Where Are All The Bitcoin Network Nodes?

As per information released by crypto analytics platform, Data Light, 74% of all the nodes on the Bitcoin Network is present in a total of 10 countries. The United States leads the pack followed by countries in Europe and China. The data revealed elaborate that USA alone boasts of 2,625 nodes. The Americans are followed by Germany with 2016 nodes, and then by France where there are 698. These three countries alone have over 50% of the nodes on the flagship cryptocurrency’s network.

These three giants are followed by the Netherlands and China. Canada along with countries like Ukraine, Brazil and Lithuania comeand can be included in the top 20 countries. They have over 86 nodes. Countries that aren’t in the top 20 notably account for only 1,441 nodes.

What may be surprising is that China, a country with a majority of the network’s hashrate due to the access to cheap energy sources has only 411 nodes. The Next Web says that considerable research indicates that China has the power to potentially “derail Bitcoin and illicitly influence its network” thanks to the miners in the country.

Singapore and the Netherlands are also located in the top 20. As these two countries are relatively small, they end up representing the greatest Bitcoin nodes per capita density, at 17,700 and 32,000 citizens per node, respectively. The US, on the other hand, has 120,000 citizens per Bitcoin node. Bitcoin.org explains that nodes are there to help validate transactions on the network.

A full node is a program that fully validates transactions and blocks. Almost all full nodes also help the network by accepting transactions and blocks from other full nodes, validating those transactions and blocks, and then relaying them to further full nodes.

Most crypto experts advise users to run full nodes so as to help decentralize the cryptocurrency and avoid the existence of a single point of failure. The first person to run a Bitcoin node was Hal Finney. He was on the receiving end of the first-ever Bitcoin transaction as a result of which he received 10 BTC from Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.