From my first post, my journey into Bitcoin, just 2 days ago, I am starting out with my second one, fueled by all your feedback. Thank you so much; I love the community.
I want to share something about Germany and Bitcoin from various perspectives, as far as I can discern. I'd like to ask for a favor: if I forget to mention any perspectives, please let me know. This is my first time experimenting with various text formatting options and incorporating pictures into the text, so please be gentle. I will often use the term DACH, representing Deutschland, Austria, and Confœderatio Helvetica (Switzerland). They all speak German, so often things can be related here. Today, I'll start with #1 The BTC Network Security. I'm considering different parts following: Bitcoin markets, Bitcoin technology, Regulatory, Social Media, Activism, Bitcoin in academic Science.
1.0 Germany and Bitcoin - Network Security
- 1.1 Nodes
- 1.2 Energy Situation & Mining
- 1.3 Core and Lightning Development
1.1 Nodes
The first thing we look at here must be Nodes. The most detailed data I found is from bitnodes. Of course, we don't know what happens behind Tor, but we could assume that the distribution could be at least close to the open ones. In the first picture, you can see the global distribution of total Nodes.
You can see that Germany looks pretty strong here, and even ASNs (Autonomous System Numbers) providers like Hetzer, Telekom, or Vodafone show strength. Frankfurt am Main (773,000 people) is by far the city with the most Nodes worldwide, which is impressive as it has just 20% of the inhabitants of Berlin. In numbers - close to 0.87 Nodes per 1000 inhabitants. I think you can clearly see the difference in the scale of density.
| Country | Inhabitants in Million | Density - Nodes per 1000 |
|---|---|---|
| Netherlands | 17.8 | 0.08 |
| US | 335 | 0.03 |
| Germany | 84.6 | 0.06 |
| Frankfurt | 0.77 | 0.87 |
| Worldwide | 8154 | 0.006 |
Here is a different picture of the distribution from the DACH region to the BTC network with a focus on reachable Nodes:
1.2 Energy Situation & Mining
Mining is strongly dependent on the energy price and the further use of thermal energy output. I don't know how familiar you are with the German power network, but in short words, it's messed up. So let's take a brief look here. We closed nuclear resources, and we will close coal distribution in the upcoming years. Don't get me wrong; I don't like coal at all, but we are doing this without having an alternative for the power demand and making regulatory bases for alternative energies harder from year to year. Resulting in a change from a net power export country to a net import country, mostly relying on coal or nuclear power from France and Poland. You can follow up the switch in the past years with the following charts:
To conclude this, we have a lot of renewable energies, making the countrywide distribution day and night more unstable. We shut down nuclear, a stable distribution of power, the same for incoming coal. So we need more net import (mostly coal energy), resulting in a much higher price.
World, look at us Germans; our way makes so much sense to stop climate change!! (shaking my head in disbelief)
I could go much deeper here, but I'll leave it at this for now.
To conclude this point, mining in Germany doesn't matter much on a worldwide scale, but with 40 cents per kWh, it only makes sense if you have too much solar power and use the energy for mining instead of contributing it to the power network (the government is giving you something like 7 cents per kWh here). If I will write about BTC technologies in DACH there is a lot to add to the topic of mining but right now, when it comes to network security it doesn´t play a significant role.
1.3 Core and Lightning Development
As I am not really into this topic, I can just name two people here, but I think the topic definitely belongs to network security. We have a lot of programmers with high academic degrees here in DACH. I would not be surprised, if the anonymous distribution to the programming part is much more significant.
If you keep tabs on these two individuals, you'll uncover numerous fascinating interviews and insightful English podcasts. Both of them are exceptionally forthright and articulating some issues with clarity.
- Jonas Schnelli - Core Developer since 2013
- Rene Pickhardt - Lightning Developer
Conclusion
I look forward to your criticisms and feedback, and please tell me if you want me to prolong this story with other perspectives. It consumed around 4 hours to compile all the data. At first i wanted to deep dive in every topic with that post, but was not feasible. :D
What are your thoughts on Germany's impact on network security? I find myself a little bit astonished; delving into this topic at such a profound level was also new for me.