If you are a noob or only have a small #Bitcoin stack, you’re fully excused from running a node. Though I’d encourage you to. But if you have a big stack and have been around Bitcoin a long time, you100% need to run a node. WILD how many OGs don’t run nodes. With a node in a box it’s easy af, or running on your computer is also quite easy. At most an hour of work and tons of YouTube tutorials are out there.