My Raspberry Pi Now Runs Umbrel and Bitcoin Knots

My Raspberry Pi has been running since 10PM last night. I loaded Umbrel on the microSD card, and a have a 2TB Western Digital NVME for storage.

I run Bitcoin Knots. It gives me a bit more control than running Bitcoin Core.

So I've been downloading the blockchain for 18 hours. the dashboard says 19.41% synced. I'm guessing that it will be a total of four or five days in all to get the whole blockchain. Not a big deal other than getting over my impatience to start using the node.

I haven't really kept up to speed on the whole Bitcoin Core vs. Bitcoin Knots debate that is going on right now. I just like being able to configure more with Knots than is available in Core (without having developer-level knowledge).

On the other side, I use Sparrow Wallet on another Raspberry Pi to do all transactions on. That one is only plugged in when I need to use it.

I have watch-only wallets in the blue wallet app. I don't transact from the phone.

A lot of my BTC holdings have been purchased through KYC sources. Haven't really been that concerned about privacy since I'm not doing anything nefarious with it. I transfer the BTC right away from the hot wallet to self custody.

I figure that governments, with all their resources, could figure out that I've purchased BTC at some point in time if they wanted -- even if I tried to hide it.

I am sure that there are some ways to get BTC without it being tied to me, but currently, it's not a huge concern for me.

What's Going On With OP_Return?

One change coming in Bitcoin Core 30 is about OP_RETURN. OP_RETURN is a part of Bitcoin that lets you attach extra data to a transaction. The outputs created this way cannot be spent, so they do not pile up in the UTXO set. People have used it to write short messages, store hashes, or add proofs directly onto the blockchain.

For a long time, OP_RETURN was limited to 80 bytes. That is about enough for a short line of text or a fingerprint of some data. It kept things small and made sure Bitcoin stayed focused on money. If you wanted to store anything bigger, you had to find tricky workarounds.

The new update increases the bytes. In Core 30, OP_RETURN will allow much more data. Some people are saying things like 1000 bytes and others are just throwing out numbers as far as I can tell. It's proposed that you can even have more than one OP_RETURN in a single transaction. In theory, someone could fill an entire block if they wanted to pay the fee. This makes it easier to store data in a “clean” way that does not add extra baggage to the UTXO set.

Some YouTube videos and articles I've read position this is a good move. They say that it gives developers more room to experiment without having to use hacks that waste space. Others are worried that it will invite spam or encourage people to use Bitcoin for things that have nothing to do with payments. Bigger transactions also mean more data for every node to download and store, which can be tough for smaller setups like a Raspberry Pi.

I really can't speak to the UTXO or OP_RETURN thing. I've never used them as far as I know (but I don't know much, obviously). I just know that it's going to take a long time to download the blockchain now, and I paid $119 for the NVME drive to do it. I know that the blockchain will grow, but I don't like the idea that it will get so big that I'll have to wait a month or two to get the blockchain downloaded and set a new node up in the future.

For me, I want Bitcoin to remain practical. I've always heard that developers should "play around" in a dev enviroment, but the production environment should always been acceptable and friendly to the end user.

It's kind of like mining bitcoin.

Honestly, it's gotten to the point where a guy like me has almost no chance of mining BTC at home. The cost of electricty, hardware, and chances of mining a block being very slim make any BTC mined almost not worth it. Sure, I could run those small ESP32 lottery miners, but those are for fun. The chances of hitting a block just are non-existent.

There are pools that one could join, but again you have the electricty and hardware costs, and the amount the pool earns may not make sense. the margins seem pretty slim right now since you have to split the earnings with the pool and all the other miners in the pool.

The bottom line is that if setting up a node, just like mining BTC is too hard for regular people to do, then slowly, the project will die over time, OR... There will be just a few entities that will hold the control. Even if it seems like everyone has a bit of the control, what if those big entities decided to change something? sure, you don't have to go along with it, but then you also might lose a lot of functionality or something. Obviously, I am not really good with words, but you get what I'm saying.