The other day I wondered what the percentage of Bitcoin users actually ran their own node. I started by checking out bitnodes.io and it showed there were 11,411 reachable Bitcoin nodes in the last 24 hours.There are over 100 million Bitcoin addresses with a balance and over 1 million wallets active daily. Most people have several Bitcoin addresses so that doesn't paint a clear picture. The 2 largest wallet providers, Coinbase and Blockchain.com, have over 35 million users and 59 million wallets respectively. A lot of people don't actually hold their Bitcoins on-chain but through a centralized custodian. Take PayPal users for example or anyone that leaves their Bitcoin on exchanges. Considering all these factors and according to the latest estimates I've seen, there are over 100 million Bitcoin users.source 1source 2That would mean that just 0.000114% of Bitcoin users run their own nodes. Let's say the estimates are off and it was only 1/10th of that, only 10 million Bitcoin users, that would make it 0.00114%, still pretty low.I realize not everyone has the hardware and internet connection to run a node but many of us do and even if we own Bitcoin, we're still trusting a third party to authenticate our transactions. Self custody + running a node to authenticate your own transactions is using Bitcoin like it was originally intended to be used and leveraging it's permissionless, trust less, decentralized capabilities.Having more nodes makes the network safer, more resilient and even more decentralized. Metcafle's Law states the effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system. The more effective the Bitcoin network is, the more valuable it will become.Be your own bank. Take your crypto off exchanges at the very least and if you can, try to run your own node. It's fun, you'll learn things, and you wil contribute to make the network even stronger.
Submitted December 10, 2020 at 05:28PM
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