PSA running a node CAN be simple.

Before you start: if your first question is, what is a bitcoin node? This guide obviously isn't for you, yet. This is for a guide for bitcoiners. Someone who already has their bitcoin in cold storage but might be using ledger etc with their software and want to increase their understanding and maybe start increasing their privacy. I'm not going into security practices that should be obvious to you by now.

Lately, I've been seeing many people buying custom hardware to run their node. People trying to work with Linux OS & struggling etc. I see people buying custom installations from third parties. It doesn't need to be complicated or expensive.

A node is just the bitcoin wallet software (Bitcoin Core). It's free to download from bitcoincore.org and available for all OS.

The only things you actually need:

• around 550gb of storage (can be a usb device). You may want more like 1tb for some future-proofing.

• any computer or laptop (Windows, Mac or Linux)

Download Bitcoin Core. Run it and it will download the entire blockchain. This will take a long time. Note: If using an external HDD you will direct the software to it where it asks you where the data will be stored on initial setup.

So you can use your hardware wallets and access coin control features, you can download Sparrow or Specter and both of these detect an instance of bitcoin core when running. Sparrow has guides on how to do this, just search "connect my bitcoin node to sparrow"

There you have it, your own node, and no more snooping from ledger, jade, bitbox or whoever runs the node of your current hardware device.

My advice. Learn by doing. Get it installed. Don't let people scare you from learning, big business makes big money from fear.

Notes:

• You can now take your time and learn how to tweek settings such as running through tor (not necessary but interesting). Opening port 8330 (I think) if it isn't already.

• You don't need a 550gb drive for storage you can "prune" the node, this can be done during setup too. Just be aware that your node will not access the older blocks it just keeps the more recent ones upto whatever your GB allowance was. I tried this and because my wallet was older than the pruned data I had, I was left with a useless (to me) node!