Bitcoin Nodes Explained (No, You Don’t Need One)

00:02 So everyone, you do not need one of 00:04 these little Bitcoin nodes, but they are 00:06 super cool. And I wanted to talk about 00:09 what they do and how mine works and how 00:12 this little map works down here. So what 00:14 is a Bitcoin node? A Bitcoin node are 00:16 the little computers that keep track of 00:18 everything that happens on the Bitcoin 00:20 network. Uh the one I run, again, it 00:23 looks like this. It's tiny. Uh you can 00:25 see how big it is compared to the size 00:27 of my hands. And it's super simple. It's 00:28 got a where can you see it there? It's 00:31 got a power button and then it's got a 00:33 cable to plug into your computer 00:36 internet router thing for the internet. 00:38 That's all it's got. Um, so if you plug 00:41 that in and then you go to 00:43 umbrell.local, I am connected to one of 00:45 these remotely, but if you go to 00:47 umbrelll.local, 00:49 uh, you can connect to your Bitcoin 00:51 node. Now, again, the average person 00:53 does not need this. I'm just showing it 00:54 to you because it's cool. If you're a 00:56 Bitcoin enthusiast, it's cool. But the 00:58 average person does not need this. You 00:60 do need a way to buy Bitcoin like River. 01:02 You do need a way to safely and securely 01:04 store your Bitcoin, like a Bit Key. You 01:08 do need that stuff. You do not need one 01:10 of these. This is for basically uh 01:12 Bitcoin techie enthusiasts for just the 01:14 fun of it. Um it's more complicated than 01:17 that, but anyway, you don't have to 01:18 worry about ever buying one of these, 01:20 but I wanted to show you what a Bitcoin 01:22 node looks like. Okay. So, this is the 01:24 interface of my Bitcoin node which shows 01:27 me all of the computers that my Bitcoin 01:29 node is connected to. So, when you plug 01:31 it in, I'll do a refresh here. So, this 01:33 is me. This Bitcoin node is in 01:35 Mississippi. Again, I'm connected to 01:37 Roma remotely, but this is a Bitcoin 01:39 node in Mississippi. You'll see it is 01:41 connected to 44 other well, sorry. Yeah, 01:45 44 other Bitcoin nodes. So, we have 44 01:48 connections around the world. If you 01:51 look at this, we've got a variety of 01:53 them all through the United States. Uh 01:56 if you and with the big dot meaning 01:58 there's multiple nodes there and I can't 02:00 tell. It's not doesn't look like it's on 02:02 the coast. I'm assuming that's like New 02:03 York City even though that would be on 02:05 the coast but it could be I don't know. 02:06 Could be somewhere in New York. Could be 02:08 Toronto. Could be something. Anyway, 02:09 it's probably New York though. Um if you 02:12 flip over here to Europe, you can see 02:14 I'm connected to a bunch of Bitcoin 02:16 nodes around Europe. Flip over here. I'm 02:18 connected to a Bitcoin node over here in 02:20 India and I'm also connected to a 02:23 Bitcoin node in South Korea. Now, just 02:25 like me, each of those nodes is has more 02:28 connections the closer it is 02:30 geographically. So, this node in India 02:32 is has a connections to a ton of local 02:35 nodes in addition to a few that are 02:37 remote. Um, and this one in South Korea, 02:40 same probably has more connections all 02:42 over Europe or sorry, all over Asia than 02:45 mine does. My connections are pretty 02:48 heavily US and Europe and then I've just 02:51 got some connections. Uh I interestingly 02:53 enough I don't have any connections in 02:55 South America or Africa. Although 02:57 sometimes I do. It just depends on uh 02:59 when my node boots up it connects to you 03:02 know it connects to as many different 03:03 Bitcoin nodes as it can find. Right now 03:05 that's between 45 and 46. And uh anytime 03:09 if I use my Bitkey device to broadcast a 03:12 Bitcoin transaction or I move Bitcoin 03:14 around on River or Coinbase uh then that 03:18 transaction will be broadcast to the 03:19 network. Uh which means these little 03:22 dots that are bouncing around going down 03:24 these things represent Bitcoin uh 03:26 transactions. It does not show my node, 03:29 my Bitcoin node pushing transactions to 03:32 other nodes. That's just not visualized 03:34 on this map. It only shows every time it 03:36 gets a Bitcoin uh packet of information 03:39 from another Bitcoin node, it shows it 03:41 moving. Now, it's actually quite fast. 03:43 These are, you know, all connections 03:45 around the world are typically with 03:46 undersea fiber optic cables. So, this 03:49 animation is probably slower than the 03:50 time it actually takes. Uh you can 03:52 actually get around the world really, 03:54 really, really super fast uh in a 03:56 fraction of a second even though they 03:58 slowed down this animation just so you 03:60 can like see it go because otherwise it 04:02 would look like it just flashed for a 04:03 second. Um, but anyway, I'm connected to 04:06 44 peers. So, the question is, how fast 04:09 uh how many hops does it take to get all 04:12 to all of the Bitcoin nodes? Well, I've 04:15 got a little spreadsheet here. And on 04:16 this spreadsheet, you will see hopefully 04:19 if the uh screen share updates. Let me 04:22 see if it does here. One second. 04:28 I do not know why it's not screen 04:30 sharing properly, but um anyway, I'll 04:32 just verbally walk you through it. uh my 04:34 node is connected to 45 peers in one 04:37 hop. Meaning my 45 if every one of them 04:40 is connected to 45 peers, it can hop to 04:43 2,000 peers with one hop and 91,000 04:46 peers in two hops. If the number of 04:48 nodes it is connected to is less than 04:50 that, uh such as 14, it would take me 04:53 three hops to reach every single Bitcoin 04:56 node in the entire Bitcoin network. But 04:58 again, it's uh if it only takes uh you 05:00 know, if all of those are as well 05:02 connected as my node with 40 44 05:04 connections, I can reach the entire 05:05 Bitcoin network in one hop and then 05:08 another hop, which is really pretty 05:10 amazing. Uh from the people I'm 05:12 connected to, I can get one more hop and 05:14 then a second hop to basically every 05:15 Bitcoin node that is anywhere. Um also, 05:19 uh how long does it take for a Bitcoin 05:21 transaction to reach every node? 05:23 According to a little search on chat 05:25 GPT, you'll see the prompt up there. It 05:27 says it can reach 50% of all the Bitcoin 05:29 nodes, more than 100,000 of them in one 05:32 to two seconds. And it can reach between 05:35 80 and 90% of all the nodes in 5 to 10 05:37 seconds. And virtually all of them, 05:39 including the ones running on satellites 05:41 and, you know, I don't know, submarines 05:43 under the ocean in less than a minute. 05:46 Uh the quick summary here is this, which 05:49 is it uh it can get to virtually all the 05:51 nodes in 1 to two seconds or 5 to 10 05:53 seconds for 80 to 90%. So anyway, uh it 05:57 is super cool how Bitcoin works. Every 05:59 time you bid, you install the Bitcoin 06:01 software on any computer, including on 06:03 one of these little Bitcoin um you know 06:07 uh Umbreal Bitcoin nodes here, which are 06:09 for sale for $400. Let me see if I can 06:12 get it in the screen here. For $400, it 06:14 will boot up and it will immediately 06:16 start searching for Bitcoin peers. And 06:18 if you're like mine, after a little 06:20 while it's up to 47 peers and then it 06:22 connects all over the world and all of 06:24 those nodes are connected to, you know, 06:26 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 peers themselves. 06:29 And, you know, with a handful of hops, 06:31 you can connect to all 100,000 Bitcoin 06:34 nodes. Now, uh, the cool thing, and I 06:37 don't know if you can show it, um, let 06:39 me see if it shows it on map of all 06:41 Bitcoin. 06:44 I should have looked this up in advance. 06:46 I did not. Um, let me see if you can 06:48 find a map of all the nodes. 06:51 Nah, there's it's not there's not a good 06:53 one. Anyway, I'd have to go look at it. 06:55 But, um, you there there are there are 06:59 maps I've seen before. 07:01 Yeah. See, these are what I want is one 07:03 that just shows like tiny little pin 07:05 pricks on every node. Um, but I don't 07:08 know that I'm gonna get that. Anyway, 07:10 there are some cool maps that I've seen 07:11 before that I'm not immediately finding 07:13 that show basically a little dot for 07:15 every Bitcoin node and uh it's just 07:19 super cool when you see that. But 07:20 anyway, um but I'm not immediately 07:22 finding it and I should have pulled it 07:23 up in advance. But anyway, just wanted 07:24 to share what my Bitcoin node looks like 07:26 and there it is in case you want to know 07:29 what a Bitcoin node looks like and you 07:31 know how it's transacting with its peers 07:32 and all that sort of stuff. So, just a 07:34 quick video for fun. And again, you do 07:36 not need a Bitcoin node, but in case you 07:39 wanted to know kind of how it connects 07:40 and what it looks like, there you go. 07:42 Have a great day, everyone.