10 sats \ 6 replies \ @ama 18 Mar \ parent \ on: How to set up an affordable bitcoin node?

No, nodes don't need to run 24/7. For a while I've been running some nodes only at night and during the weekends, when electricity was cheaper.

What happens if I do some transactions, the switch it off and switch on in a few days?

Your wallet will still have your private keys, ready to sign transactions to expend your utxos. The node will synchronize the blockchain when you turn it back on. If it's been just a few days off, synchronization won't take too long.

What I usually do is having small amounts on LN or on-chain wallets on my phones ready for quick small transactions while my nodes are off.

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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @mooz 18 Mar

Great! I got the point ;)

30 sats \ 4 replies \ @amaOP 18 Mar

I'm glad I could help. It's all a little confusing at first, although not complicated.

Perhaps you could start running a testnet Bitcoin node. Synchronization takes much shorter, disk space is much less, and stress for the possibility of making a mistake is also reduced a lot.

Also, it's cool helping run the testnet and you can try any crazy thing you might think about. :-)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @amaOP 19 Mar

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0 sats \ 1 replies \ @mooz 19 Mar

Good idea. I will start with a testnet node in a VM while I‘m still looking for some good hardware for a real full node.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @amaOP 19 Mar

Cool cool cool

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @amaOP 18 Mar

I've just downloaded the whole testnet blockchain. It's taken about three hours and it's only 31GB of space. I'm going to leave it running on the P4 alongside the prune BTC node and the full LTC node for the moment. :-)