Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is officially running a Bitcoin node. He shared a tweet to his 5.2 million followers with the phrase “running Bitcoin.”
This is a reference to the late Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney, who famously tweeted “Running bitcoin” on January 11, 2009. Just eight days after Bitcoin’s genesis block went live and the blockchain was set in motion.
Jack Dorsey’s tweet also included a screenshot of software called Bitcoin. The program was synchronizing with the BTC blockchain at the time Dorsey took the screenshot. Meaning it was downloading the chain’s entire history onto the device.
Bitcoin Node Software
A Bitcoin node is software running the Bitcoin blockchain. It stores every transaction ever made on the Bitcoin network and checks whether they are all valid transactions.
It also enables someone to create transactions and submit them to the network. Currently, there are 7,300 nodes on the network, not counting those that are hidden.
Dorsey revealed he had set up the BTC node by using the M1 Macbook chip, which is the latest of Apple’s laptop processors. However, he pointed out that he is not going to become a Bitcoin miner.
As a result, he will not receive a share of the block reward. Instead, nodes serve to host an immutable copy of the blockchain.
They make sure that the true shape of the blockchain remains in as many copies as possible, so that no one would be able to hack and change the majority. Dorsey essentially is contributing to Bitcoin’s network security, alongside somewhere between 7,000 and 11,000 other users.
Dorsey is a longtime proponent of Bitcoin. In 2014, some engineers at his payments company Square asked if they could integrate the leading cryptocurrency into its online store.
In February 2019, Dorsey appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he proclaimed that the Internet will have a currency. “[Bitcoin] is something that was born on the internet, that was developed on the internet, that was tested on the Internet,” he said at the time.
Later in December 2019, Dorsey created an offshoot of Square, called Square Crypto, which was destined to work on open-source Bitcoin development. A year later, he showed even more faith in BTC by investing $50 million of the firm’s cash into it.
