Own Your Financial Future By Becoming A Fully-Fledged Independent Bitcoin User

Not long after the central banks bailed out the most important financial institutions, all on the brink of collapse as a result of their unlimited greed, in 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published a whitepaper promising financial freedom. Months later, Nakamoto launched the project that would become known as the Bitcoin blockchain.

 

Initially, not everyone could actually ‘run bitcoin’ as the late computer scientist Hal Finney tweeted out more than ten years ago.

 

In fact, very few skilled cryptographers and computer scientists immersed themselves into the Bitcoin universe, in the first few years. To run a full node and mine Bitcoin, you needed extensive knowledge concerning computer hardware and programming.

 

Much has changed since then, fortunately. Now, the process is much more smooth and simple, without any special tech-intensive knowledge required.

 

Buying Bitcoin via a cryptocurrency exchange is just the first step. To truly fulfil Satoshi Nakamoto’s dream, you have to take several new ones in the right direction, towards your own financial freedom.

Step 1: Your Keys, Your Bitcoins

What better way to start than actually owning your crypto funds?

 

If you don’t plan to actively trade your coins, it’s generally a good idea to store them in a wallet you control. On a cryptocurrency exchange, you only know your BTC address and nothing more. If you use a desktop wallet like Electrum or a popular hardware wallet like Ledger or Trezor, you will also have access to your private keys, usually in the form of a user-friendly seed phrase.

 

 

Private keys are essential for your financial freedom. It is the best possible proof you actually own your bitcoins. If you protect the private keys, nobody could ever steal your crypto funds. Be wary though. If you lose the private keys and can’t recover them, your bitcoins will be lost forever.

Step 2: Running Your Own Bitcoin Full Node

 

To make the real jump though, you have to run the Bitcoin full node on your own computer.

Don’t worry, you actually don’t need any special hardware, unless you plan to actually enter the mining business, of course. You can do it using your laptop or even an inexpensive Raspberry Pi. All you need is storage - at least 300 GB, the current size of the blockchain.

 

Any operating system will do: Windows, Linux, or MacOS. The current development team covers all platforms. Moreover, the Bitcoin Core software has a user-friendly interface and you don’t need any programming skills whatsoever to install and run it.

 

Since there is no incentive to run a full node, why do it, still? How about participating in the fascinating consensus protocol, for starters? Most importantly, you can actually help broadcast and validate your own transactions, thus include them in the blockchain, when you run your own Bitcoin full node. At the same time, you can help prevent centralization and make the number one cryptocurrency a truly decentralized network.

Step 3: Be A Part Of The Growing Lightning Network

Since you are a Bitcoin owner, you may have heard about the payment layer built on top of the BTC blockchain. If you are still unsure about it, you can always check BetBTC’s blog about the Lightning Network. Like the platform it was built on, anyone can run his or her own node without any special hardware requirements.

 

 

Since it’s a newer project, the software isn’t that user-friendly and that stable, but the first step toward adoption has already been taken. Lightning Labs - one of the companies participating in the development of the payment layer - has recently released an easy-to-use cross-platform Lightning wallet that can help you achieve the financial freedom you’ve always dreamt of.

You can also use your Bitcoin full node to start and run your Lightning Node, unleashing the full potential of the digital currency. With Lightning, you can make any type of micropayments on the blockchain through your own everyday computer.

Take It To The Next Level: Electrum Personal Server

You can go even further and create your own bridge between a desktop Bitcoin wallet and your own full node. Electrum, for example, has its own network broadcasting any BTC transaction made with the wallet forward, to the Bitcoin blockchain. Instead of relying on other nodes or servers to help you with the transaction, you can create your own Electrum server and do the job yourself. However, there is no easy way to do it; you would need to understand how a terminal or command prompt or basic shell works.

 

 

Electrum Personal Server as in its current state doesn’t have a user-friendly interface, so you need to write commands in a shell to install it and make it work. Still, if you manage to install Electrum Personal Server on your computer that also runs the Bitcoin full node, the Lightning node, and the Electrum wallet, you will truly be financially independent. You won’t rely on any third party anymore, giving you the chance to enjoy crypto at its full potential.