Bitcoin Forum

I see many people are claiming that running full Bitcoin node is expensive and that many people can't afford it but I never saw exact calculations and costs.
Only with running full nodes we can say that Bitcoin is truly decentralized, and all transactions and blocks are fully validated.

Requirements for running full Bitcoin node

 - Desktop or Laptop computer or Raspberry Pi (https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/) with minimum 2GB RAM (starting from $35)

 - Hard Drive (starting from $13 per TB)

 - Internet connection with good upload speed and unlimited traffic (starting from $5 per Month (https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=33))

Hard Drives prices are rapidly going down and Seagate just announced (https://www.anandtech.com/show/16544/seagates-roadmap-120-tb-hdds) they plan to release 50 TB hard drives by 2026 and over 120 TB HDDs after 2030 and you can see that hard drive prices are starting from $13 per TB (https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=external_hdd,external_hdd25,internal_hdd,internal_hdd25,internal_sshd,internal_sas,internal_ssd,m2_ssd,m2_nvme).
Trend is clear and nobody can tell me that people can't afford to buy large hard drive today, much larger than current Bitcoin blockchain size of around 350GB.

Internet connection prices varies a lot depending from region you live but cheapest is in Ukraine, Russia, Romania and most expensive in Ethiopia according to Numbeo stats.
Internet connection speed is also going up all the time especially for Scandinavia and Asia.

I think most people can afford RaspberryPi4.

Is there someone who can still convince me I am wrong and come up with new theory that running full Bitcoin node is expensive and not for everyone?

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Cryptocurrency Client Categorization (Full node, Pruned node, SPV node,...) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5229765.0)

It isn't, such a setup is quite common. My node[1] is roughly about $10 a month and I have some spare capacity for my side projects. Something like this is usually dedicated for one purpose only so the argument is still valid that the average user doesn't find any benefits in taking the (fairly long) time to download just for a full node. I don't see how people would be motivated to do something like this if it doesn't benefit them directly. SPV clients are sufficient for most users and they probably wouldn't bother to even think about this.

RPis are actually fairly weak if you actually try them. I wouldn't do the IBD on it though.

[1] http://163.172.57.208/

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Something that is related; for those who did this, is it reliable to use a USB SATA connection for this? I'm thinking of running another since I have a spare RPi4 but I'm not sure whether using an adapter would be okay,

There is no need to run node on Pi4 if you already have some old computer, this can be even cheaper, and there are no financial benefits but you are 100% sure that your transactions will be confirmed (if you used correct fees) and you will have much more privacy for sure (if you care about that), plus you will be able to run your own LN node.
My point was not to show any benefits, but to use this topic whenever someone tells me that running Bitcoin nodes is expensive, and that we need to move to some altcoin because of that, like in THIS (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5323146.0) example.
I think this will also answer Hard Drive argument with links I provided.

bs

You are wrong :-)

On my own side I am running 2 lightning nodes, both on RPi4 units. For those I AM using SSD, but not for speed. Since they are USB they are powered through the USB port on the RPi and the pull less power then a spinning drive allowing me to have a screen and some other things attached without worrying about power.
Look at raspiblitz and mynodebtc

For others I have setup I have been using 4th gen core i5 PCs. Dell OptiPlex 3020 units. Just about indestructible.
8gb DDR3 ram so it's cheap to find
And 1TB spinning drives.

For the initial sync if you are pulling from the net then yes it's nice to be able to pull down the blockchain a bit faster, but after that not so much.

Now, if you are using this machine for something else (anything else) too it's a different conversation, but just running a local node you can talk to, it's more then fine.

-Dave

Wouldn't using a Wasabi Wallet be just sufficient and better than the privacy that Bitcoin Core can provide? I don't think being able to run a LN node would be that enticing. You would probably be looking to run Bitcoin Core as a wallet instead of purely as a full node if your purpose is for the bolded part.
Right, so the topic is more about the fact that the fees for the transactions are rising rapidly and it is infeasible to use Bitcoin for day to day transaction.

When people are making decisions they'll generally evaluate whether something is worth doing or not. IBD on RPi takes several days of constant synchronization or at least that was from my experience. Waiting days just to run a Bitcoin node when the most I'll do with it is probably to point my SPV wallet at it is probably not that worth, considering that I've already spent ~$70 on it alone. So what is the point of running one when an SPV node will be more than sufficient? I have never found Bitcoin Core that useful if my primary purpose is to just send and receive coins, privacy and security isn't an issue.

If you want to accommodate even the current transaction volume, I guarantee that the storage and the bandwidth requirements will not be enough. Nevermind LN, it doesn't even have a comparable adoption rate in the first place. If people really want to run a full node, I doubt there would only be ~10K nodes with listening connection.

Indeed! For an average Windows/Mac user, terminal = geek thing. But with a little courage, it isn't that difficult. Especially, with the introduction of WSL, the life has become easier for Windows users. It took me around an hour with an online article to figure out how to setup WSL on my computer and how to download and run Bitcoin Core. Even without the deep understanding of Linux, I was able to run the commands (mostly through copy/paste) and successfully setup the full node. If people really wanna run the node, they don't have to install actual Linux OS or anything. Simple, WSL setup and downloading Ubuntu from Microsoft Store will do the task.

I'm confused... Why do you need to use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)? ??? The Windows versions of Bitcoin Core/bitcoind works perfectly fine as a "Full Node".

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/zI6lC.png


Thank goodness for unlimited fibre tho!!?! :o :o :o :o
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/zIRmb.png

That's less than 48 hours worth of uptime... and already at 88 gigs of data sent... :o

Yes, but Chipmixer would be even better, or monero with much lower fees that wasabi, and if you are not using full node you need to trust other people and explorers for showing your balance and transactions.
If you already have unlimited and unmetered internet like many people have, than I don't see any downside for running full node, and we don't always need to have financial benefit for doing that.
For example why are you using Bitcoin for transations?
Is there any financial benefit for sending transations in Bitcoin compared to USD or some altcoin?
I don't think so, but we do have other benefits.

Topic is about transaction fees, but he clearly writes that it is expensive to run Bitcoin nodes and I showed that it isn't so expensive.

Don't you think if more people would run full Bitcoin and LN node that more people would use LN and in that way save more on fees?
I really don't see the point of using LN with custodial clients.

I would argue that CoinJoin and traditional mixers are different and the fees are never so clear cut, network fees still comes into play with Chipmixer both during the deposit and the withdrawal. They aim to obfuscate the path rather than to completely break the link and the trustless aspect of that is enticing for some, no risk of MITM attacks, etc. Of course using a full node will be marginally more secure, I don't think most people find it an issue though. Even if you're running a full node, you'll probably still be using a block explorer to search up on the transactions. Full nodes are limited in this aspect.

I have both unlimited and unmetered 1GBPS but it
No. There is no decent substitute for this, fiat, Litecoin, Ethereum are all intrinsically different. If your primary purpose is to use Bitcoin, to receive and send funds, why would you waste days trying to bootstrap the entire Blockchain when a simple Electrum download or Wasabi would be enough. I have to sacrifice my disk space and time just to set up a node, why would I do that when I can just use a SPV wallet in minutes?

I understand, I was talking about the motivation to move to altcoins; topic appears to be saying people may move to altcoin due to the TX fees, not solely because its not feasible to run a full node. It really depends on your definition of average. From what I can recall, most desktops that I have seen comes with a HDD of 1TB max. It's more than enough to store the entire blockchain on it, provided that you can stand looking at 360GB of block data occupying your HDD. Sure, you can upgrade but the whole process would probably appear to be daunting for most.

There are loads of clients that supports LN and there is no lacking of LN nodes. Adopting LN lies only on the fact that there are still a bulk of the merchants still not accepting LN at all. You don't have to use LN with custodial clients, Electrum isn't at least.

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Yes, it is relatively cheap if that is the point you're making. If you're saying that people will run the nodes, I highly doubt that would be the case. I'm coming from the average user's POV, still see tons of people being put off by the bootstrapping on their own computer.

It's really just a function of the "instant gratification" society that we have devolved into... People want stuff "now"... they don't want to wait a couple of days. So the idea of having to download and verify 350+ Gigs of blockchain data just doesn't appeal to someone who wants to send $100 worth of BTC to somebody or to cash out their BTC from a gambling site or exchange etc.

Now, for some people, "Time is Money"™... so an argument could be made that the time "cost" of running a full node is quite high... especially given the volatility of BTC... $100 worth of BTC today, might only be $80 tomorrow (or it could be $150 :P).

Sure, the IBD is really a "one off" cost... but it's still there... and if you're not going to be using the node on an ongoing basis, then it's pointless waiting 3 days to get a full node up and running. I'm sure if there was a way to setup a full node and have it fully synced and ready to go in less than 10 minutes... the number of full nodes currently in operation would probably increase by a fairly stubstantial amount :P

Using open source wallets like Sparrow (https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow) for example you really don't need to use 3rd party explorers, or you can run your own explorer.

With that logic nobody would run full nodes, and please don't make this precious disk space argument anymore.  :)
I would not waste any time, computer would do all downloading and work for me and I would do other things meanwhile.

Common man, we are 2021 and I have multiple hard drives with multiple TB of space and even my backup HDD drive old more than 20 years have 500 GB of space.

There are many open source one click solutions for running full node now, and I know most people still won't run it, but why putting off all people telling them how it's almost impossible and very hard to run full node for average users.
Examples of one-click full node solutions for lazy or non-tech users:
- myNode (https://mynodebtc.com/)
- Samourai Dojo (https://samouraiwallet.com/dojo)
- Umbrel (https://getumbrel.com/)

Case in point guys: if your desktop/laptop can run CS:GO (and it's system requirements are very low - most hardware [ram sticks, cpu, disk] from 2011 or later will work) then chances are it can run a full node like a champ. That's a few hundred dollars just to own a PC anyway which can also function as a node at the same time.

You probably shouldn't attempt to run Core on a disk that's already been running for 10 years anyway.


40GB a day outgoing is normal for a node with a fast internet speed and 80+ incoming peers. The lower your node's latency the more well-connected it will be which results in yours sending several hundred TX and block messages to all of those peers.

Just curious, has anyone tried running an explorer on RPi?
Sure, pruned nodes are still nodes anyways. I've made my point about the time taken and I think you have made yours clear as well. No point discussing it further since my point was from the general view that I had when interacting with other Bitcoiners.

Same. Though I think most of the OEM computers that I've seen tops at about 1TB without upgrades, perhaps just catering to different market. Damn, I've never seen a 500GB drive that old though  :o.
Running a node is a piece of cake, my first full node was done using a bash script 4 years ago, whether people want to run it is a whole other issue altogether[1]. Running Bitcoin Core on your computer is also considered a full node.

[1] https://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/historical.html

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Anyways, I'll try to set up a full node on my RPi and see how long it takes to synchronize. Maybe try to run a blockexplorer as well, while I'm at it. Will update this thread soon.

Oh right! You were saying in the context to Raspberry Pi, I missed that part. I thought we discussing about running Bitcoin Core in command-line.

Some users simply don't want to do it, that's all. We westerners can enjoy the benefits of unlimited internet bandwidth, but consider the African continent that still lags behind. They have limitations that don't allow them to download 350GB. And it's time consuming for the average user who just wants to make the occasional transactions from time to time. 

In the words of satoshi himself: Some users just want to be users.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

This is not true. Broadcasting a transaction from a full node that includes a low fee or is invalid will not guarantee the transaction will confirm. You could even include what was the “next block” fee, and the transaction might not confirm if fees rise before the next block and continue to be elevated until the transaction is dropped from most nodes mempools.

Running a full node will reduce but not remove the chances a valid transaction will be ignored when it is broadcast. 

This is really the selling point for running a full node. There are simply many people who don’t care about their privacy, or don’t put the value of the amount of increased privacy above the effort to run a full node.

Yeah, I think I got about 700 GB sent already for about 2 weeks. So estimate maybe 1.4 TB per month. Maybe 1.5 TB. 90 connections. And I think I set mine to have larger memory or something. mempool is at around 160 mb.

For me, I've always been running a full node. Since 2012-ish. I don't know if I would still be running one if I had just recently "joined"... maybe I would have.

I think mentioning Internet is a kind of superfluous since everyone has it anyway, but I haven't seen anyone mention electricity. On older and less power efficient hardware, and with higher rates, over the year it can exceed the value of a cheap computer.


I think you could be off by a couple years. ;)

Regular lightbulbs are also spending similar amounts of electricity and people usually have more than one in their home and I don't see people complaining about that.
It's not like running asic or gpu for mining that have much bigger effect on electricity bill.


I am not sure when exactly I purchased my old HDD and I had smaller drives before so I was not speaking exact historical facts, but let's see history of  first 500GB and larger hard drives:

2005, first 500GB hard drive by Hitachi
2006, first 750GB hard drive by Seagate
2007, first 1TB hard drive by Hitachi
2011, first 4TB hard drive by Seagate

Regular light bulbs don't run 24/7 and LED lights have been a thing for a while now with markedly lower power consumption.

Let's say someone decides to repurpose their older computer that uses 50 watts when a Bitcoin full node is running. 0.05 kW * 24 * 30 * 12 = 432 kW per year. In Germany or Denmark, for example (countries with expensive electricity), that's going to amount to over $150 per year.

So you are comparing OLD computer hardware with new led light bulbs? Some people have their TV and other devices turned on all day.
Simply reduce your electricity bill by purchasing any SSD drive and you don't need your monitor running all the time.

Maybe you don't need to run your led lights 24/7 but you have more of them that run every day, let's say each of them spends average 10 watts and don't forget they are much more expensive than regular old light bulbs.

You basically trade the hardware cost with electricity bill.

With the way a lot of modern things work 50 watts is nothing, you can somewhat easily offset it if that matters to you.
The standby power draw of your cable box, using cheap power adapters to charge your phone / tablet / laptop.
Your PS 3/4/5 or XBox sitting in standby mode. Just unplug it. Do you need your Alexa sitting there all day pulling 1 or 2 watts when you are not home?
Things like that can easily go over 50 watts in total.

Worrying about the cost of running a node is really a fringe case. Toast your bread for a few seconds less each day. Cooking a steak, make it medium rare instead of medium.
Do you really need the super powerful Wi-Fi gaming router or can a lower power one that only pulls 2 watts from the wall instead of 7 work?

Note: This is all US 120 volt examples, 220 may vary a bit but you get the point.

-Dave

$150 a year is $12 a month? Should not be an issue. TVs consume more power, what with the speakers and Kong punching Godzilla making all those noises ...

8TB drives from Seagate now around $170-ish.

Computers have a very long useful life, while lightbulbs need to be frequently replaced. Some electric companies will also give away x LED lightbulbs for free to new customers to help reduce total electric consumption.

If someone has an old, power-hungry computer to run a full node, that is all that is available without incurring additional costs.

Hard drive prices have really gone down in recent years with capacity gone up and I would choose one with longer warranty for running Bitcoin node.
Seagate BarraCuda 8TB $139.99 on Amazon now with only 2 years warranty, and 14TB version is with 5 years but much more expensive.

Computers are actually taking only 1% of total spent electricity at home, lights are taking 12% that is much more, and most is spent for cooling and heating with almost 50% in total.
TV is energy vampire that spends similar energy like computers and I personally don't watch it for years, not to save energy but to save my mental health :)

If you run it on a PC (or better: laptop) that's on 24/7 anyway, it barely costs anything. That's what I do.
I wouldn't use a dedicated (old) computer just to run a node, in that case even a VPS can be cheaper and has much better bandwidth.

This must differ a lot per country ;) I don't use electricity to regulate the temperature at home, and in work-from-home-lockdown year computers easily make up 10% of the electricity consumption.

The other issue is that there is no "one size fits all" solution.
I have natural gas heat where I live. It's cheap and efficient.
BUT it's one zone for the entire place. SO we use electric space heaters (old quiet miners) at night and in the back room during the day if we are working from home.
No matter how efficient gas is, heating the entire place just to keep one room warm it's going to be a net negative vs paying more for the service (electricity) but using less because you are heating a much smaller space.

Same with running a node. Are you better off spending a bit more to get a more efficient setup because power is expensive where you are. Or are you better off running whatever because power is cheap. Should you host it in the cloud because although power is cheap where you live and you have a ton of spare computers BUT you have expensive bandwidth that has some sort of a cap on it. Is everything cheap but not reliable at home and you are going to be offline for a few hours each month.

Without that kind of background knowledge of what each user has / needs it's difficult to give a really good answer as to what is best for them.

-Dave

They also last a lot longer.


And depending on their power costs, long-term it's going to cost them more to run an old computer.


Exactly. One Bitcoin node alone is nothing, but still worth mentioning to those to whom costs are a barrier of entry, because these costs can add up to a nice sum every year when self-hosting a lot things (vide /r/homelab to get an idea).


As low as $190 for a 14 TB drive during Black Friday.


In my case computers are closer to 50%, since heating is via natural gas and good insulation etc. protects against the heat in summers.

I guess it's possible to save more electricity by running 8 different instances of Bitcoin Core at the same time, each with their own data dies and chainstate, assuming you do have 8 threads.

Granted this is only possible for people who have enough RAM and storage to run all of them at once (networking will not be a problem). So for 2GB dbcache then you'd be using about 16GB of ram in total and about 3.2TB of disk storage, if we future-proof blockchain sizes to 400GB. I think it's doable. Someone could even try selling hosted full nodes with the wallet= setting in bitcoin.conf pointing to some encrypted filesystem. I think bitcoin.conf settings apply to all the bitcoind's you launch, so you could fine-tune the port numbers and data directories via command-line arguments.

It's a nice experiment I want to carry out one day.

That is true, I was one of the first guys to purchase those led lights online years ago when they started to come out and some of them are still working today.
Sucks that I was not so early for mining and running Bitcoin node but better late than never.


I know some people who are using GPU mining rigs for warming their house in winter months so I guess they are win-win and net positive ;)

My nodes cost me nothing. I've got an unlimited data plan, and several 2Tb drives. Power comes from solar panels, or from recharged leisure batteries. I take advantage of free WiFi as well. I'm thinking of trying a bit of mining also, and that would be free, apart tom any extra hardware costs. I run the nodes when I feel like it, but at least once in a 2 day period.

Hi! Sorry to hijack the thread here. I'm trying to figure out if its worth upgrading an old iMac (mid-2009) to run a full node on. Or if I should buy something to use as a dedicated node. We have unlimited download/upload 1GB fioptics.

I'd like to run one for privacy reasons but my technical skills end at using a Cricut. Long story short I had a lab partner in college that was really passionate about torr and bitcoin projects and I had a top of the line laptop that he mined on. And I'm a pack rat that recently decided to go through my old college binders and notes and found handwritten wallets/keys (hence privacy reasons).


Just a newb looking for some guidance.

Bitcoin Core requires OSX 10.12 and above. If you're able to upgrade to that version, you're fine though the synchronization process would be very slow.

I wouldn't buy a dedicated node for this, you'll probably be trying to run a node to help the network instead of using it as a wallet and they are still not that powerful. If you're able to get a new computer, it'll work just fine.

I think it runs on el capitan. Would I be able to run a Linux OS on it if it's not able to upgrade? Not too worried about time. We graduated in 2010 so I don't mind waiting a little longer haha. I'd like to contribute but if it's not going to be powerful enough to actually make a difference what would you recommend?

I have a MacBook Pro M1 chip that I can't seem to get Core to work on and wouldn't mind using it a node if I could figure it out. And a 2011  Pro that has a Core wallet on it (used for other purposes than mining) that I can't get to sync but now the hard drive is too small. Not sure I'm willing to upgrade that hard drive just yet until I can find someone local to try and pull any left on there off.

This is what happens when your non technical friends smile and nod when you explain everything. 11 years later we regret not paying better attention and letting you set everything up! But I would like to learn and contribute as best as my skill set will let me, and this seems like something I might be able to handle.

I know nothing about iMacs, but: an easy solution to get balances with full privacy: download this 1 GB archive (http://addresses.loyce.club/blockchair_bitcoin_addresses_and_balance_LATEST.tsv.gz) (through Tor), and search your addressse in the text file (more information here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5254914.0)). Don't risk your keys on an online system, only type/search the addresses.

Bitcoin Core 0.21 dropped El Capitan support, you now need Sierra or newer to run it.

You can dual-boot Ubuntu on that Mac though if you install the rEFInd boot loader and follow these instructions: https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-dual-boot-ubuntu-mac/

Thank you for this!!