Bitcoin is not a new name in today’s world but setting up your own bitcoin full node is still a time-consuming task.

There are many reasons to have a full node, like having a higher degree of privacy as you can create and manage your own wallet instead of having to trust a third-party service provider.

Running any kind of bitcoin wallet that does not require you to run a full node means that you have to place a certain degree of trust in the service provider.

A web-based wallet requires you to trust the central node through which your transactions are broadcasted and even lightweight clients like Electrum require that you trust their servers. Even an SPV client requires trust in a third party. With your own full node, you don’t need to worry about trusting a third party.

This course covers the reason why you need a full node and how to get one.

We provide you an out of the box environment for bitcoin full node which is a virtual machine with a complete preinstalled setup. It includes the bitcoind and bitcoin-QT GUI and synched ledger. The bitcoin ledger is pre-synched making it easier and faster for you to fully synch the ledger.

Having your own full bitcoin node provides you the following benefits:

1. Gives you a higher degree of privacy and keeps you safe
2. Gives you full control

The full node VM is available on:

1. Google Cloud Platform
2. AWS
3. Microsoft Azure