00:00 Hey everyone, this is my Bitcoin node.
00:04 Uh there are many like it, but this one
00:06 is mine. You do not need a Bitcoin node.
00:09 Uh there is no reason for an average
00:10 person to own one of these. Although
00:12 we’re going to talk about what it is,
00:14 why people do own them, and how do they
00:17 differ from a Bitcoin miner like this
00:21 little thing with the uh running and
00:23 making noise and trying to secure and
00:25 audit the Bitcoin network. Okay, so what
00:28 is a Bitcoin node? A Bitcoin node uh
00:31 contains an entire copy. This one right
00:34 here contains an entire copy of the
00:36 entire Bitcoin network. All 16 years of
00:40 it, trillions of dollars of value
00:42 transferred over the years, billions of
00:44 transactions, all of that is in this
00:46 little device right here. A Bitcoin at
00:48 node is the official recordkeeper of the
00:51 Bitcoin network. And there are tens of
00:53 thousands of these around the world,
00:55 including Bitcoin nodes running on
00:57 satellites. So, if you ever have to
00:60 worry about, well, what happens if the
01:01 Bitcoin network goes down? First of all,
01:03 it’s not going to. Uh, second, you could
01:05 restart the entire Bitcoin network, the
01:08 entirety of it, with a single node
01:10 anywhere in the world. You could restart
01:12 the entire Bitcoin network even if the
01:14 internet went down. And you need one of
01:16 the tens of thousands of Bitcoin nodes
01:19 that exist in the world. So, what does
01:21 this little guy do? Uh, first of all,
01:22 it’s simple. It’s got a power button and
01:26 it’s got a port to plug in power and
01:29 then you can connect it to your Wi-Fi or
01:30 you can plug it into like your uh you
01:32 know your uh your uh actual physical
01:35 cable for the internet. But this little
01:37 guys uh it keeps a log and a record and
01:40 it audits the entire Bitcoin network.
01:42 Now you may be wondering but wait when I
01:46 talked about a Bitcoin miner which is
01:47 what this little thing is I talk about
01:49 the fact that this secures and audits
01:51 the network. The reason I talk about
01:53 this as securing and auditing the
01:54 Bitcoin network is a minor always goes
01:57 with a Bitcoin node. You cannot mine
02:01 without a Bitcoin node. Now, you can run
02:03 a node all day long without a Bitcoin
02:05 miner. These are standalone. Anyone can
02:07 run these. You do not need to be a
02:09 Bitcoin miner or have Bitcoin mining
02:10 equipment. But if somebody is trying to
02:13 do Bitcoin mining, it always means they
02:15 have a Bitcoin node because otherwise
02:17 this little blue guy would try to be
02:19 would be attempting to secure a network
02:22 that didn’t exist or that it didn’t
02:24 know. So every Bitcoin miner is
02:26 connected to a Bitcoin node, but every
02:28 Bitcoin node uh is not necessarily
02:31 connected to a Bitcoin miner, but they
02:32 do use the Bitcoin miners because that’s
02:34 what’s uh securing the network. And as
02:36 always, I am vastly vastly vastly
02:39 oversimplifying all of this. So if
02:41 you’re a techie, please don’t harass me
02:43 for being, you know, for oversimplifying
02:45 because that’s what I’m doing here.
02:46 Okay, so let’s talk about how these
02:48 works. First of all, any computer can be
02:50 a Bitcoin node. This just happens to be
02:52 an umbrell,
02:55 which is just the easiest way to run a
02:56 Bitcoin node. It is so simple that
02:58 literally you buy it. This one’s cost
03:01 $400. Uh although you can buy you can
03:03 run a Bitcoin node on a computer that
03:05 costs $100, $200. Basically, the
03:08 cheapest of cheap computers uh can run a
03:10 Bitcoin node as long as you have at
03:11 least a one terabyte hard drive. This
03:14 one actually has a two terabyte hard
03:15 drive just so that it will be able to
03:17 run the Bitcoin network for decades into
03:19 the future. Um, but this one costs $400.
03:23 Um, all right. So, let’s talk about what
03:25 this thing does. So, when you plug this
03:27 thing in for the very first time, you
03:29 connect it to your Wi-Fi or you plug it
03:31 into that cable in the back and it uh
03:34 downloads the entire Bitcoin network.
03:37 Every single transaction that has ever
03:39 happened on the Bitcoin network can be
03:41 stored inside this tiny little computer.
03:43 In fact, this one right here, because
03:45 it’s on, it’s plugged into power, it’s
03:47 connected by Wi-Fi, this one is running
03:50 the entire Bitcoin network. 100% of the
03:52 Bitcoin network is running on this
03:55 computer right now. So, that is what uh
03:58 that’s what you can do here. It’s really
03:60 amazing. Okay, so um and it takes about
04:03 this one took between 21 hours and 23
04:06 hours to download the entire Bitcoin
04:08 network. And we’ll look at sort of what
04:10 that looks like. So again to recap, this
04:14 logs, audits, and stores the entire
04:18 Bitcoin network, every transaction in
04:20 the entirety of history. This is a
04:23 Bitcoin miner that secures the Bitcoin
04:26 network. The world has a billion or more
04:29 of these in it. There are I mean
04:32 billions of computations, trillions,
04:34 quadrillions, seextillions, septillions
04:37 of computations per second on the
04:38 Bitcoin network run by things like
04:40 these. The entire Bitcoin network only
04:43 has, you know, tens of thousands of
04:44 these and you only need one. So in some
04:48 ways it’s, you know, there’s tens of
04:50 thousands of nodes worth of redundancy,
04:53 including Bitcoin nodes running on
04:54 satellites. So even if something took
04:56 out the entire network on Earth, these
04:60 Bitcoin nodes are running on satellites,
05:02 meaning there’s copies of the entire
05:04 Bitcoin network on satellites. Okay, so
05:07 with that being said, um what does this
05:09 thing do? So this thing downloads the
05:11 entire Bitcoin network and every single
05:13 block, more than 800,000 blocks, it
05:16 downloads the block of transactions. It
05:18 verifies that it’s linked to the block
05:20 before it. It goes through every single
05:23 transaction in the entire block making
05:25 sure that no transaction is using
05:27 Bitcoin that was already spent.
05:29 Basically uh verifying that every single
05:31 user has the legal rights to the Bitcoin
05:33 they are trying to spend in that block.
05:36 It does all of that. It audits every
05:38 single transaction in the entire block
05:40 which is 10 minutes worth of
05:41 transactions. And then it stores it
05:44 away. And then it takes the next block.
05:46 And it does that. And it takes about
05:47 again somewhere between 21 hours and 23
05:50 hours to do that for the entire Bitcoin
05:53 network. You know, billions of
05:55 transactions, trillions of dollars in
05:57 value. It does it all in about 21 to 23
05:60 hours to audit 16 years. And then what
06:03 it does now is it communicates with
06:05 every other well with a sort of a
06:07 critical mass of the other Bitcoin
06:08 nodes. And every time somebody processes
06:10 a transaction on Coinbase or to their
06:13 Bitkey device, uh it shares it with a
06:16 Bitcoin node that looks like this or you
06:18 know a bigger version of this and that
06:20 Bitcoin node immediately shares it with
06:22 a bunch of others which could share it
06:23 with a bunch of others and in less than
06:25 a second all of the Bitcoin nodes in the
06:28 entire world are aware of that
06:29 transaction. So when you transmit
06:31 something on the Bitcoin network, the
06:32 nodes all chatter about it instantly and
06:36 within less than a second all of the
06:38 nodes in the entire world are aware of
06:40 your transaction and they’re all in sync
06:43 to make sure that you that you are not
06:45 trying to spend Bitcoin that’s already
06:46 been spent and that you’ve uh you know
06:48 you followed all the Bitcoin rules. And
06:54 additionally,
06:55 every time a Bitcoin miner mines a new
06:58 Bitcoin block, it uh gives that new
07:01 Bitcoin block to a node. The node
07:03 verifies that it’s legit, that it
07:05 follows all the rules, and then it
07:07 propagates that to all of the other
07:08 nodes. So, you can run the entire
07:11 Bitcoin network on one node and one
07:14 Bitcoin miner. Literally the entire
07:16 Bitcoin network could run with just this
07:19 at my house. Now, obviously, there’s no
07:21 benefit to having just Bitcoin at my
07:23 house. So, uh all of these are
07:25 connected. This is connected with all of
07:27 the the uh the um the Bitcoin miners in
07:31 the entire world are all linked
07:32 together. They’re all mining. And that’s
07:35 what these are doing. But there’s a
07:36 billion of them. And the tens of
07:38 thousands of Bitcoin nodes are all
07:40 talking to each other all of the time as
07:42 well. And that’s why you can transact
07:43 Bitcoin anywhere in the world, anytime,
07:45 day or night. And again, if it can’t get
07:47 there by landline, it’ll use satellites
07:49 to uh to replicate the Bitcoin network
07:52 via satellite to make sure all the nodes
07:54 stay up to date all the time. Okay. So,
07:56 what is the back end of this look like?
07:58 So, I’m going to do a screen share here
08:00 and show you what it looks like. Give me
08:03 one second here to do that. Um, I don’t
08:05 usually do screen shares on my laptop,
08:08 so give me a second. I was doing it just
08:11 prior to this. And let me figure out how
08:14 to do that.
08:16 One second.
08:21 It is not immediately showing me how to
08:24 do that. It’s acting like it wanted me
08:25 to do that before I started, but let me
08:29 see if I can figure it out.
08:35 Where is the share screen?
08:39 Well, before I started recording, it
08:41 gave me a share my screen option, and
08:44 now it is not giving me that option. So,
08:46 looks like I’m going to have to end this
08:48 video and start another one that uh will
08:52 let me share my screen. So, I will do
08:53 that right now.