine on it or whatever, but it is so much faster than our old mower. It's, like, mind boggling. It literally I mean, you get on it, and the first time you push the arms or whatever forward, it's like, woah. Wait. I was not expecting that.
So I'm getting used to that. I'd never used a zero turn before. Cool stuffs, though. We got all of our grass cut in the last less than a day, which is probably a record for us. And, you know, I even got one of my kids to mow the grass, which was, you know, always a bonus. So, free labor. You want me to mow the grass? I'm like, well, yeah. I guess so. I was kinda looking forward to it after work, but whatever. So good stuff. Mhmm. Nice. No. I prefer the robots now. So I don't have to do anything. Not a fan. I like to sit and not have to think and then let my brain go do other things. Right? This I get some of my some of my best, thinking is done while I drive down the interstate.
Seriously. Anyways, what's today's topic, Kenshin?
[00:09:16] Kenshin:
Oh, Bitcoin nodes.
[00:09:18] McIntosh:
Oh, well, let's talk about Bitcoin nodes. Let's not talk about Monero nodes or I don't know. Lightning. No. Not like No. Well, we whatever. Anyways,
[00:09:31] Kenshin:
just Bitcoin. Bitcoin nodes. Yeah. We thought to talk about it. It's, they're quite important. And, the more there are, the better for the ecosystem. So we think that's maybe a good opportunity to introduce them, maybe for people who are on the fence or they want to know
[00:09:51] McIntosh:
more. So So let's talk about know how many Bitcoin nodes there are? And I think we have to give a Yeah. Like a caveat with this. But Yeah. Exactly. The
[00:10:02] Kenshin:
the clear net, the ones that are visible in the network around twenty, twenty two thousand. Right. Mhmm. That's the number I've heard. Globally, I would say my nodes are on the Tor network, so they're not visible. So I'm pretty sure it's a big percentage actually there because,
[00:10:24] McIntosh:
I would be curious to know, and I don't know if there's any kind of estimate of that.
[00:10:29] Kenshin:
Nice stuff to do.
[00:10:31] McIntosh:
Before we jump into all this, though, let us actually explain the difference between Clearnet and the Tor network because I think maybe that confuses some people. Mhmm. With Clearnet, that's just simply over the regular Internet. And and, frankly, this is how I have my nodes set up. They connect to o other nodes using just the straight protocol. There's no obfuscation, no encryption. It's just there. Okay? Mhmm. With the Tor network, it essentially is a network that is designed for anonymity. It is designed so that if if I'm not mistaken, you really don't even know who you're connecting to, and it hides those nodes. And Tor is not only this is not the only thing that the Tor network is used for, but this is a good example.
So you're running your node on the Tor network, and it gives you a level of privacy that is simply not available on the clear net, on the regular network.
[00:11:43] Kenshin:
Mhmm. And we can say here that, this is nothing to be, let's say, afraid of or to set up or anything. This comes preinstalled and you just press a button. Sometimes it's preconfigured in some systems, so you don't even have to care about it. It it does depend on the set setup. But,
[00:12:05] McIntosh:
yeah, it's typically pretty simple.
[00:12:08] Kenshin:
Yeah. But before we get too deep, should we describe a bit what the Bitcoin node is and what it's doing in simple terms? Let's do that. Yeah. So a Bitcoin node is basically a computer, running the Bitcoin software which connects to the overall Bitcoin network.
[00:12:29] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:12:30] Kenshin:
So that's the simplest way of describing it. It's just a computer.
[00:12:34] McIntosh:
So you have a network of these Bitcoin nodes that when we say the Bitcoin main net, this is really what we're talking about. Right? Right. You can store the entire Bitcoin blockchain. Certainly. It's they call that like a full node. You can also truncate it for space. Right. The prune or prune nodes. Exactly. They call it that, a pruned node. I have run both. It depends on the what I need it for. Lightning, unfortunately, typically doesn't work well with pruned nodes. So for example, with our Lightning node, on that server, I have a copy of Bitcoin, core running, and it has a full set of data. And it's a lot of data. I think it's a full set.
Pretty sure it is. I'd have to check. But, yeah. So it's
[00:13:35] Kenshin:
do you know offhand how big it is these days around 800 terabyte gigabytes. Right? I I always think around 800, eight 50, but that's my node, which runs a few other stuff. Mhmm. So it might be a bit less, but, yeah, it's close to one terabyte today.
[00:13:52] McIntosh:
So we're looking at seven forty five on mine. So it's probably a little less than that because I do have some other things running as well. But, but this the road the the node that operates with our lightning node is 750 or so. So, yeah, somewhere right around there. It's getting to be a lot of data. It's a significant amount per month just to have your storage space for a full node.
[00:14:20] Kenshin:
Exactly. And I mean, when I make my nodes now, I am putting out two terabyte disks in them. Right. Two terabyte SSD disks. Right. Right. And those are over a hundred dollars each. Right. So it's it's a significant amount, you know, for you and I, maybe that's not too much, but considering that we want to bring
[00:14:43] McIntosh:
Bitcoin to the disenfranchised, to, you know, the people who don't have access to modern monetary systems and this kind of thing. A lot of times those people don't have the money to spend on something like that. So, it is an important discussion. And I think it's important that we continue to do what we can to minimize that growth of that data. So
[00:15:14] Kenshin:
Yeah. Right. Let's see. Then we have what else do those nodes do? So we said they store the whole blockchain
[00:15:24] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:15:26] Kenshin:
Which is seven fifty gigabytes. And the main part is that they verify the transactions. Right. So all the transactions that go through the network, they get shared between nodes and each node then verifies. Yeah. That's a valid transaction and then gets stored in, then it stores those blocks and those blocks. That's why the the storage goes up. Each block takes space and gets stored. So when you go and look at your node and look at the explorer of those blocks Mhmm. Then you see all the transactions from the start of the, Bitcoin blockchain until now. You can put any address and find all the transactions for that address.
Those are, let's say, the main, functions that the Bitcoin node does is to store the blockchain, verify the transactions, and then you can query all those transactions and and see the the values and, interactions. Okay. It's a ledger essentially. Right? Right.
[00:16:33] McIntosh:
Right. So when we say that Bitcoin has a ledger and it's transparent and all that kind of stuff, this is actually what we're talking about. The Bitcoin nodes contain the copies of this, and this is one of the reasons why this is I would argue this is the main reason why Bitcoin is so decentralized because any one of these full nodes, can run the network, essentially. I mean, you you need multiple copies, but let's say you had, well, here's an example. The power went out in Spain. I forgot to put that in the news, but I don't know. Did you hear about this? No.
What? Here I am, like, 2,000 miles away, and I heard about this. For it was for a significant period of time, like, the entire country. The entire country. Yeah. It was like, I I don't wanna get this wrong. If it was not the entire country, maybe it wasn't, but it was most of it. And it was around, I wanna say twenty four hours. Okay. Yes. So this is literally days after Spain had been touting how they were using, basically, the majority of their network was using renewable energy. Mhmm. Not a good look. Okay. But here's my point. Just because however many nodes went offline in Spain because of that, the network was still up. The network was still running. The network was still decentralized.
Mhmm. Have you ever see you see I'm sure you've seen a map of the Bitcoin nodes. Right? Like the globe. They're everywhere. They probably have one down in Antarctica.
[00:18:32] Kenshin:
Yeah. They have one in the International Space Station. They do, actually, which is insane.
[00:18:38] McIntosh:
Yeah. I can't believe that got through the, the review, but it did. And it it works. So there you go. So we could lose the entire world, and I that's a horrible thing to say. But, theoretically, we could take that copy on the International Space Station and go to Mars and start over.
[00:19:03] Kenshin:
Mhmm.
[00:19:03] McIntosh:
So that's true decentralization people.
[00:19:07] Kenshin:
Yeah. So And how why is that important, I would say, is because each node can verify the transactions independently. Yes. Then they keep they keep each other accountable in a way. So if you have a rogue node, they will be outnumbered. Right? Right. If someone injects a fake transaction or whatever Right. Try to broadcast that fake transaction, then you have 20,000 other nodes that say, no. That's not valid. So that's why it's important to be decentralized, and anyone can have a node. And we can literally, say, group together in that sense to to verify and validate the whole blockchain.
What else? Then we can, you mentioned a bit the mining Mhmm. Mining nodes and those full nodes that we're talking about here. Mhmm. I would say as a summary, it's that the mining nodes, you said they're different, and the mining nodes essentially create Glucks and get re get Bitcoin rewards for creating Glucks, packaging all the transaction and creating blocks.
[00:20:21] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:20:22] Kenshin:
And the Bitcoin knows that we're talking about here. They're just storing those blocks. Right. Those finished blocks from the miners. They're storing them and validating them. What we've seen is a specialization
[00:20:38] McIntosh:
of this. Right? The miners in a specialization in terms of hardware because the miners are using ASICs that are extremely, extremely fast. And so there's that going on, but also a specialization of the software. Right? It's running code that, as you were saying, would do its own, you know, build it build the block and see if that works and keep trying that, whatever. So, there's a lot of specialization going on there that's not in the typical it's not in our Bitcoin node setup.
[00:21:15] Kenshin:
Yeah. And for that reason, the mining nodes are very expensive. And the Bitcoin full nodes that we're talking about here, they can be very cheap. You can run them on any hardware for that reason and yeah. You just need space, basically, and some power.
[00:21:39] McIntosh:
A Raspberry Pi, which is certainly a very low powered computer, can run it if it has enough disk space. Yeah. It's really an issue of the disk space at this point versus almost any kind of CPU requirements. They're so minimal because essentially, it's just sitting there pulling polling the other nodes. Oh, there's a new block. Here it is. Add it to the chain. Oh, I'm gonna query it, so it's gonna run some calculations or whatever. But, yeah, it's it's very, very minimal in terms of the overhead on it other than the disk space. So
[00:22:17] Kenshin:
Yeah. And if we can say that each block is around two, three megabytes in size. Right. So in those notes query those blocks on average every ten minutes. So you basically download two to three megabytes every ten minutes. That's around 20 megabytes per hour. That's nothing compared to watching a YouTube video or whatever. Right? Right. It's not network intensive. It's Right. Not that hard. That's it.
[00:22:50] McIntosh:
Right before we got online, I looked at the Grafana tab for for network activity. And it was amazing how little and this is on the node that's running a full Bitcoin node. So it's sitting there gathering the data. It's so minimal. Like, it almost it does show up. But we're not talking about a large amount of network traffic at all. Yeah. So this is why it's if you have a reliable network connection that can be opened properly, you can very easily want run one of these at home. And in fact, even though I don't really have the best Internet connection here, I do that very thing on a small Linux server that I keep in the house. I run a Bitcoin node, and I run, what else do I run on there? I guess it's oh, no. It's electors. It's, basically an index tool, which we haven't really talked about here at all.
And maybe I don't know if we'll have time to add it, but it's kind of a it's a it's an indexing tool. It lets you look up things very quickly inside that Bitcoin node. Mhmm. So I run both of those, and then I use Sparrow wallet on my laptop to manage my Bitcoin. And it's transacting with that Bitcoin node running on my own network. So it's it's kind of the ultimate in security, especially if I ran it on TorNet, which I do not. But yeah. Mhmm. Right.
[00:24:29] Kenshin:
Well, now since we know what it is Mhmm. Why would someone want to run it for personal reasons? Because we talked about decentralization and that contributes to the Bitcoin ecosystem and that's important. But what are the personal benefit if we say that?
[00:24:48] McIntosh:
So I think you have the the first one listed here is the most important in my opinion, and that is simply enhanced privacy and security. So that's why I'm running the one on my internal network that I then use to connect my Sparrow wallet to. I don't trust anyone else. I don't connect to anyone else. There's no one else that has any idea that my Sparrow wallet is connecting to that Bitcoin node. And even though it's running over the clear net, it would still make it very difficult for any kind of activity to be tracked like that.
[00:25:28] Kenshin:
Yeah. And if I bring in an example here, practically what that means is that when you want to send Bitcoin Mhmm. You have your spare wallet as you said. Your spare wallet is connected to your node. In practical terms, that means that you create a transaction on Sparrow. Let's say you send me 1000000¢. Right?
[00:25:55] McIntosh:
Kenshin feeling rich today.
[00:25:58] Kenshin:
And you put you create a transaction on Sparrow. Sparrow sends that transaction to your node and then your node distributes it Right. To the rest of the network and says, here is a transaction I want to make Mhmm. Between those two wallets. So there is no intermediary there to facilitate that transaction and essentially also snoop into this Right. Transaction. So that's why you have, this enhanced privacy and security. And that's exactly what I do. That's that's the only way I send transactions. I'm even scared to look up my addresses on public, blockchain explorers in that sense.
And that's the and that's the other thing that connects here that having your own node you put your ad you search with your Bitcoin wallet address Mhmm. And your node tells you how much Bitcoin you have. If you do that, if you go to a website like mempool.space, you put your address there, you see the same amount. Right. Like, 99.999% of the time, it should be the same amount. Right. Better be a hundred. Yeah. You never know if they go rogue and so that that that's why there is that chance that they So are malicious. Somehow that hurt you if you go to mempool.space
[00:27:31] McIntosh:
and look that wallet address up?
[00:27:34] Kenshin:
Well, it hurts you that there is a log somewhere on that website, on that server who runs mempool.space, the owners of that site. There is a log that me with my IP address from my computer visited their website, and possibly also they can log also what I input. Yeah. Not possibly. Because when you query a Bitcoin address on their website, it creates a URL mempool.space/Right. And then your address, your Bitcoin address. So then they know exactly that me with my IP address, I visited that page. So they assume that wallet is mine and it's cataloged and stored somewhere, possibly.
And that could leak. Some bad actor could get at least find my address, you know, and that could be a privacy issue or security issue that they can come to my place potentially. So for those two reasons, broadcasting your own transactions and verifying what you have on your own node. For me, those are the two main personal reasons why I run and why people who are taking privacy and security seriously, why they should also run, a node, pruned node or full node for that matter.
[00:29:03] McIntosh:
Okay. Very good. There's always going to be a range with people. You know, when you when you first get involved with Bitcoin, what do you do? You go to Coinbase and you buy your Bitcoin. You go to strike, you go to whoever, Kraken, whatever place, and and you buy your Bitcoin. And at that point, you know, you've got your credentials tied to the Bitcoin that you bought and so on and so forth. I don't wanna scare people off by this, but I do wanna make sure that people understand the benefits of doing this. And we're gonna talk a little bit later kind of about, how hard this is to set up. It's not as hard as you think.
So if you're serious about Bitcoin, if you're involved in Bitcoin for the long term and this isn't something that you're just doing kind of on a lark, then this probably is something that you need to be thinking about at least. Is that fair, Kinshan?
[00:30:09] Kenshin:
Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:30:12] McIntosh:
Alright. So what's some other benefits?
[00:30:17] Kenshin:
I think we we
[00:30:18] McIntosh:
went through the main ones. Yeah. We did talk about the validation, your own validation. We did talk about the network decentralization. For me, after privacy, that's that is important. I am a Bitcoin. I I don't wanna say I'm a Bitcoin maxi. I guess I am. But what I'm trying to get at is I believe in Bitcoin as a concept as a concept. I'm trying to promote it as a global world currency slash asset reserve currency because the benefits that that brings, in my opinion, to the world makes sense. And running my own Bitcoin node is a way to help that happen. Alright.
So even though I'm spending money doing so, it's too important for me not to do that. Everybody's different. I'm not telling people you gotta run a Bitcoin node or you're no good. You are where you're at on your journey. But we're just trying to describe why you might wanna do this, if that makes sense. Yeah.
[00:31:37] Kenshin:
Let me ask you something. Would you would you consider not running a node for yourself at some point?
[00:31:48] McIntosh:
Can you imagine yourself not having your own node or a node that you really, really trust. Can I add can I turn that around a little bit? I know a lot of people who I would say will never run their own node.
[00:32:02] Kenshin:
Okay.
[00:32:03] McIntosh:
But that doesn't mean that I won't. These are the kind of things that I've done my entire career, literally, run servers like this. So it's not difficult for me to do this. Yes. There is some monetary loss, I guess, you could say for running your own node, but the benefits of that far outweigh it in my opinion. Yeah. I I don't see a a place until I'm just no longer involved where I I'm not running a node
[00:32:37] Kenshin:
Yeah. Personally. Yeah. I could imagine the only scenario not running a node would be if I had insignificant amount of Bitcoin.
[00:32:48] McIntosh:
But you have zero. Right?
[00:32:51] Kenshin:
Yeah. But I still have the one that I lost. Right? So I can still go and see the ones I lost. But but they're gone. That's a decent. But that maybe wait. That's a nice parenthesis. Maybe we should say that losing your Bitcoin doesn't mean it ever goes away from the blockchain. Well If you have the address, you can always go to your node or any other node. Where that's Yeah. Look at that address and see what it has, but you don't have the keys to move and use that Bitcoin. So it's like any other address in there. Almost
[00:33:29] McIntosh:
every person who comes into Bitcoin will not be running their node from day one. And I do think that technical people have a fair chance of running their own node. Nontechnical people, it's a little bit different. There are ways, and we need to talk about that. But there are ways that I have friends who they're nontechnical, but they could actually run their own Bitcoin node. And it would not be a problem. And we'll talk about that in just a minute. I don't recommend that you run it necessarily the way that I run it on Nix OS on a little what would you call those things? It's a tiny little computer.
One liter PC. Yes. I think that is yeah. So That's what we call them in Europe. One of those little things. Right? And there's no monitor hooked up to it. There's nothing. But there are other tools that give you the same functionality that are easier to work with. So Yeah. Okay.
[00:34:36] Kenshin:
Yeah. So that but why not? Let's talk about that. How hard is it to
[00:34:42] McIntosh:
to make your own node? It depends on how you do it.
[00:34:46] Kenshin:
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, there is the simplest way you mentioned it is a Raspberry Pi. Mhmm. You take an SD card. You load one of the specialized softwares.
[00:35:01] McIntosh:
Mhmm. Yeah? There's actually a simpler way. You can run Bitcoin Core, like, on your laptop. So you can run Windows, Macintosh, or yeah. Or Linux and Not you. Not not me. The Macintosh, the Apple. MacOS. And and you can run it They said it's a Mac. I whatever. I'm old, Kenshin. Leave me alone. Yeah. It's a Macintosh. Alright. Anyways, regardless, you know, you can actually do it that way. I don't really recommend that, but you can. And it's literally just running a file and maybe answering a few questions.
[00:35:42] Kenshin:
So And that's the original way? The Bitcoin Core software is open source. You can download it and run the executable, and it will ask you if you want to download the full blockchain or pruned part of it. Right. So, yes, you're right. You can run that on a Windows very fast and easily.
[00:36:01] McIntosh:
Now that being said, pick back up where you were. Move on. Sorry.
[00:36:06] Kenshin:
Right. Yeah. Then if you want a more, let's say, serve server like approach and reliable and then twenty four seven on Mhmm. Because you cannot have your own laptop maybe twenty four seven on. Then the cheapest way is a Raspberry Pi.
[00:36:25] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:36:26] Kenshin:
I would not recommend it. I've seen how slow they are to load the whole interface. Once they are up and running, they're can be reliable Right. And run for days or weeks or months. But to start them up and run something extra on them, I don't know. They they get very slow. If you want the lowest cost, that's the one with a Raspberry Pi. And now there is the five, which is the best alternative. So that's not so bad. But still, you need to connect a big external hard drive, especially an SSD on it, USB3 SSD, on it to be to have the proper performance, with a drive.
Okay. So so it's gonna cost a bit due to that. But otherwise, my preferred choice is having those little servers as you said. It's a prop a little box PC, a normal PC desktop. Mhmm. Components inside. You put a two terabyte disk on it if it doesn't have one and then you download start nine Umbro yeah so you have those specialized operating systems like Start nine, Umbro. There is myNode. There is Casa Node. There is a few. My favorite right now is Start nine. Okay. But I've seen a lot of people that their favorite is Umbro. So you can go to their website and, yeah,
[00:38:01] McIntosh:
see how they look. Yeah. I would steer you towards start nine versus Umbrel. I I'm just that's just my opinion.
[00:38:10] Kenshin:
Yeah. That's my opinion too.
[00:38:13] McIntosh:
Yeah. So that's probably the most beginner friendly, nontechnical
[00:38:19] Kenshin:
way to do it, and I I would agree with that. And what that involves, I can describe it really fast, is you take a USB stick, you load the just copy paste the ISO on it. So you download the ISO, and they have instructions how to put that, virtual, yeah, operating system on the USB stick. So you just do that in one step, then you connect that USB stick to that computer. You follow again the instructions that you start from the USB stick, and essentially then it guides you to install that operating system on the computer. And it's super simple. I mean, it's like two, three steps. It's not much. Right. You you essentially just select in which hard drive to install, and then it's only one usually.
And put the username and passwords, and I think that's it. It doesn't have much more to do. And then it turns on and you have an interface that is again very focused on that purpose. So that's why mine too, Start nine is the best alternative. It feels like a full operating system Mhmm. With a very easy way to put it on any desktop PC.
[00:39:40] McIntosh:
So I have another suggestion kind of go along with this. I you can run this, any of these really, on an old PC. And one of the things that's coming up, Windows, Microsoft Windows 10 is actually end of life in October. And what they're saying is because of the licensing rules or whatever, Windows 11 won't run on the hardware that Windows 10 would. And there's going to be a large quantity of laptops, you know, desktops, whatever, coming onto the market that can't run Windows. But they're perfectly capable of running start nine, or sorry. Yeah. Start nine. Start nine. Yeah. Or one of these other alternatives or just actually installing like Ubuntu on it, which is a Linux distribution, and then installing Bitcoin Core with that or
[00:40:43] Kenshin:
something along those lines. So Yeah. Or Umbrel. I think Umbrel needs a Linux system running already.
[00:40:52] McIntosh:
So that might be a cheap way to approach this
[00:40:57] Kenshin:
as well. A very good way and Maybe a little more technical,
[00:41:01] McIntosh:
but I would suggest that almost everyone listening to this podcast, I would think if they're not super technical, they probably know someone who can help them and would be willing to do so, especially if you paid them a few cents.
[00:41:18] Kenshin:
Mhmm.
[00:41:19] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:41:20] Kenshin:
Another advice for the start nine. If you do that with start nine and you start it up, my suggestions there is, like a marketplace or an app store on there.
[00:41:34] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:41:35] Kenshin:
And the three things that for me are are the core items to install is the Bitcoin core. Right. Then is the elector s. Right. And then is the mempool.
[00:41:51] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:41:54] Kenshin:
So those three are officially offered by Start9's marketplace. They are there on the interface. So you just select those three Bitcoin Core, ElectorS, Electors and Mempool, and then you're good to go. And basically, the only one you'll be using is the mempool to query yeah. Go and visualize and see your, transactions on the blockchain.
[00:42:23] McIntosh:
And then beyond that, of course, you can run a full blown server locally. You can run, VPS setup. And at that point, you're running, I guess, locally, you could run start nine. But if you're running it a VPS like what we do, you're running a bun to or some Linux distribution most likely, and then you're running like a Docker setup maybe or what they would call a daemon, which is the server like the Bitcoin node, Bitcoin d or whatever node, running the the actual running code, which you could basically use commands from the command line to stop and start and and these kind of things. A little more technical, a little more difficult to set up, but, it certainly gives you the most control.
[00:43:22] Kenshin:
Right. And once you have, a server like that running Mhmm. You can install other stuff. Right. So if you're satisfied with the Bitcoin nodes working properly and you're comfortable now with, let's say, Start9 in the marketplace, then they have a lot of other stuff you can install there like a Nextcloud, then you store your own files locally and you have your own clouds, You can install, like, they have, I think, Plex. No. Maybe not Plex, but they have Jellyfin. Jellyfin. So so you have your own Netflix kind of It's a media server. Media server. Yeah. Then you have some other more advanced stuff. You even have an AI, chat box.
[00:44:10] McIntosh:
I would caution depending on what you're doing on that server, you may not want to be putting a bunch of other things on it like that. If you're, say, running a lightning node and you have a decent amount of Satoshis on there, I probably wouldn't be running anything extra. That's just me. I'm paranoid. But yeah.
[00:44:36] Kenshin:
Yeah. I have installed a lot of things, and I have tried them. But just to try Mhmm. I agree. The only things running right now is the Bitcoin,
[00:44:48] McIntosh:
and the lightning stuff. It it just depends on the value that you place on on what you have on there. If you are storing Bitcoin on a wallet or something like that, then, you know, you need to be thinking about that. Right? Yeah. This is just kind of fundamental security one zero one for computers. Mhmm. But yeah. Alright.
[00:45:12] Kenshin:
Yeah. And just like that, I checked if I mined the block today through my own node. Still did. No. Zero zero zero zero zero zero.
[00:45:22] McIntosh:
When you mine a block, I'm gonna call that into existence. When you mine a block, you need to contact me. We need to get online, start recording, and then you need to say, I mine a block and post it on Nostra at the same time.
[00:45:40] Kenshin:
And then I say, I'm going to Costa Rica. Can can you do that for me? Yeah. Sure.
[00:45:48] McIntosh:
Alright. Very good. So what else do we have left to I mean, the I I did wanna actually mention one thing, which is not on our notes here. We keep saying Bitcoin Core, and that is certainly the most used version of the Bitcoin, node software. It is not the only version. There is another there's probably multiple ones. I'm sure there are. But there's another kind of competitor if you wanna call it that, but it's called Knott's, k n o t s.
[00:46:19] Kenshin:
That's the one I'm running, actually. Are you? Good. Yeah.
[00:46:22] McIntosh:
I we're not gonna delve into this, but periodically from time to time, there's there's discussions about the benefits of core versus not, and I'm kinda tired of it. I also like the idea of having multiple options in a Bitcoin ecosphere. And frankly, knots is not that it's not as popular as Bitcoin Core. Bitcoin Core is kind of the default. So it is much more common. So I think when I start setting up or the next time I set up nodes or maybe maybe if I upgrade, I'm not sure if how that would work, but I'll set up knots instead. I just wanna mention, first of all, there's two versions, at least. I think there's probably more.
And second, you know, running knots is not really gonna cause you there won't be compatibility issues. Okay? So, it's kind of a way to keep I hate to say it, and it's gonna sound terrible when I say it, but I'm gonna say it. It's a way to keep the developers in check. Is that is that fair? Yeah. Exactly. And there was some drama today. Yeah. We're not going into that. But, yes, it's it's Twitter, Internet drama, whatever, blah blah blah. I don't know. I don't I don't know. I don't I
[00:47:50] Kenshin:
yeah. No. But I what I can add there is that if, like me, you want to mine, local solo mine, mine your own Glocks and create your own Glocks with your whole miner, then you need to run notes.
[00:48:08] McIntosh:
Are you actually doing that?
[00:48:11] Kenshin:
Yeah. You were, weren't you? Or you are. You still are. I am. Yeah. Because I I need to run this Datum, server Right. Within the node. Everyone So that needs the notes.
[00:48:22] McIntosh:
Bow to Kenshin. Wow. That's pretty impressive.
[00:48:29] Kenshin:
Wow. Just just follow the instructions on ASEAN.xyz.
[00:48:35] McIntosh:
I did not catch that the first time we talked about this, that you were actually, like, building your own blocks.
[00:48:41] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. You can actually solo mine through a service online. Yes. Mhmm. That's true. So you don't need to do all this, but that's the most, private way to do it. Right.
[00:48:56] McIntosh:
Okeydokey.
[00:48:58] Kenshin:
Good. So let us know what you think about the subject. If you have more questions about running your own node, if you are already running your own nodes, what OS are you running? What type of device are you running? Mhmm.
[00:49:15] McIntosh:
Yeah. Yeah. You can boost that in and let us know. We'd love to hear from you. Surely, there's at least a couple of people out there running their own nodes that are listening to this. I would hope more, but we'll see. And they may not wanna, you know, it is what it is. It may not boost it or whatever. Mhmm. But we'd love to hear from you. And especially if you set up a note that because of this conversation, let us know. We'd love for you to tag us on social media on Noster on Twitter, x, whatever. And,
[00:49:50] Kenshin:
you know, let us know. That that would be helpful. To help also.
[00:49:55] McIntosh:
Yeah. Seriously. This is literally the kind of thing you could do remotely. Like, you do not have to live next to somebody to help them do that. As long as you've got a second computer to kind of work off of with Zoom or whatever, then I could absolutely help you walk through some something like that. We could talk about your needs, kind of your level, and figure out where where you kinda slot into that. Mhmm. Yep.
[00:50:30] Kenshin:
Alright. Good. Do we have any boosts
[00:50:35] McIntosh:
this week? We did. I checked the helipad, and we did. Send it, Mike. Send us a boost. Now I've got one bone to pick with you, send it, Mike, and it's not the one that you think. I think explicitly I said if you were gonna send hate mail, it had to be 200000¢. So I'm a little disappointed in that, but no. Seriously, I'll I'll I'll joking aside, Senate Mike boosted, 2,069 sats. So we do appreciate that. And his subject of the boost was hate mail colon. Macintosh can't stay on topic. That's the story of my life, my friend. And that's news to no one.
You are correct. Question of the week. I am personally not interested in EU politics. I'm not much interested in US politics. I would much more enjoy episodes like the Noster how to, but for non KYC Bitcoin or home heating or sauna with minors, or maybe an episode about the country of Bhutan. I would love to talk about Bhutan. I just don't think there's enough there to talk about it for an entire episode. So let's go back over this real quick. I appreciate the thoughts, and I'm I'm serious. I'm appreciate the the hate mail, if you wanna call it that.
You're right. And that's actually something Kenshin and I've talked about, and we're gonna work on that. I'm trying to stay on target a little bit better. We are always looking to improve this show, so thank you for that input. I appreciate that. I'm gonna be honest. The the macro politics stuff is something that we are going to continue to talk about. It is too important, in my opinion, not to. And we will we will kinda box it. We'll we'll make sure it doesn't take over the whole show for weeks on end, which I think we probably have let happen over the last few weeks, to be honest, Kenshin.
But, you know, we we need to talk about it some. Macro stuff, there's going to be some of that. We will do our best to constrain that. These other topics, yeah, I think we are gonna do more kind of DIY hands on kind of whatever topics like what we did today, frankly. Mhmm. Some things I mean, home heating, sauna with minors. That's just fascinating. Maybe get on somebody that could talk about that. I don't really know that I could do a whole episode talking about that. But there will always be topics like that that we can talk about. So we will dig into that as well as much as we can. There's always fascinating things like for years, they've run greenhouses with Bitcoin miner heat. I mean, that that's just it's just a thing. So alright.
I, again, appreciate it. Send it, Mike. You're a great Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Yeah.
[00:53:52] Kenshin:
So news. Mhmm. What do we have? There are some news here. There is, you want to bring something up first?
[00:54:05] McIntosh:
No. I this first one, the one that you got highlighted, I really think is probably the most important one. Let's talk about this for just a minute, and then we'll kinda speed through the rest of them. Yeah.
[00:54:16] Kenshin:
Go ahead and and jump on into that. Yeah. So the title is companies acquire nearly a hundred thousand Bitcoin in a single month. Mhmm. So, yeah, companies are stacking,
[00:54:31] McIntosh:
Sequins. Yes, exactly.
[00:54:34] Kenshin:
In their reserves and over a total overall. Now there is, 746,000 Bitcoin in corporate Bitcoin holdings. So that's 3 quarters of a million already there. Right. So I just did a quick calculation.
[00:54:54] McIntosh:
So Mhmm. If they acquired let's just round it up to a hundred a hundred thousand Bitcoin in the last month or so. That is an astounding figure. In fact, it is 7.4 times more Bitcoin than it's actually being mined. Now why is the price of Bitcoin not going up in the last month? I guess it has some, but I don't understand. But, eventually, assuming that this continues and there's no reason to believe that it won't, it will go up. It has to because there won't be any Bitcoin left. They these companies have to buy the Bitcoin from somebody. There's only 450 a day that you can buy from the miners.
So it has to come from somebody else. Yep.
[00:55:45] Kenshin:
And, you know, this time last year so now it's 750,000, let's say. This time last year was around 300,000. So that's more than double What's what's the 750,000?
[00:55:58] McIntosh:
I missed 750,000
[00:56:00] Kenshin:
is a total Bitcoin owned by corporations. Okay. Sorry. Yes. By private company. Or
[00:56:07] McIntosh:
Yeah. And Yeah. This trend is only going to expand and go higher and continue as more and more companies realize they need to stop saving cash, and they need to start saving Bitcoin because cash goes down in value over the long term. Not even the long term. The the the medium term at, you know, and Bitcoin goes up over that same time frame. So Yeah. Really cool stuff.
[00:56:38] Kenshin:
So yeah. And one more thing. You said, yeah, about how much was mined in the same period of time. Here it says exactly 13,600 Bitcoin was mined Mhmm. And 96,000 was acquired. So that's a staggering amount Mhmm. That was acquired versus mined. Yep. Sorry.
[00:57:03] McIntosh:
Crazy stuff. Bitcoin mining, reaches a 52.4% sustainability energy use, whatever you wanna call it. So meaning hydro, solar, wind, they probably include the, like, the flare gas mitigation in this, the methane mitigation, all of that. And this is girls. Yeah. This is a study that was done by Cambridge, Cambridge University. I I don't know. But they're they have done previous studies in the past along this topic, and it's a let me make sure. Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance. I bet it goes back to Cambridge University somehow. Yeah. It says Cambridge Judge Business School.
Anyways, it's a prestigious study, whatever. And you know what this does mean? Bitcoin has more renewable energy usage than any other industry. So when those people who don't understand, say Bitcoin is destroying the earth, you say, no. It's not. And here's why. And you can name off natural gas, flare mitigation, which is just spewing, you know, carbon dioxide or whatever into the atmosphere along with other things. Methane mitigation, like in landfills. There are so many benefits to what Bitcoin does in mining terms in these all of these little edge environments. It's just it's amazing.
And I just that argument holds no water as we would say. Right. So
[00:58:48] Kenshin:
Some, very interesting numbers here. Last time they did this research was in 2022.
[00:58:55] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:58:56] Kenshin:
And the the number was 37.6% was sustainable energy. So from thirty seven point six, we're up to 52.4% now. And back then, we had, natural gas at 25%. Now it's at 38.2% is, natural gas. Coal was 36.6%, and now it's only 8.9. So it dropped a lot. So that's why we have been saying, right, Bitcoin incentivizes the best type of energy uses Yeah. Because it's so competitive.
[00:59:37] McIntosh:
Recently, I've heard some discussion about nuclear power. The United States is is, loosening regulations, gonna start building more power plants, this kind of thing. If that continues and nuclear power becomes an even bigger part of this mix, I guarantee you that that number will be so close to a % that it will be, it well, it will be almost a %.
[01:00:06] Kenshin:
Right? Yeah. Because In this sorry. In this study, nuclear power is 42.6%.
[01:00:14] McIntosh:
Forty two? Where is that?
[01:00:17] Kenshin:
Second paragraph. I missed that.
[01:00:21] McIntosh:
Second Oh. Okay. I see that. Yeah. Oh, so No. No. It's 9.8%. 9.8. Yeah. Yeah. I no. You're good. It's 9.8% right now.
[01:00:38] Kenshin:
Alright. Good. Next.
[01:00:39] McIntosh:
Next. Definitely. Alright. You wanna do that one? We can skip that one. Let's skip that. I do wanna mention a couple of things really quick. Why don't you I I can do all three of these. They're really quick. I saw this tweet. Man, this is it's this is crazy. Fourteen years ago last Saturday. So when this comes out almost a week ago, Satoshi Nakamoto, quote, disappeared forever. So he posted on the forum saying, it's in good hands talking about Bitcoin, and I'm done. I'm moving on to other things, which I'm always curious what those other things were, but that's that's what he said. So we've been without a CEO for fourteen years, and you know what? We're doing better than all the rest of the crypto. Just saying.
The second thing, I know I know not political stuff, but in my opinion, the Republicans are losing their mojo. They've gotten bogged down in all this trade war stuff and the spending cuts that were promised essentially by Doge are not really materializing. I'm I'm all for cutting any kind of governmental anything, but they were talking a trillion dollars. They're not even a year. They're not even gonna be close to it. And now the house GOP is trying to increase their military spending by a hundred and $50,000,000,000. So all those savings that they've been making over the last few weeks are probably all gone in that $150,000,000,000 increase.
And Wow. I, you know, I don't know. Alright. And then the very last thing, Russia continues to make moves. I would not put much well, there's some basis to this story. Oh, well, yeah. It's the same thing. I'm sure. Maybe not. But I don't think Russia like, the country is building exchange, but they a crypto exchange. But they there's some involvement there. So it's in Russian. It's the translations, you know, whatever. So, again, nation states making moves ultimately into Bitcoin, ultimately into being able to work in that environment. Mhmm. And you've got something about them launching a national stable coin, which that would be interesting.
[01:03:23] Kenshin:
Not launching but considering because they they had some assets frozen again by USDT Mhmm. From Tether. So they realized that yeah. They cannot control the dollar. They get the losses frozen. They cannot control the Right. USDT. So then yeah. Of course, they get pushed and pushed more towards Bitcoin or some sort of stable coins Okay. Which is yeah. Could be good for Bitcoin. We've already got our question for the week.
[01:03:53] McIntosh:
We would love to hear from you if you're running a node, if you're thinking well, if you build a node because of this episode, that kind of thing. So that's our question for the week. We've got a few software updates. They actually all were around Nostra this week. Everything in general was pretty quiet. Let me bring this up real quick. I guess I'm the only one who has this list. Right? Yeah. I didn't look into software. So Primal, which is one of the the larger Nostr clients, for Android, we've got version 2.2 came out, including among other things, I thought a very nice feature to request deletes for your notes.
Now there's no guarantee in the Nostra network if you write a note and publish it that it will be deleted, but the idea would be that the the user who created the note is requesting that it be deleted. And I think most people will honor that. This isn't news, but I posted this because it's absolute truth. There are 2.1 Satoshis. Did you know that, Kenshin? Yes. I do I do not know what quadrillion is, but it's a really big number. It's 21,000,000 times 100,000,000 is what it is, but there's 2.1 Satoshis. Right now, there's at least 8,000,000,000 people in the world. Do you know how many Satoshis per person that is?
[01:05:24] Kenshin:
Around 200,000?
[01:05:26] McIntosh:
It's slightly more than that, but it's 262,500 for each person in the world. So a quarter of the million Satoshis would put you on average with every person in the world if it were all distributed equally. And then also if for podcasting two point o fans, there is a new version of Podcast Guru on the Android, that also runs on iOS. I did not see a report for that. I run this on iOS, but, you might wanna check that out. And then Korkle, which is the web browser kind of, Nostra client, put out a new version, but their website's down as far as I can tell. So I don't know what that's all about, but a new version of that. So and that oh, and o x chat v one dot four dot nine, which is a chat protocol came out, a week ago.
[01:06:29] Kenshin:
So Alright. Busy.
[01:06:32] McIntosh:
Developers have been very busy. Oster. Yes. Nothing literally nothing like Bitcoin only came out. I couldn't find anything. It's crazy. Yeah. But last few weeks, we had more.
[01:06:45] Kenshin:
But yeah.
[01:06:48] McIntosh:
Okay.
[01:06:49] Kenshin:
Good. Well, thank you for this week again. Oh, anytime. So let's wrap it up. So as always, we're podcasting two point o, podcasts. You can find us on your favorite, podcasting app including the new podcasting two point o, which you can find on podcastapps.com. Mhmm. A good one is Fountain. Another good one that I like is the Podcast Guru that you mentioned there. Mhmm. There's also Podverse that's open source and free. So find us there, and you can boost us directly there. Leave a comment there for us to read.
[01:07:39] McIntosh:
And you know what? You can be just like Mike, and you can boost in, and you can give us a hate boost. Just make sure you boost a large amount when you do that. Thanks. Yeah. We do take your comments seriously.
[01:07:55] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. So find us on Nostra as well. Leave us a comment there or follow us, and let's talk there. If you have some questions, then we can, yeah, discuss more on Nostr for sure. Now, Kenshin,
[01:08:12] McIntosh:
you know marketing is not my forte, but I completely dropped the ball again. We were supposed to announce what?
[01:08:23] Kenshin:
The live episodes. Yes. Episode 210.
[01:08:28] McIntosh:
Episode two ten. And we have set the topic for that episode, if I'm not mistaken.
[01:08:34] Kenshin:
Is that correct?
[01:08:36] McIntosh:
Have. And it's going to be drum roll, please. Is your Bitcoin actually safe?
[01:08:43] Kenshin:
So Wow. Another
[01:08:45] McIntosh:
practical episode. Exciting. And we will be doing that live on zap.stream. When we get closer to that, we'll let you know the details, how you can get on there, and that kind of thing. And I'm hoping some plebs show up in the chat.
[01:09:08] Kenshin:
Yeah. So get your nostril accounts ready. Get your Yeah. You can Exactly.
[01:09:13] McIntosh:
And the recording time for that, we record on Wednesdays at 01:30 central time in The United States. So Yeah. I'm just gonna
[01:09:26] Kenshin:
Or eight third 08:30 Central European
[01:09:30] McIntosh:
Time. Right. So that would be this was episode two zero seven. So 02/2008, '2 zero '9. I think that is May. Mhmm. Yep. So we are looking forward to that. We actually need to start doing some testing for that. But, yeah, really looking forward to to it. So so thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and we would love to hear from you. There, you can always reach us at the different ways that are listed on the bottom of each of our episode pages, which are on the website satoshis-plebs.com. Stay humble, friends. Go out and make it a great week. We will talk to you all soon.
[01:10:13] Kenshin:
See you around. Bye bye.
What is up, Pleb Nation? Today is May, and this is episode 207 of Satoshi's Plebs. I'm McIntosh.
[00:00:09] Kenshin:
I'm Ken Shin. And this episode is, should you run your own node?
[00:00:33] McIntosh:
Alright. Alright, Kenshin. Let's jump right in there. We got a lot to do today. I wanna keep this tight if possible. April 2025 as we record, the price of Bitcoin is 94,000 in US dollars and how many in euros?
[00:00:52] Kenshin:
Around €82,800.
[00:00:55] McIntosh:
And you know what that means? We were wrong. We were? We were. Did we not say we were gonna hit a hundred thousand?
[00:01:04] Kenshin:
Oh, by the April.
[00:01:06] McIntosh:
Oh, it's the April. Oh, gosh. We still got a couple of days. No. That's today. Yeah. That's today. Okay. Well, technically, we're we're not wrong yet, but it's not looking good. It's it's it's been it keeps pushing at this 94, 90 five thousand level, and it doesn't seem to wanna make through. But then it drops, and it pulls right back up. So, eventually, it will. I think we'll see. And as always, not financial advice. And what do we always say, Kenshin? You should be doing what?
[00:01:36] Kenshin:
DCA.
[00:01:37] McIntosh:
Thank you, sir. You're a good man. Dollar cost average. Dollar cost average. Alright. So, price last April 30 was 60,622. So we are up a nice little 55% since that time. Right.
[00:01:56] Kenshin:
And the Bitcoin market cap is 1,900,000,000,000.0 USD, which is the same as last week. The gold market, market cap is 23,000,000,000,000 USD, which is also the same as last week, which brings us to 8.1 percent from gold's market cap.
[00:02:15] McIntosh:
But, Kinshian, I thought Bitcoin was volatile. Yeah. We've been stayed the same.
[00:02:21] Kenshin:
Yeah. Everything is exactly the same as last week. Weird. Yeah. Alright.
[00:02:26] McIntosh:
So as we record, we've got a block height of eight nine four six four zero. It does look like we're gonna have a nice difficulty adjustment of minus of 5% or so. Right now, minus 5.48%, and that's happening on May. So, insert Star Wars jokes there, and we'll move on. And, of course, our last update was 1.42% up. So it's a welcome, drop, I think.
[00:02:57] Kenshin:
Yep. And the fees are around four sets per v byte right now, and there are 90 megabytes of unprocessed transactions in the mempool and around 14,000 transactions waiting in the queue.
[00:03:12] McIntosh:
So So we're a little backed up. I think there's some things going on there. I don't know. Maybe you and I wouldn't approve of. I don't know. Whatever. It is what it is. And maybe we'll talk about that a little bit with today's topic. I don't know. We'll see. So what's up with you?
[00:03:31] Kenshin:
Well, it's, it's May the first, and, thankfully, it's on Thursday, May. So I'm taking Friday off, which means I have a long weekend, a nice long weekend. Oh, coming up. Yeah. Coming up. Well, this podcast is out. It's Friday already. So Well, true.
[00:03:53] McIntosh:
So when you're listening to this podcast, Kenshin is going to be doing what?
[00:03:58] Kenshin:
Enjoying my free time at home.
[00:04:00] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:04:01] Kenshin:
Tinkering with my Python scripts, I think.
[00:04:05] McIntosh:
Oh, okay.
[00:04:07] Kenshin:
Well, as well, actually, now that it's spring now here, we have a lot of garden work. So that's another thing I've been doing and I will be doing this weekend, I think. So Yeah. Taking care of the grass and stuff like that.
[00:04:22] McIntosh:
Very cool. So you say it's spring. Does that mean you only have one more snowstorm?
[00:04:27] Kenshin:
Yeah. It could. It could happen. No. Not anymore. I don't think so.
[00:04:33] McIntosh:
You never know. Yeah.
[00:04:35] Kenshin:
You never know. Never know. Alright. We have removed the winter tires now, so that would be bad. How about you, McIntosh? Well,
[00:04:47] McIntosh:
maybe not as much fun as you've been having or going to have, but, I did get Prometheus and Grafana set up for our Satoshis Plebs servers.
[00:04:58] Kenshin:
I saw that. Yeah. Nice.
[00:05:00] McIntosh:
So for those of you who aren't familiar, it's basically a metrics and alerting package so that we can kind of see how our servers are doing if they need to be modified, upgraded, whatever, because maybe they're not performing as well as we would like, this kind of thing. And I did get that set up. It actually was not as bad as I thought. And so I already have a number of graphs set up for, like, CPU and memory usage and disk space, which, of course, that's important. We don't wanna run out of disk space on our lightning node. I plan on from here doing some more specific, graphs and whatever for, like, our Bitcoin node and our Lightning node so that we can see what the block height is. I'm hoping we can track our, maybe our what's like, our wallet balance for the lightning node. I wanna kinda know where things are there, that kind of thing. So looking forward to that. And then I did wanna kinda throw this out. I guess maybe it goes along with your springtime getting out in the garden, this kind of thing.
So it's a little warmer where I live. There's no chance of a snowstorm here. And so our grass has been growing. And for a long time, I've kind of put off getting a new lawnmower, kind of upgrading my lawnmower. We we had a riding lawnmower previously, but it, it had a lot of issues. It was actually really old, to be honest. And so, like, it seemed like the last year or so, basically, every other time I I used it, it would kinda break. And then I had to haul it off to the shop, and it would cost a lot of money.
[00:06:56] Kenshin:
I I don't like those. I have one as well and keeps the belt keeps slipping. Right. Things like actually, that was one of the things that would happen, ironically.
[00:07:05] McIntosh:
But yeah. So we sold that, and I picked up a new model. And McIntosh likes power and engines and stuff like that. I can't help it.
[00:07:18] Kenshin:
Are you like Jeremy Clarkson? Do you know him? Oh, yeah. No.
[00:07:23] McIntosh:
I so I'm not a Jeremy Clarkson fan. Now I what the the what is the other guy? There's three guys. It's, James May, Jeremy Clarkson, and who's the third guy? Hammond. So I gotta be honest. I'm a little more like Richard. Have you seen the episode where he drove the Dodge Challenger? Like, that would be me. In US If you've when they have this trip. Yeah. If you've not seen that episode, you should look it up. It's crazy. I do love power, superchargers, fun stuff like that. So, anyways, we bought this. It's called a zero turn mower. It's and it's it's got a decent size engine on it or whatever, but it is so much faster than our old mower. It's, like, mind boggling. It literally I mean, you get on it, and the first time you push the arms or whatever forward, it's like, woah. Wait. I was not expecting that.
So I'm getting used to that. I'd never used a zero turn before. Cool stuffs, though. We got all of our grass cut in the last less than a day, which is probably a record for us. And, you know, I even got one of my kids to mow the grass, which was, you know, always a bonus. So, free labor. You want me to mow the grass? I'm like, well, yeah. I guess so. I was kinda looking forward to it after work, but whatever. So good stuff. Mhmm. Nice. No. I prefer the robots now. So I don't have to do anything. Not a fan. I like to sit and not have to think and then let my brain go do other things. Right? This I get some of my some of my best, thinking is done while I drive down the interstate.
Seriously. Anyways, what's today's topic, Kenshin?
[00:09:16] Kenshin:
Oh, Bitcoin nodes.
[00:09:18] McIntosh:
Oh, well, let's talk about Bitcoin nodes. Let's not talk about Monero nodes or I don't know. Lightning. No. Not like No. Well, we whatever. Anyways,
[00:09:31] Kenshin:
just Bitcoin. Bitcoin nodes. Yeah. We thought to talk about it. It's, they're quite important. And, the more there are, the better for the ecosystem. So we think that's maybe a good opportunity to introduce them, maybe for people who are on the fence or they want to know
[00:09:51] McIntosh:
more. So So let's talk about know how many Bitcoin nodes there are? And I think we have to give a Yeah. Like a caveat with this. But Yeah. Exactly. The
[00:10:02] Kenshin:
the clear net, the ones that are visible in the network around twenty, twenty two thousand. Right. Mhmm. That's the number I've heard. Globally, I would say my nodes are on the Tor network, so they're not visible. So I'm pretty sure it's a big percentage actually there because,
[00:10:24] McIntosh:
I would be curious to know, and I don't know if there's any kind of estimate of that.
[00:10:29] Kenshin:
Nice stuff to do.
[00:10:31] McIntosh:
Before we jump into all this, though, let us actually explain the difference between Clearnet and the Tor network because I think maybe that confuses some people. Mhmm. With Clearnet, that's just simply over the regular Internet. And and, frankly, this is how I have my nodes set up. They connect to o other nodes using just the straight protocol. There's no obfuscation, no encryption. It's just there. Okay? Mhmm. With the Tor network, it essentially is a network that is designed for anonymity. It is designed so that if if I'm not mistaken, you really don't even know who you're connecting to, and it hides those nodes. And Tor is not only this is not the only thing that the Tor network is used for, but this is a good example.
So you're running your node on the Tor network, and it gives you a level of privacy that is simply not available on the clear net, on the regular network.
[00:11:43] Kenshin:
Mhmm. And we can say here that, this is nothing to be, let's say, afraid of or to set up or anything. This comes preinstalled and you just press a button. Sometimes it's preconfigured in some systems, so you don't even have to care about it. It it does depend on the set setup. But,
[00:12:05] McIntosh:
yeah, it's typically pretty simple.
[00:12:08] Kenshin:
Yeah. But before we get too deep, should we describe a bit what the Bitcoin node is and what it's doing in simple terms? Let's do that. Yeah. So a Bitcoin node is basically a computer, running the Bitcoin software which connects to the overall Bitcoin network.
[00:12:29] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:12:30] Kenshin:
So that's the simplest way of describing it. It's just a computer.
[00:12:34] McIntosh:
So you have a network of these Bitcoin nodes that when we say the Bitcoin main net, this is really what we're talking about. Right? Right. You can store the entire Bitcoin blockchain. Certainly. It's they call that like a full node. You can also truncate it for space. Right. The prune or prune nodes. Exactly. They call it that, a pruned node. I have run both. It depends on the what I need it for. Lightning, unfortunately, typically doesn't work well with pruned nodes. So for example, with our Lightning node, on that server, I have a copy of Bitcoin, core running, and it has a full set of data. And it's a lot of data. I think it's a full set.
Pretty sure it is. I'd have to check. But, yeah. So it's
[00:13:35] Kenshin:
do you know offhand how big it is these days around 800 terabyte gigabytes. Right? I I always think around 800, eight 50, but that's my node, which runs a few other stuff. Mhmm. So it might be a bit less, but, yeah, it's close to one terabyte today.
[00:13:52] McIntosh:
So we're looking at seven forty five on mine. So it's probably a little less than that because I do have some other things running as well. But, but this the road the the node that operates with our lightning node is 750 or so. So, yeah, somewhere right around there. It's getting to be a lot of data. It's a significant amount per month just to have your storage space for a full node.
[00:14:20] Kenshin:
Exactly. And I mean, when I make my nodes now, I am putting out two terabyte disks in them. Right. Two terabyte SSD disks. Right. Right. And those are over a hundred dollars each. Right. So it's it's a significant amount, you know, for you and I, maybe that's not too much, but considering that we want to bring
[00:14:43] McIntosh:
Bitcoin to the disenfranchised, to, you know, the people who don't have access to modern monetary systems and this kind of thing. A lot of times those people don't have the money to spend on something like that. So, it is an important discussion. And I think it's important that we continue to do what we can to minimize that growth of that data. So
[00:15:14] Kenshin:
Yeah. Right. Let's see. Then we have what else do those nodes do? So we said they store the whole blockchain
[00:15:24] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:15:26] Kenshin:
Which is seven fifty gigabytes. And the main part is that they verify the transactions. Right. So all the transactions that go through the network, they get shared between nodes and each node then verifies. Yeah. That's a valid transaction and then gets stored in, then it stores those blocks and those blocks. That's why the the storage goes up. Each block takes space and gets stored. So when you go and look at your node and look at the explorer of those blocks Mhmm. Then you see all the transactions from the start of the, Bitcoin blockchain until now. You can put any address and find all the transactions for that address.
Those are, let's say, the main, functions that the Bitcoin node does is to store the blockchain, verify the transactions, and then you can query all those transactions and and see the the values and, interactions. Okay. It's a ledger essentially. Right? Right.
[00:16:33] McIntosh:
Right. So when we say that Bitcoin has a ledger and it's transparent and all that kind of stuff, this is actually what we're talking about. The Bitcoin nodes contain the copies of this, and this is one of the reasons why this is I would argue this is the main reason why Bitcoin is so decentralized because any one of these full nodes, can run the network, essentially. I mean, you you need multiple copies, but let's say you had, well, here's an example. The power went out in Spain. I forgot to put that in the news, but I don't know. Did you hear about this? No.
What? Here I am, like, 2,000 miles away, and I heard about this. For it was for a significant period of time, like, the entire country. The entire country. Yeah. It was like, I I don't wanna get this wrong. If it was not the entire country, maybe it wasn't, but it was most of it. And it was around, I wanna say twenty four hours. Okay. Yes. So this is literally days after Spain had been touting how they were using, basically, the majority of their network was using renewable energy. Mhmm. Not a good look. Okay. But here's my point. Just because however many nodes went offline in Spain because of that, the network was still up. The network was still running. The network was still decentralized.
Mhmm. Have you ever see you see I'm sure you've seen a map of the Bitcoin nodes. Right? Like the globe. They're everywhere. They probably have one down in Antarctica.
[00:18:32] Kenshin:
Yeah. They have one in the International Space Station. They do, actually, which is insane.
[00:18:38] McIntosh:
Yeah. I can't believe that got through the, the review, but it did. And it it works. So there you go. So we could lose the entire world, and I that's a horrible thing to say. But, theoretically, we could take that copy on the International Space Station and go to Mars and start over.
[00:19:03] Kenshin:
Mhmm.
[00:19:03] McIntosh:
So that's true decentralization people.
[00:19:07] Kenshin:
Yeah. So And how why is that important, I would say, is because each node can verify the transactions independently. Yes. Then they keep they keep each other accountable in a way. So if you have a rogue node, they will be outnumbered. Right? Right. If someone injects a fake transaction or whatever Right. Try to broadcast that fake transaction, then you have 20,000 other nodes that say, no. That's not valid. So that's why it's important to be decentralized, and anyone can have a node. And we can literally, say, group together in that sense to to verify and validate the whole blockchain.
What else? Then we can, you mentioned a bit the mining Mhmm. Mining nodes and those full nodes that we're talking about here. Mhmm. I would say as a summary, it's that the mining nodes, you said they're different, and the mining nodes essentially create Glucks and get re get Bitcoin rewards for creating Glucks, packaging all the transaction and creating blocks.
[00:20:21] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:20:22] Kenshin:
And the Bitcoin knows that we're talking about here. They're just storing those blocks. Right. Those finished blocks from the miners. They're storing them and validating them. What we've seen is a specialization
[00:20:38] McIntosh:
of this. Right? The miners in a specialization in terms of hardware because the miners are using ASICs that are extremely, extremely fast. And so there's that going on, but also a specialization of the software. Right? It's running code that, as you were saying, would do its own, you know, build it build the block and see if that works and keep trying that, whatever. So, there's a lot of specialization going on there that's not in the typical it's not in our Bitcoin node setup.
[00:21:15] Kenshin:
Yeah. And for that reason, the mining nodes are very expensive. And the Bitcoin full nodes that we're talking about here, they can be very cheap. You can run them on any hardware for that reason and yeah. You just need space, basically, and some power.
[00:21:39] McIntosh:
A Raspberry Pi, which is certainly a very low powered computer, can run it if it has enough disk space. Yeah. It's really an issue of the disk space at this point versus almost any kind of CPU requirements. They're so minimal because essentially, it's just sitting there pulling polling the other nodes. Oh, there's a new block. Here it is. Add it to the chain. Oh, I'm gonna query it, so it's gonna run some calculations or whatever. But, yeah, it's it's very, very minimal in terms of the overhead on it other than the disk space. So
[00:22:17] Kenshin:
Yeah. And if we can say that each block is around two, three megabytes in size. Right. So in those notes query those blocks on average every ten minutes. So you basically download two to three megabytes every ten minutes. That's around 20 megabytes per hour. That's nothing compared to watching a YouTube video or whatever. Right? Right. It's not network intensive. It's Right. Not that hard. That's it.
[00:22:50] McIntosh:
Right before we got online, I looked at the Grafana tab for for network activity. And it was amazing how little and this is on the node that's running a full Bitcoin node. So it's sitting there gathering the data. It's so minimal. Like, it almost it does show up. But we're not talking about a large amount of network traffic at all. Yeah. So this is why it's if you have a reliable network connection that can be opened properly, you can very easily want run one of these at home. And in fact, even though I don't really have the best Internet connection here, I do that very thing on a small Linux server that I keep in the house. I run a Bitcoin node, and I run, what else do I run on there? I guess it's oh, no. It's electors. It's, basically an index tool, which we haven't really talked about here at all.
And maybe I don't know if we'll have time to add it, but it's kind of a it's a it's an indexing tool. It lets you look up things very quickly inside that Bitcoin node. Mhmm. So I run both of those, and then I use Sparrow wallet on my laptop to manage my Bitcoin. And it's transacting with that Bitcoin node running on my own network. So it's it's kind of the ultimate in security, especially if I ran it on TorNet, which I do not. But yeah. Mhmm. Right.
[00:24:29] Kenshin:
Well, now since we know what it is Mhmm. Why would someone want to run it for personal reasons? Because we talked about decentralization and that contributes to the Bitcoin ecosystem and that's important. But what are the personal benefit if we say that?
[00:24:48] McIntosh:
So I think you have the the first one listed here is the most important in my opinion, and that is simply enhanced privacy and security. So that's why I'm running the one on my internal network that I then use to connect my Sparrow wallet to. I don't trust anyone else. I don't connect to anyone else. There's no one else that has any idea that my Sparrow wallet is connecting to that Bitcoin node. And even though it's running over the clear net, it would still make it very difficult for any kind of activity to be tracked like that.
[00:25:28] Kenshin:
Yeah. And if I bring in an example here, practically what that means is that when you want to send Bitcoin Mhmm. You have your spare wallet as you said. Your spare wallet is connected to your node. In practical terms, that means that you create a transaction on Sparrow. Let's say you send me 1000000¢. Right?
[00:25:55] McIntosh:
Kenshin feeling rich today.
[00:25:58] Kenshin:
And you put you create a transaction on Sparrow. Sparrow sends that transaction to your node and then your node distributes it Right. To the rest of the network and says, here is a transaction I want to make Mhmm. Between those two wallets. So there is no intermediary there to facilitate that transaction and essentially also snoop into this Right. Transaction. So that's why you have, this enhanced privacy and security. And that's exactly what I do. That's that's the only way I send transactions. I'm even scared to look up my addresses on public, blockchain explorers in that sense.
And that's the and that's the other thing that connects here that having your own node you put your ad you search with your Bitcoin wallet address Mhmm. And your node tells you how much Bitcoin you have. If you do that, if you go to a website like mempool.space, you put your address there, you see the same amount. Right. Like, 99.999% of the time, it should be the same amount. Right. Better be a hundred. Yeah. You never know if they go rogue and so that that that's why there is that chance that they So are malicious. Somehow that hurt you if you go to mempool.space
[00:27:31] McIntosh:
and look that wallet address up?
[00:27:34] Kenshin:
Well, it hurts you that there is a log somewhere on that website, on that server who runs mempool.space, the owners of that site. There is a log that me with my IP address from my computer visited their website, and possibly also they can log also what I input. Yeah. Not possibly. Because when you query a Bitcoin address on their website, it creates a URL mempool.space/Right. And then your address, your Bitcoin address. So then they know exactly that me with my IP address, I visited that page. So they assume that wallet is mine and it's cataloged and stored somewhere, possibly.
And that could leak. Some bad actor could get at least find my address, you know, and that could be a privacy issue or security issue that they can come to my place potentially. So for those two reasons, broadcasting your own transactions and verifying what you have on your own node. For me, those are the two main personal reasons why I run and why people who are taking privacy and security seriously, why they should also run, a node, pruned node or full node for that matter.
[00:29:03] McIntosh:
Okay. Very good. There's always going to be a range with people. You know, when you when you first get involved with Bitcoin, what do you do? You go to Coinbase and you buy your Bitcoin. You go to strike, you go to whoever, Kraken, whatever place, and and you buy your Bitcoin. And at that point, you know, you've got your credentials tied to the Bitcoin that you bought and so on and so forth. I don't wanna scare people off by this, but I do wanna make sure that people understand the benefits of doing this. And we're gonna talk a little bit later kind of about, how hard this is to set up. It's not as hard as you think.
So if you're serious about Bitcoin, if you're involved in Bitcoin for the long term and this isn't something that you're just doing kind of on a lark, then this probably is something that you need to be thinking about at least. Is that fair, Kinshan?
[00:30:09] Kenshin:
Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:30:12] McIntosh:
Alright. So what's some other benefits?
[00:30:17] Kenshin:
I think we we
[00:30:18] McIntosh:
went through the main ones. Yeah. We did talk about the validation, your own validation. We did talk about the network decentralization. For me, after privacy, that's that is important. I am a Bitcoin. I I don't wanna say I'm a Bitcoin maxi. I guess I am. But what I'm trying to get at is I believe in Bitcoin as a concept as a concept. I'm trying to promote it as a global world currency slash asset reserve currency because the benefits that that brings, in my opinion, to the world makes sense. And running my own Bitcoin node is a way to help that happen. Alright.
So even though I'm spending money doing so, it's too important for me not to do that. Everybody's different. I'm not telling people you gotta run a Bitcoin node or you're no good. You are where you're at on your journey. But we're just trying to describe why you might wanna do this, if that makes sense. Yeah.
[00:31:37] Kenshin:
Let me ask you something. Would you would you consider not running a node for yourself at some point?
[00:31:48] McIntosh:
Can you imagine yourself not having your own node or a node that you really, really trust. Can I add can I turn that around a little bit? I know a lot of people who I would say will never run their own node.
[00:32:02] Kenshin:
Okay.
[00:32:03] McIntosh:
But that doesn't mean that I won't. These are the kind of things that I've done my entire career, literally, run servers like this. So it's not difficult for me to do this. Yes. There is some monetary loss, I guess, you could say for running your own node, but the benefits of that far outweigh it in my opinion. Yeah. I I don't see a a place until I'm just no longer involved where I I'm not running a node
[00:32:37] Kenshin:
Yeah. Personally. Yeah. I could imagine the only scenario not running a node would be if I had insignificant amount of Bitcoin.
[00:32:48] McIntosh:
But you have zero. Right?
[00:32:51] Kenshin:
Yeah. But I still have the one that I lost. Right? So I can still go and see the ones I lost. But but they're gone. That's a decent. But that maybe wait. That's a nice parenthesis. Maybe we should say that losing your Bitcoin doesn't mean it ever goes away from the blockchain. Well If you have the address, you can always go to your node or any other node. Where that's Yeah. Look at that address and see what it has, but you don't have the keys to move and use that Bitcoin. So it's like any other address in there. Almost
[00:33:29] McIntosh:
every person who comes into Bitcoin will not be running their node from day one. And I do think that technical people have a fair chance of running their own node. Nontechnical people, it's a little bit different. There are ways, and we need to talk about that. But there are ways that I have friends who they're nontechnical, but they could actually run their own Bitcoin node. And it would not be a problem. And we'll talk about that in just a minute. I don't recommend that you run it necessarily the way that I run it on Nix OS on a little what would you call those things? It's a tiny little computer.
One liter PC. Yes. I think that is yeah. So That's what we call them in Europe. One of those little things. Right? And there's no monitor hooked up to it. There's nothing. But there are other tools that give you the same functionality that are easier to work with. So Yeah. Okay.
[00:34:36] Kenshin:
Yeah. So that but why not? Let's talk about that. How hard is it to
[00:34:42] McIntosh:
to make your own node? It depends on how you do it.
[00:34:46] Kenshin:
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, there is the simplest way you mentioned it is a Raspberry Pi. Mhmm. You take an SD card. You load one of the specialized softwares.
[00:35:01] McIntosh:
Mhmm. Yeah? There's actually a simpler way. You can run Bitcoin Core, like, on your laptop. So you can run Windows, Macintosh, or yeah. Or Linux and Not you. Not not me. The Macintosh, the Apple. MacOS. And and you can run it They said it's a Mac. I whatever. I'm old, Kenshin. Leave me alone. Yeah. It's a Macintosh. Alright. Anyways, regardless, you know, you can actually do it that way. I don't really recommend that, but you can. And it's literally just running a file and maybe answering a few questions.
[00:35:42] Kenshin:
So And that's the original way? The Bitcoin Core software is open source. You can download it and run the executable, and it will ask you if you want to download the full blockchain or pruned part of it. Right. So, yes, you're right. You can run that on a Windows very fast and easily.
[00:36:01] McIntosh:
Now that being said, pick back up where you were. Move on. Sorry.
[00:36:06] Kenshin:
Right. Yeah. Then if you want a more, let's say, serve server like approach and reliable and then twenty four seven on Mhmm. Because you cannot have your own laptop maybe twenty four seven on. Then the cheapest way is a Raspberry Pi.
[00:36:25] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:36:26] Kenshin:
I would not recommend it. I've seen how slow they are to load the whole interface. Once they are up and running, they're can be reliable Right. And run for days or weeks or months. But to start them up and run something extra on them, I don't know. They they get very slow. If you want the lowest cost, that's the one with a Raspberry Pi. And now there is the five, which is the best alternative. So that's not so bad. But still, you need to connect a big external hard drive, especially an SSD on it, USB3 SSD, on it to be to have the proper performance, with a drive.
Okay. So so it's gonna cost a bit due to that. But otherwise, my preferred choice is having those little servers as you said. It's a prop a little box PC, a normal PC desktop. Mhmm. Components inside. You put a two terabyte disk on it if it doesn't have one and then you download start nine Umbro yeah so you have those specialized operating systems like Start nine, Umbro. There is myNode. There is Casa Node. There is a few. My favorite right now is Start nine. Okay. But I've seen a lot of people that their favorite is Umbro. So you can go to their website and, yeah,
[00:38:01] McIntosh:
see how they look. Yeah. I would steer you towards start nine versus Umbrel. I I'm just that's just my opinion.
[00:38:10] Kenshin:
Yeah. That's my opinion too.
[00:38:13] McIntosh:
Yeah. So that's probably the most beginner friendly, nontechnical
[00:38:19] Kenshin:
way to do it, and I I would agree with that. And what that involves, I can describe it really fast, is you take a USB stick, you load the just copy paste the ISO on it. So you download the ISO, and they have instructions how to put that, virtual, yeah, operating system on the USB stick. So you just do that in one step, then you connect that USB stick to that computer. You follow again the instructions that you start from the USB stick, and essentially then it guides you to install that operating system on the computer. And it's super simple. I mean, it's like two, three steps. It's not much. Right. You you essentially just select in which hard drive to install, and then it's only one usually.
And put the username and passwords, and I think that's it. It doesn't have much more to do. And then it turns on and you have an interface that is again very focused on that purpose. So that's why mine too, Start nine is the best alternative. It feels like a full operating system Mhmm. With a very easy way to put it on any desktop PC.
[00:39:40] McIntosh:
So I have another suggestion kind of go along with this. I you can run this, any of these really, on an old PC. And one of the things that's coming up, Windows, Microsoft Windows 10 is actually end of life in October. And what they're saying is because of the licensing rules or whatever, Windows 11 won't run on the hardware that Windows 10 would. And there's going to be a large quantity of laptops, you know, desktops, whatever, coming onto the market that can't run Windows. But they're perfectly capable of running start nine, or sorry. Yeah. Start nine. Start nine. Yeah. Or one of these other alternatives or just actually installing like Ubuntu on it, which is a Linux distribution, and then installing Bitcoin Core with that or
[00:40:43] Kenshin:
something along those lines. So Yeah. Or Umbrel. I think Umbrel needs a Linux system running already.
[00:40:52] McIntosh:
So that might be a cheap way to approach this
[00:40:57] Kenshin:
as well. A very good way and Maybe a little more technical,
[00:41:01] McIntosh:
but I would suggest that almost everyone listening to this podcast, I would think if they're not super technical, they probably know someone who can help them and would be willing to do so, especially if you paid them a few cents.
[00:41:18] Kenshin:
Mhmm.
[00:41:19] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:41:20] Kenshin:
Another advice for the start nine. If you do that with start nine and you start it up, my suggestions there is, like a marketplace or an app store on there.
[00:41:34] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:41:35] Kenshin:
And the three things that for me are are the core items to install is the Bitcoin core. Right. Then is the elector s. Right. And then is the mempool.
[00:41:51] McIntosh:
Okay.
[00:41:54] Kenshin:
So those three are officially offered by Start9's marketplace. They are there on the interface. So you just select those three Bitcoin Core, ElectorS, Electors and Mempool, and then you're good to go. And basically, the only one you'll be using is the mempool to query yeah. Go and visualize and see your, transactions on the blockchain.
[00:42:23] McIntosh:
And then beyond that, of course, you can run a full blown server locally. You can run, VPS setup. And at that point, you're running, I guess, locally, you could run start nine. But if you're running it a VPS like what we do, you're running a bun to or some Linux distribution most likely, and then you're running like a Docker setup maybe or what they would call a daemon, which is the server like the Bitcoin node, Bitcoin d or whatever node, running the the actual running code, which you could basically use commands from the command line to stop and start and and these kind of things. A little more technical, a little more difficult to set up, but, it certainly gives you the most control.
[00:43:22] Kenshin:
Right. And once you have, a server like that running Mhmm. You can install other stuff. Right. So if you're satisfied with the Bitcoin nodes working properly and you're comfortable now with, let's say, Start9 in the marketplace, then they have a lot of other stuff you can install there like a Nextcloud, then you store your own files locally and you have your own clouds, You can install, like, they have, I think, Plex. No. Maybe not Plex, but they have Jellyfin. Jellyfin. So so you have your own Netflix kind of It's a media server. Media server. Yeah. Then you have some other more advanced stuff. You even have an AI, chat box.
[00:44:10] McIntosh:
I would caution depending on what you're doing on that server, you may not want to be putting a bunch of other things on it like that. If you're, say, running a lightning node and you have a decent amount of Satoshis on there, I probably wouldn't be running anything extra. That's just me. I'm paranoid. But yeah.
[00:44:36] Kenshin:
Yeah. I have installed a lot of things, and I have tried them. But just to try Mhmm. I agree. The only things running right now is the Bitcoin,
[00:44:48] McIntosh:
and the lightning stuff. It it just depends on the value that you place on on what you have on there. If you are storing Bitcoin on a wallet or something like that, then, you know, you need to be thinking about that. Right? Yeah. This is just kind of fundamental security one zero one for computers. Mhmm. But yeah. Alright.
[00:45:12] Kenshin:
Yeah. And just like that, I checked if I mined the block today through my own node. Still did. No. Zero zero zero zero zero zero.
[00:45:22] McIntosh:
When you mine a block, I'm gonna call that into existence. When you mine a block, you need to contact me. We need to get online, start recording, and then you need to say, I mine a block and post it on Nostra at the same time.
[00:45:40] Kenshin:
And then I say, I'm going to Costa Rica. Can can you do that for me? Yeah. Sure.
[00:45:48] McIntosh:
Alright. Very good. So what else do we have left to I mean, the I I did wanna actually mention one thing, which is not on our notes here. We keep saying Bitcoin Core, and that is certainly the most used version of the Bitcoin, node software. It is not the only version. There is another there's probably multiple ones. I'm sure there are. But there's another kind of competitor if you wanna call it that, but it's called Knott's, k n o t s.
[00:46:19] Kenshin:
That's the one I'm running, actually. Are you? Good. Yeah.
[00:46:22] McIntosh:
I we're not gonna delve into this, but periodically from time to time, there's there's discussions about the benefits of core versus not, and I'm kinda tired of it. I also like the idea of having multiple options in a Bitcoin ecosphere. And frankly, knots is not that it's not as popular as Bitcoin Core. Bitcoin Core is kind of the default. So it is much more common. So I think when I start setting up or the next time I set up nodes or maybe maybe if I upgrade, I'm not sure if how that would work, but I'll set up knots instead. I just wanna mention, first of all, there's two versions, at least. I think there's probably more.
And second, you know, running knots is not really gonna cause you there won't be compatibility issues. Okay? So, it's kind of a way to keep I hate to say it, and it's gonna sound terrible when I say it, but I'm gonna say it. It's a way to keep the developers in check. Is that is that fair? Yeah. Exactly. And there was some drama today. Yeah. We're not going into that. But, yes, it's it's Twitter, Internet drama, whatever, blah blah blah. I don't know. I don't I don't know. I don't I
[00:47:50] Kenshin:
yeah. No. But I what I can add there is that if, like me, you want to mine, local solo mine, mine your own Glocks and create your own Glocks with your whole miner, then you need to run notes.
[00:48:08] McIntosh:
Are you actually doing that?
[00:48:11] Kenshin:
Yeah. You were, weren't you? Or you are. You still are. I am. Yeah. Because I I need to run this Datum, server Right. Within the node. Everyone So that needs the notes.
[00:48:22] McIntosh:
Bow to Kenshin. Wow. That's pretty impressive.
[00:48:29] Kenshin:
Wow. Just just follow the instructions on ASEAN.xyz.
[00:48:35] McIntosh:
I did not catch that the first time we talked about this, that you were actually, like, building your own blocks.
[00:48:41] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. You can actually solo mine through a service online. Yes. Mhmm. That's true. So you don't need to do all this, but that's the most, private way to do it. Right.
[00:48:56] McIntosh:
Okeydokey.
[00:48:58] Kenshin:
Good. So let us know what you think about the subject. If you have more questions about running your own node, if you are already running your own nodes, what OS are you running? What type of device are you running? Mhmm.
[00:49:15] McIntosh:
Yeah. Yeah. You can boost that in and let us know. We'd love to hear from you. Surely, there's at least a couple of people out there running their own nodes that are listening to this. I would hope more, but we'll see. And they may not wanna, you know, it is what it is. It may not boost it or whatever. Mhmm. But we'd love to hear from you. And especially if you set up a note that because of this conversation, let us know. We'd love for you to tag us on social media on Noster on Twitter, x, whatever. And,
[00:49:50] Kenshin:
you know, let us know. That that would be helpful. To help also.
[00:49:55] McIntosh:
Yeah. Seriously. This is literally the kind of thing you could do remotely. Like, you do not have to live next to somebody to help them do that. As long as you've got a second computer to kind of work off of with Zoom or whatever, then I could absolutely help you walk through some something like that. We could talk about your needs, kind of your level, and figure out where where you kinda slot into that. Mhmm. Yep.
[00:50:30] Kenshin:
Alright. Good. Do we have any boosts
[00:50:35] McIntosh:
this week? We did. I checked the helipad, and we did. Send it, Mike. Send us a boost. Now I've got one bone to pick with you, send it, Mike, and it's not the one that you think. I think explicitly I said if you were gonna send hate mail, it had to be 200000¢. So I'm a little disappointed in that, but no. Seriously, I'll I'll I'll joking aside, Senate Mike boosted, 2,069 sats. So we do appreciate that. And his subject of the boost was hate mail colon. Macintosh can't stay on topic. That's the story of my life, my friend. And that's news to no one.
You are correct. Question of the week. I am personally not interested in EU politics. I'm not much interested in US politics. I would much more enjoy episodes like the Noster how to, but for non KYC Bitcoin or home heating or sauna with minors, or maybe an episode about the country of Bhutan. I would love to talk about Bhutan. I just don't think there's enough there to talk about it for an entire episode. So let's go back over this real quick. I appreciate the thoughts, and I'm I'm serious. I'm appreciate the the hate mail, if you wanna call it that.
You're right. And that's actually something Kenshin and I've talked about, and we're gonna work on that. I'm trying to stay on target a little bit better. We are always looking to improve this show, so thank you for that input. I appreciate that. I'm gonna be honest. The the macro politics stuff is something that we are going to continue to talk about. It is too important, in my opinion, not to. And we will we will kinda box it. We'll we'll make sure it doesn't take over the whole show for weeks on end, which I think we probably have let happen over the last few weeks, to be honest, Kenshin.
But, you know, we we need to talk about it some. Macro stuff, there's going to be some of that. We will do our best to constrain that. These other topics, yeah, I think we are gonna do more kind of DIY hands on kind of whatever topics like what we did today, frankly. Mhmm. Some things I mean, home heating, sauna with minors. That's just fascinating. Maybe get on somebody that could talk about that. I don't really know that I could do a whole episode talking about that. But there will always be topics like that that we can talk about. So we will dig into that as well as much as we can. There's always fascinating things like for years, they've run greenhouses with Bitcoin miner heat. I mean, that that's just it's just a thing. So alright.
I, again, appreciate it. Send it, Mike. You're a great Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Yeah.
[00:53:52] Kenshin:
So news. Mhmm. What do we have? There are some news here. There is, you want to bring something up first?
[00:54:05] McIntosh:
No. I this first one, the one that you got highlighted, I really think is probably the most important one. Let's talk about this for just a minute, and then we'll kinda speed through the rest of them. Yeah.
[00:54:16] Kenshin:
Go ahead and and jump on into that. Yeah. So the title is companies acquire nearly a hundred thousand Bitcoin in a single month. Mhmm. So, yeah, companies are stacking,
[00:54:31] McIntosh:
Sequins. Yes, exactly.
[00:54:34] Kenshin:
In their reserves and over a total overall. Now there is, 746,000 Bitcoin in corporate Bitcoin holdings. So that's 3 quarters of a million already there. Right. So I just did a quick calculation.
[00:54:54] McIntosh:
So Mhmm. If they acquired let's just round it up to a hundred a hundred thousand Bitcoin in the last month or so. That is an astounding figure. In fact, it is 7.4 times more Bitcoin than it's actually being mined. Now why is the price of Bitcoin not going up in the last month? I guess it has some, but I don't understand. But, eventually, assuming that this continues and there's no reason to believe that it won't, it will go up. It has to because there won't be any Bitcoin left. They these companies have to buy the Bitcoin from somebody. There's only 450 a day that you can buy from the miners.
So it has to come from somebody else. Yep.
[00:55:45] Kenshin:
And, you know, this time last year so now it's 750,000, let's say. This time last year was around 300,000. So that's more than double What's what's the 750,000?
[00:55:58] McIntosh:
I missed 750,000
[00:56:00] Kenshin:
is a total Bitcoin owned by corporations. Okay. Sorry. Yes. By private company. Or
[00:56:07] McIntosh:
Yeah. And Yeah. This trend is only going to expand and go higher and continue as more and more companies realize they need to stop saving cash, and they need to start saving Bitcoin because cash goes down in value over the long term. Not even the long term. The the the medium term at, you know, and Bitcoin goes up over that same time frame. So Yeah. Really cool stuff.
[00:56:38] Kenshin:
So yeah. And one more thing. You said, yeah, about how much was mined in the same period of time. Here it says exactly 13,600 Bitcoin was mined Mhmm. And 96,000 was acquired. So that's a staggering amount Mhmm. That was acquired versus mined. Yep. Sorry.
[00:57:03] McIntosh:
Crazy stuff. Bitcoin mining, reaches a 52.4% sustainability energy use, whatever you wanna call it. So meaning hydro, solar, wind, they probably include the, like, the flare gas mitigation in this, the methane mitigation, all of that. And this is girls. Yeah. This is a study that was done by Cambridge, Cambridge University. I I don't know. But they're they have done previous studies in the past along this topic, and it's a let me make sure. Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance. I bet it goes back to Cambridge University somehow. Yeah. It says Cambridge Judge Business School.
Anyways, it's a prestigious study, whatever. And you know what this does mean? Bitcoin has more renewable energy usage than any other industry. So when those people who don't understand, say Bitcoin is destroying the earth, you say, no. It's not. And here's why. And you can name off natural gas, flare mitigation, which is just spewing, you know, carbon dioxide or whatever into the atmosphere along with other things. Methane mitigation, like in landfills. There are so many benefits to what Bitcoin does in mining terms in these all of these little edge environments. It's just it's amazing.
And I just that argument holds no water as we would say. Right. So
[00:58:48] Kenshin:
Some, very interesting numbers here. Last time they did this research was in 2022.
[00:58:55] McIntosh:
Mhmm.
[00:58:56] Kenshin:
And the the number was 37.6% was sustainable energy. So from thirty seven point six, we're up to 52.4% now. And back then, we had, natural gas at 25%. Now it's at 38.2% is, natural gas. Coal was 36.6%, and now it's only 8.9. So it dropped a lot. So that's why we have been saying, right, Bitcoin incentivizes the best type of energy uses Yeah. Because it's so competitive.
[00:59:37] McIntosh:
Recently, I've heard some discussion about nuclear power. The United States is is, loosening regulations, gonna start building more power plants, this kind of thing. If that continues and nuclear power becomes an even bigger part of this mix, I guarantee you that that number will be so close to a % that it will be, it well, it will be almost a %.
[01:00:06] Kenshin:
Right? Yeah. Because In this sorry. In this study, nuclear power is 42.6%.
[01:00:14] McIntosh:
Forty two? Where is that?
[01:00:17] Kenshin:
Second paragraph. I missed that.
[01:00:21] McIntosh:
Second Oh. Okay. I see that. Yeah. Oh, so No. No. It's 9.8%. 9.8. Yeah. Yeah. I no. You're good. It's 9.8% right now.
[01:00:38] Kenshin:
Alright. Good. Next.
[01:00:39] McIntosh:
Next. Definitely. Alright. You wanna do that one? We can skip that one. Let's skip that. I do wanna mention a couple of things really quick. Why don't you I I can do all three of these. They're really quick. I saw this tweet. Man, this is it's this is crazy. Fourteen years ago last Saturday. So when this comes out almost a week ago, Satoshi Nakamoto, quote, disappeared forever. So he posted on the forum saying, it's in good hands talking about Bitcoin, and I'm done. I'm moving on to other things, which I'm always curious what those other things were, but that's that's what he said. So we've been without a CEO for fourteen years, and you know what? We're doing better than all the rest of the crypto. Just saying.
The second thing, I know I know not political stuff, but in my opinion, the Republicans are losing their mojo. They've gotten bogged down in all this trade war stuff and the spending cuts that were promised essentially by Doge are not really materializing. I'm I'm all for cutting any kind of governmental anything, but they were talking a trillion dollars. They're not even a year. They're not even gonna be close to it. And now the house GOP is trying to increase their military spending by a hundred and $50,000,000,000. So all those savings that they've been making over the last few weeks are probably all gone in that $150,000,000,000 increase.
And Wow. I, you know, I don't know. Alright. And then the very last thing, Russia continues to make moves. I would not put much well, there's some basis to this story. Oh, well, yeah. It's the same thing. I'm sure. Maybe not. But I don't think Russia like, the country is building exchange, but they a crypto exchange. But they there's some involvement there. So it's in Russian. It's the translations, you know, whatever. So, again, nation states making moves ultimately into Bitcoin, ultimately into being able to work in that environment. Mhmm. And you've got something about them launching a national stable coin, which that would be interesting.
[01:03:23] Kenshin:
Not launching but considering because they they had some assets frozen again by USDT Mhmm. From Tether. So they realized that yeah. They cannot control the dollar. They get the losses frozen. They cannot control the Right. USDT. So then yeah. Of course, they get pushed and pushed more towards Bitcoin or some sort of stable coins Okay. Which is yeah. Could be good for Bitcoin. We've already got our question for the week.
[01:03:53] McIntosh:
We would love to hear from you if you're running a node, if you're thinking well, if you build a node because of this episode, that kind of thing. So that's our question for the week. We've got a few software updates. They actually all were around Nostra this week. Everything in general was pretty quiet. Let me bring this up real quick. I guess I'm the only one who has this list. Right? Yeah. I didn't look into software. So Primal, which is one of the the larger Nostr clients, for Android, we've got version 2.2 came out, including among other things, I thought a very nice feature to request deletes for your notes.
Now there's no guarantee in the Nostra network if you write a note and publish it that it will be deleted, but the idea would be that the the user who created the note is requesting that it be deleted. And I think most people will honor that. This isn't news, but I posted this because it's absolute truth. There are 2.1 Satoshis. Did you know that, Kenshin? Yes. I do I do not know what quadrillion is, but it's a really big number. It's 21,000,000 times 100,000,000 is what it is, but there's 2.1 Satoshis. Right now, there's at least 8,000,000,000 people in the world. Do you know how many Satoshis per person that is?
[01:05:24] Kenshin:
Around 200,000?
[01:05:26] McIntosh:
It's slightly more than that, but it's 262,500 for each person in the world. So a quarter of the million Satoshis would put you on average with every person in the world if it were all distributed equally. And then also if for podcasting two point o fans, there is a new version of Podcast Guru on the Android, that also runs on iOS. I did not see a report for that. I run this on iOS, but, you might wanna check that out. And then Korkle, which is the web browser kind of, Nostra client, put out a new version, but their website's down as far as I can tell. So I don't know what that's all about, but a new version of that. So and that oh, and o x chat v one dot four dot nine, which is a chat protocol came out, a week ago.
[01:06:29] Kenshin:
So Alright. Busy.
[01:06:32] McIntosh:
Developers have been very busy. Oster. Yes. Nothing literally nothing like Bitcoin only came out. I couldn't find anything. It's crazy. Yeah. But last few weeks, we had more.
[01:06:45] Kenshin:
But yeah.
[01:06:48] McIntosh:
Okay.
[01:06:49] Kenshin:
Good. Well, thank you for this week again. Oh, anytime. So let's wrap it up. So as always, we're podcasting two point o, podcasts. You can find us on your favorite, podcasting app including the new podcasting two point o, which you can find on podcastapps.com. Mhmm. A good one is Fountain. Another good one that I like is the Podcast Guru that you mentioned there. Mhmm. There's also Podverse that's open source and free. So find us there, and you can boost us directly there. Leave a comment there for us to read.
[01:07:39] McIntosh:
And you know what? You can be just like Mike, and you can boost in, and you can give us a hate boost. Just make sure you boost a large amount when you do that. Thanks. Yeah. We do take your comments seriously.
[01:07:55] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. So find us on Nostra as well. Leave us a comment there or follow us, and let's talk there. If you have some questions, then we can, yeah, discuss more on Nostr for sure. Now, Kenshin,
[01:08:12] McIntosh:
you know marketing is not my forte, but I completely dropped the ball again. We were supposed to announce what?
[01:08:23] Kenshin:
The live episodes. Yes. Episode 210.
[01:08:28] McIntosh:
Episode two ten. And we have set the topic for that episode, if I'm not mistaken.
[01:08:34] Kenshin:
Is that correct?
[01:08:36] McIntosh:
Have. And it's going to be drum roll, please. Is your Bitcoin actually safe?
[01:08:43] Kenshin:
So Wow. Another
[01:08:45] McIntosh:
practical episode. Exciting. And we will be doing that live on zap.stream. When we get closer to that, we'll let you know the details, how you can get on there, and that kind of thing. And I'm hoping some plebs show up in the chat.
[01:09:08] Kenshin:
Yeah. So get your nostril accounts ready. Get your Yeah. You can Exactly.
[01:09:13] McIntosh:
And the recording time for that, we record on Wednesdays at 01:30 central time in The United States. So Yeah. I'm just gonna
[01:09:26] Kenshin:
Or eight third 08:30 Central European
[01:09:30] McIntosh:
Time. Right. So that would be this was episode two zero seven. So 02/2008, '2 zero '9. I think that is May. Mhmm. Yep. So we are looking forward to that. We actually need to start doing some testing for that. But, yeah, really looking forward to to it. So so thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful, and we would love to hear from you. There, you can always reach us at the different ways that are listed on the bottom of each of our episode pages, which are on the website satoshis-plebs.com. Stay humble, friends. Go out and make it a great week. We will talk to you all soon.
[01:10:13] Kenshin:
See you around. Bye bye.
Introduction
Market Update
Personal Updates and Weekend Plans
Understanding Bitcoin Nodes
Bitcoin Node Functions and Types
Decentralization and Node Importance
Mining Nodes vs. Full Nodes
Why Run a Bitcoin Node?
Setting Up Your Own Bitcoin Node
Bitcoin Holdings and Market Trends
Bitcoin Mining and Renewable Energy
Software Updates and Nostr Developments
Podcast Wrap-Up and Announcements
DJ Yo! -
