Bitcoin node distribution globally

[hd49728]

I am curious on the meaning of bitcoin nodes distribution, as below.

Source: https://bitaps.com/

From the site, and given figures, as of writing, there are 9318 nodes in total, and most of them run and located in the USA. and Germany.
Details:

• USA: 2636 (28.3%)
• DE: 1669 (17.9%)
• FR: 617 (6.6%)
• NL: 462 (5%)
• CN: 390 (4.2%)
• Others: 3544 (38%)
  
• Total: 9318 (100%)

It is abnormal to see there are very little nodes in China, that has the biggest bitcoin mining farms, globally. Nodes in China account for only 4.2% of current bitcoin nodes.

The first position of the USA does not surprise me, but the second position held by Germany does surprise me a lot. Together, those two nations have more than 46% of the total bitcoin nodes globally. That is a very impressive figure.

Among top nations listed, I grouped them into different continents, and found raw results:

• America: 2921 (31.3%)
• Europe: 3551 (38.1%)
• Asia: 911 (9.8%)
• Others: 1935 (20.8%)

They are not exactly representative statistics for continents because there are nations in each continent that are not displayed in the top list. I think the raw data shows that America and Europe continents have nearly the same percent of bitcoin nodes, and Asia continent ranked in the third place but significantly falls behind first two continents.

I am not familiar to that term, so I am wondering myself with some questions:
- Has China lost its leading position in bitcoin ecosystem, that reflected via total bitcoin nodes in that nation?
- Should we use Total Bitcoin Nodes as an indicator for level of powerful contribution of nation on bitcoin global network?

Thank you all for your help. I am still discovering about bitcoin nodes. Keep learning every day.

BTW, have a nice weekend everyone.

Bitcoin Q&A: What is the role of nodes? (Andreas M. Antonopoulos)
https://medium.com/bitstamp-blog/should-i-run-my-own-node-13c3f6a21627
https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node#what-is-a-full-node

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[nc50lc]

It is abnormal to see there are very little nodes in China, that has the biggest bitcoin mining farms, globally. Nodes in China account for only 4.2% of current bitcoin nodes.

All I can tell is Mining farms doesn't usually require a full node in exception to solo mining farms,
all they need to have is a secure bitcoin client/wallet to receive the their payouts.

Plus, Bitcoin is partially banned there: wiki: Legality of Bitcoin.

[hugeblack]

Run full nude relates to your willingness to decentralize & to pay for it. In addition to the above you need to:

 - High internet speed: about 240GB.
 - Extra disk space to download the entire blockchain: about 500 GB.

These things are not available for free in many countries, and the personal return from the full-nude wallet is not considered valuable compared to what you pay for.

If you compare this map to the speed of the Internet and the prevalence of BTC payments, you will find some sense.

[hd49728]

- High internet speed: about 240GB.
If you compare this map to the speed of the Internet and the prevalence of BTC payments, you will find some sense.

Thank you. I think this factor seriously affects on bitcoin node distribution. In some nations, there are people whom can invest money to run a bitcoin node, but internet speed is thing they might struggle with their local infracstructures, then they give up.
How about this question?

- Should we use Total Bitcoin Nodes as an indicator for level of powerful contribution of nation on bitcoin global network?

[Thirdspace]

It is abnormal to see there are very little nodes in China, that has the biggest bitcoin mining farms, globally. Nodes in China account for only 4.2% of current bitcoin nodes.

no, it's not abnormal. one big mining farm needs only one full node
the size of the mining farm is directly correlated with total hashrate power
but total number of bitcoin nodes based on number of computers that are running full node bitcoin
this means 1000 electrum wallets will be counted as 0, and an electrum server counted as one
so despite of bitcoin popularity there, legal issue forces them not to run full node for their own safety
many of them are using spv or online wallets, instead of using bitcoin core or other full node wallets

[hatshepsut93]

There is language barrier - most of the quality resources are in English, so it can be very hard to effectively use Bitcoin Core without the knowledge of this language. You also need some pretty good general computer proficiency to run the client, and you can see that most countries on the list also have high quality education, especially in fields like computer science. Bitcoin's ideology of freedom is also more appealing to people from the West, as historically ideas like democracy and liberalism originate from that region.

[pooya87]

what these websites do is that they try connecting to different node IP addresses and if they accept the connection (incoming) then the site counts them as a node and if they reject it, the site doesn't. so it other words they are not counting a ton of bitcoin nodes just because these nodes don't accept incoming connections.

- Has China lost its leading position in bitcoin ecosystem, that reflected via total bitcoin nodes in that nation?

China has never had any "lead" to lose it now. the media made them big partially because the biggest ASIC manufacturer and mining pool is located in China and partially because of the fake and huge trading volume their exchanges used to report. but China has never been in the lead.

There is language barrier - most of the quality resources are in English, so it can be very hard to effectively use Bitcoin Core without the knowledge of this language. You also need some pretty good general computer proficiency to run the client, and you can see that most countries on the list also have high quality education, especially in fields like computer science. Bitcoin's ideology of freedom is also more appealing to people from the West, as historically ideas like democracy and liberalism originate from that region.

it is not like China is at the bottom of the list! it is the fifth one which is still a pretty high rank.

[gentlemand]

China has plenty more nodes than it used to when it was much more prominent in trading. When all the zero fee exchanges were commanding the price there I remember seeing node counts of around 60 which goes to show how empty all the stats about China were.

Similarly when people were screaming about losing India, at certain points the node count was in single figures. If they clearly don't care why should we?

It's a very woolly metric but it does give an idea of the level of engagement in a country. It's not exactly the most demanding thing to keep running.

[wwzsocki]

We have been discussing this subject in a different thread.

The geographical distribution of bitcoin full nodes that visually presented by the image, gives us the fact that China has much less impacts on bitcoin, technically (at least)...In the top ten nations: 3 come from Asian continent, 2 come from American continent, and 5 come from European continent.

Exactly, I was also surprised to see Europe at the first place with 32,27% of all full nodes (exactly 2987) in countries like Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The second spot with 25.29% which is exactly 2341 full nodes goes to the USA and China is at 6th place with 3,53% which gives only 327 full nodes.


https://bitnodes.earn.com/

Is really surprising to see China at 6th place only with 327 full nodes because I was sure that the biggest amount will be in the biggest mining farms, but to be honest I don't know if mining is actually allowed there or not because China banned and unbanned BTC and mining so many times that I don't know what is the real situation there?


https://bitnodes.earn.com/nodes/live-map/

From my understanding, there are not so many full nodes in China because they need only a couple of them even for big mining farms. They have thousands of miners and a few or a dozen full nodes is enough for their needs. In other countries like the USA, Germany, France, Netherlands mining farms are a lot smaller and they have also a few or a dozen full nodes, just like the big once.

Additionally, all these bans for crypto mining in China for sure prevented many ordinary people from buying a miner and to start mining. So we can assume that in the other countries there is a lot more mining done by small investors on one or a few miners maximum and for safety reasons they need full nodes. Large BTC mines in China do not translate into the number of full nodes because not every miner must be a full node and just a few or a dozen is enough, to meet their safety needs, even with hundreds of miners or more.

[Velkro]

I am curious on the meaning of bitcoin nodes distribution, as below.

I will explain it.
This map shows you exactly where world have good internet connection and where it doesn't.
Mostly Europe, then USA and many many minor places. This is almost perfect distribution when "others" category is over 30% .
This is really good for Bitcoin, if 50% would be in USA or Europe alone, it would be maybe worrying. But its perfect now, perfect decentralization.

[legendster]

China has plenty more nodes than it used to when it was much more prominent in trading. When all the zero fee exchanges were commanding the price there I remember seeing node counts of around 60 which goes to show how empty all the stats about China were.

Similarly when people were screaming about losing India, at certain points the node count was in single figures. If they clearly don't care why should we?

It's a very woolly metric but it does give an idea of the level of engagement in a country. It's not exactly the most demanding thing to keep running.

When I joined the crypto space there were barely any nodes in India. Now there are close to 50. Which is, at least 10 times more than what it was back in 2012. So its not like people don't care here. People did and still do. It's just that we're in a democracy and a minority.

[Sancho18]

I have a Bitcoin full node and am happy to make my small contribution to the geography of this distribution.

It does not bring me any material reward, I do it simply because I can.

[legendster]

I have a Bitcoin full node and am happy to make my small contribution to the geography of this distribution.

It does not bring me any material reward, I do it simply because I can.

Where are you from? which region are you making your mark on? Are you running your node from your PC or is it from a VPS or something? Interested because just curious.

[Sancho18]

I have a Bitcoin full node and am happy to make my small contribution to the geography of this distribution.

It does not bring me any material reward, I do it simply because I can.

Where are you from? which region are you making your mark on? Are you running your node from your PC or is it from a VPS or something? Interested because just curious.

My native language is Russian, my region is planet Earth. I don’t see the need to specify in more detail if the purpose of interest is just curiosity (but if you like quests - within a radius of 100km my full node is only one and I contribute to a more decentralized Bitcoin).

A full node works on an old laptop, I just replaced the hard drive in it. It works silently 24/7/365 and does not consume much electricity.

[fillippone]

- Has China lost its leading position in bitcoin ecosystem, that reflected via total bitcoin nodes in that nation?

There's no strong correlation between total nodes and Bitcoin ecosystem strength.

- Should we use Total Bitcoin Nodes as an indicator for level of powerful contribution of nation on bitcoin global network?

No, because :
1. Total Bitcoin Node only show node which allow incoming connection and detected by other node.
2. Cost to run full node isn't cheap, especially initial block download/IBD
3. Most users are behind NAT, which makes incoming connection impossible unless they bother to configure "port forwarding" on their router/modem configuration

I don't know if you included those in your first group, but I would also add all TOR nodes, that are transparent to these statistics.
I think they are a not irrelevant percentage of nodes.

More informations here
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/tor.md