I want to register my first full node here. Not to get sats like many sausage stuffers here. But because I found a lot of useful information and a community that really understands the importance of Bitcoin as money and a tool for sovereignty, at least some here do. And so I want to record the milestones of my evolution as a bitcoiner on my nym in SN.

Ever since I began to understand bitcoin and what it was all about, I understood that I needed to help decentralize the network, not depend on third parties, guarantee direct access to the network without intermediaries. It's something that every bitcoiner should do. Many third parties facilitate access to information for those who can't or don't want to run a bitcoin node, but if you care about your money there's nothing better than having a control point for the entire ledger.

I'm not a developer, I don't know how to create code and I don't have any experience in this area and it may seem complicated to do for someone with my profile, but it's not. There's no excuse when you know how to read and use a computer.

My first step was to get a machine, and of the many guides I found, two were very useful in this process. The @DarthCoin and the Minibolt guide, the latter of which I used to build my node. Both focus on building a bitcoin node to use the lightning network, but due to the configuration of my machine I'm going to stop at the bitcoin node for now, since I got a modest machine for it. It's an Intel J1800 Dual Core, 4gb of RAM and a 1TB HD, yeah, HD. These specifications are adequate for running a full bitcoin node until I can upgrade it with a 2TB SSD and RAM to take it to the next step, the lightning node.

Following the steps carefully, learning and trying to understand what each step means was a great learning task, and it will be even more so when the initial download is complete and I start executing the commands. I preferred it this way via Ubuntu Server, having to type in the commands instead of a graphical interface. Writing the code makes me feel like I'm using the thing from the root, without intermediaries, as silly as that sounds.

I'm going to look here on SN for any information that can help me maintain and improve my node. The next step is to have my own lightning channel without relying on a lot of custodial solutions.