Bitcoiners say "don't trust, verify." But what if you're not technical? You can still understand more about what is in Bitcoin's code and what is protecting your money.

Bitcoin's code has grown from 26k lines in 2009 to 780k lines in 2024. But most of this is not needed to run the network. The extra code makes everything safer, easier to digest for developers, and more accessible to users.

'Base code' is what makes the Bitcoin network run. When critics say "nothing is backing Bitcoin", they never consider this agreed-upon set of rules. Try changing the rules and get people to adopt that change. You quickly find out something is indeed backing Bitcoin

Dependencies are a minimum number of well-maintained external tools that Bitcoin uses The biggest ones are LevelDB, a data storage library developed by Google (used in Chrome). And secp256k1, a method to generate public and private keys to control access to your bitcoin.

Localization means translation for local use. Bitcoin Core is fully translated into dozens of languages and partially translated into a few dozen more. That's why this is most of the code! Underappreciated but critical work if we want Bitcoin to be accessible to anyone.

Tests help Bitcoin developers find issues more quickly. As Bitcoin's codebase grows, new additions add new combinations of features. None of these can break, so they must be tested under as many conditions as possible.

Documentation explains what a piece of code is for. It takes developers time to understand this and to check if a piece of code works as intended High-quality documentation makes life easier for developers so that more of them know how parts of Bitcoin's code work.

Who is doing this work? Bitcoin Core developers. They look after the health, security, performance, and decentralization of the network, and propose upgrades to users with those goals in mind. They've been growing Bitcoin's code at a steady and conservative pace for 15 years.

Most of these developers could get high paid jobs at big tech companies.

So who is paying them to work on Bitcoin instead? Some developers get grants from fundraising organizations like @bitcoinbrink, @ChaincodeLabs, @HRF, @OpenSats, and @spiralbtc Some are unpaid.

Finally, where does all this code live? As of 2011 it lives on Github https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin Anyone can download the code and look at it or start contributing. Can you do that for your bank or payments network? This is the power of open-source development.