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Comment by jonstaab | Hacker News Reader

It's accessible by tor because it's primarily a bitcoin/lightning node. If you're not interested in that core value prop, umbrel isn't for you.

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I am amazed to see people are interested in running Bitcoin nodes. As far as I know, none of the people I have talked to about Bitcoin or shit coins have any interest in running a full node. This is the thing that convinced me that cryptocurrency is a fad or worse a place people see to make a quick buck.

When I looked into it, a Bitcoin node took over 300GB of space on your computer. I'd imagine that is over 600 GB now. Is anyone running full nodes on a raspberry pi?

Many people do. A large part of Umbrels initial user base falls in that category. A reliable enough 1TB SSD costs <$100. A full bitcoin node takes ~500GB today.

There have never been more people that run their own bitcoin/lightning node then there are right now.

I'm glad to see that there are sixteen thousand full nodes because the last I heard there were fewer than ten thousand.

I have never spent actual currency to get Bitcoin but I cannot imagine being serious enough about Bitcoin to put tens of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin but then putting that money in Coinbase or something like that. (sorry YC, I know I was wrong about Dropbox and but I think I am still correct about Coinbase).

I run one, it's quite easy and reasonably cheap. I admit the main value prop is feeling smug about your opsec, but the self-sovereignty thesis and culture of bitcoin are genuinely important. A small minority of people (nerds) running their own nodes is a way to keep the wider network more honest and help regular people benefit from using it.

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