This question is aimed at normal users, not those running a webservice or transaction processor. Of course you want your own node if you do the above.
Unsure if this question's been asked before, searching comes up with tutorials on how to set up a node server, which I fully well know how to do.
I only see the following benefits for running a Bitcoin node:
- Using it as a "vote" on the Bitcoin network, signalling support for protocol changes, or even hard forks
- You want to contribute to the network by ensuring high transfer rates and network stability, with lower latency
- You want to keep your address and IP totally seperate by broadcasting to your own remote node
- When syncing your wallet, you want to connect to a node you trust
1. This doesn't necessarily require a relatively expensive and high throughput webserver
2. If you want to do it a AWS server in California, there's already a bunch of people doing it there. I don't see a point, since there are already people doing it there, who are probably putting them to good use, probably web services relying on their own node.
3. From my understanding, when a node is broadcast a transaction, they don't differentiate between relating information from other nodes and say relating that from an SPV client .
4. By connecting to multiple peers and nodes and adding trusted and reputable ones to your node list, you can prevent a malicious attack. If your client would be fooled into using an incorrect blockchain, the same thing would happen with a node, connecting to other nodes.
So all in all, the only reason would be to support another hard/soft fork. But then, why pay $35+ a month for a node when you can run it from your computer or even start up a server when you find a fork you support? If I've got anything wrong, please correct me, because I'm trying to understand all the newbies trying to start up their own node without justification. To me, running a node is an investment, not a charity.
