Running your own Bitcoin node is one of the most powerful actions you can take to secure financial sovereignty and protect the network’s decentralization.

Bitcoin nodes independently verify transactions and enforce consensus rules, ensuring no single entity—be it governments, corporations, or influential players like BlackRock or Michael Saylor—can dictate how Bitcoin evolves.

Here’s why it matters 👇🏽

1. Decentralization Is Freedom

A network is only as decentralized as its participants. When you run a node, you become a part of the consensus mechanism that ensures Bitcoin remains neutral, censorship-resistant, and immune to centralized control.

2. Verification, Not Trust

Bitcoin’s power lies in its ability to eliminate the need for trust. By running a node, you verify every transaction and block yourself, instead of relying on others who may have vested interests. This ensures you’re transacting on the Bitcoin network as it was designed—not on a version compromised by corporate or governmental interests.

3. Preventing Centralized Upgrades

Players like BlackRock and influential figures might push for changes to Bitcoin that align with their agendas, potentially undermining its core principles. Running your own node gives you the power to reject unwanted upgrades and stick to Bitcoin’s original ethos.

4. Strengthening the Network

The more nodes in the network, the more robust and resistant it becomes to attacks or collusion by centralized entities. Your node helps secure this public good for everyone.

Bitcoin is a tool for freedom, but that freedom only lasts if we actively protect it. Running a node is not just a technical act—it’s a declaration of independence. Don’t let the promise of Bitcoin be steered by the powerful. Take control. Verify. Secure your sovereignty.

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For anyone who decides to run their own node, some notes from my personal experience with this:\

1) initial synchronisation took weeks, until I gave the host 16GB ram and changed the setup from 1 HDD to 2 HDDs in a LVM volume. The RAM increase together with increased disk throughput made a big difference. Would have been even better to be able to use SSD and/or striped RAID.\

2) once synchronised, much less RAM is needed - right now my node is using less than 2GB\

3) the host is currently using just under 700GB disk space, so have at the very least 1TB for your node.\

4) any CPU should be fine\

5) after applying some limits in the config file, I get on average 1.2Mb/s upload and 30Kb/s download network utilisation\

\

Config file options to consider on top of what is in the guides:\

# limit network utilisation - I used 84G as the value, didn't do much testing\

maxuploadtarget=84G

\# allow peerbloomfilters so Bisq can use the node\

peerbloomfilters=1

\# whitelist some hosts which you want to be able to use the node\

whitelist=bloomfilter,download,noban,mempool,relay@192.168.1.1\

whitelist=bloomfilter,download,noban,mempool,relay@192.168.1.2

\# allow JSON-RPC from those hosts too. It may be possible to tighten permissions but for me limiting the access to a few trusted hosts is good enough. Remember to keep localhost in there so you can run cli commands from the host.\

rpcallowip=127.0.0.1

rpcallowip=192.168.1.1\

rpcallowip=192.168.1.2

\# listen on the public IP and localhost\

rpcbind=192.168.1.100\

rpcbind=127.0.0.1

\# configure the username and password for the rpc account\

# sparrow and local cli commands need this, bisq does not\

rpcpassword=yourpass\

rpcuser=youruser

\

For me personally, the biggest benefit is faster sync times for wallets and Bisq when connecting to my own node instead of public ones.

For anyone who decides to run their own node, some notes from my personal experience with this:\

1) initial synchronisation took weeks, until I gave the host 16GB ram and changed the setup from 1 HDD to 2 HDDs in a LVM volume. The RAM increase together with increased disk throughput made a big difference. Would have been even better to be able to use SSD and/or striped RAID.\

2) once synchronised, much less RAM is needed - right now my node is using less than 2GB\

3) the host is currently using just under 700GB disk space, so have at the very least 1TB for your node.\

4) any CPU should be fine\

5) after applying some limits in the config file, I get on average 1.2Mb/s upload and 30Kb/s download network utilisation\

\

Config file options to consider on top of what is in the guides:\

# limit network utilisation - I used 84G as the value, didn't do much testing\

maxuploadtarget=84G

\# allow peerbloomfilters so Bisq can use the node\

peerbloomfilters=1

\# whitelist some hosts which you want to be able to use the node\

whitelist=bloomfilter,download,noban,mempool,relay@192.168.1.1\

whitelist=bloomfilter,download,noban,mempool,relay@192.168.1.2

\# allow JSON-RPC from those hosts too. It may be possible to tighten permissions but for me limiting the access to a few trusted hosts is good enough. Remember to keep localhost in there so you can run cli commands from the host.\

rpcallowip=127.0.0.1

rpcallowip=192.168.1.1\

rpcallowip=192.168.1.2

\# listen on the public IP and localhost\

rpcbind=192.168.1.100\

rpcbind=127.0.0.1

\# configure the username and password for the rpc account\

# sparrow and local cli commands need this, bisq does not\

rpcpassword=yourpass\

rpcuser=youruser

\

For me personally, the biggest benefit is faster sync times for wallets and Bisq when connecting to my own node instead of public ones.

For anyone who decides to run their own node, some notes from my personal experience with this:\

1) initial synchronisation took weeks, until I gave the host 16GB ram and changed the setup from 1 HDD to 2 HDDs in a LVM volume. The RAM increase together with increased disk throughput made a big difference. Would have been even better to be able to use SSD and/or striped RAID.\

2) once synchronised, much less RAM is needed - right now my node is using less than 2GB\

3) the host is currently using just under 700GB disk space, so have at the very least 1TB for your node.\

4) any CPU should be fine\

5) after applying some limits in the config file, I get on average 1.2Mb/s upload and 30Kb/s download network utilisation\

\

Config file options to consider on top of what is in the guides:\

# limit network utilisation - I used 84G as the value, didn't do much testing\

maxuploadtarget=84G

\# allow peerbloomfilters so Bisq can use the node\

peerbloomfilters=1

\# whitelist some hosts which you want to be able to use the node\

whitelist=bloomfilter,download,noban,mempool,relay@192.168.1.1\

whitelist=bloomfilter,download,noban,mempool,relay@192.168.1.2

\# allow JSON-RPC from those hosts too. It may be possible to tighten permissions but for me limiting the access to a few trusted hosts is good enough. Remember to keep localhost in there so you can run cli commands from the host.\

rpcallowip=127.0.0.1

rpcallowip=192.168.1.1\

rpcallowip=192.168.1.2

\# listen on the public IP and localhost\

rpcbind=192.168.1.100\

rpcbind=127.0.0.1

\# configure the username and password for the rpc account\

# sparrow and local cli commands need this, bisq does not\

rpcpassword=yourpass\

rpcuser=youruser

\

For me personally, the biggest benefit is faster sync times for wallets and Bisq when connecting to my own node instead of public ones.

For anyone who decides to run their own node, some notes from my personal experience with this:\

1) initial synchronisation took weeks, until I gave the host 16GB ram and changed the setup from 1 HDD to 2 HDDs in a LVM volume. The RAM increase together with increased disk throughput made a big difference. Would have been even better to be able to use SSD and/or striped RAID.\

2) once synchronised, much less RAM is needed - right now my node is using less than 2GB\

3) the host is currently using just under 700GB disk space, so have at the very least 1TB for your node.\

4) any CPU should be fine\

5) after applying some limits in the config file, I get on average 1.2Mb/s upload and 30Kb/s download network utilisation\

\

Config file options to consider on top of what is in the guides:\

# limit network utilisation - I used 84G as the value, didn't do much testing\

maxuploadtarget=84G

\# allow peerbloomfilters so Bisq can use the node\

peerbloomfilters=1

\# whitelist some hosts which you want to be able to use the node\

whitelist=bloomfilter,download,noban,mempool,relay@192.168.1.1\

whitelist=bloomfilter,download,noban,mempool,relay@192.168.1.2

\# allow JSON-RPC from those hosts too. It may be possible to tighten permissions but for me limiting the access to a few trusted hosts is good enough. Remember to keep localhost in there so you can run cli commands from the host.\

rpcallowip=127.0.0.1

rpcallowip=192.168.1.1\

rpcallowip=192.168.1.2

\# listen on the public IP and localhost\

rpcbind=192.168.1.100\

rpcbind=127.0.0.1

\# configure the username and password for the rpc account\

# sparrow and local cli commands need this, bisq does not\

rpcpassword=yourpass\

rpcuser=youruser

\

For me personally, the biggest benefit is faster sync times for wallets and Bisq when connecting to my own node instead of public ones.