Germany Overtakes USA in Bitcoin Nodes

Of those, 1833 are in Germany and 1821 in USA with France a distant third at 549 while China has just 152 bitcoin nodes.

Germany was close to overtaking USA in 2019, but back then America was running 2,400 nodes while Germany was at 1,900.

That was still notable however because Germany’s population is some four times lower than USA’s, while its economy is some five times smaller, yet it has managed to overtake USA.

That appears to be in part because American node numbers fell during this period by some 700 publicly reachable nodes, while German ones have held the line.

It’s not clear what these nodes are used for as it can range from some kid in his basement playing with bitcoin to a global entity like Coinbase.

Yet what appears to be a bit clear is that Germany is an under-appreciated coding powerhouse in part because quite a few American leet coders have chosen the country as their base due to its strong privacy laws.

One of the most striking image of our times is Google street view which covers in blue all of USA and Europe, but almost none of Germany and only Germany.

There’s the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Germany as well which is described as Europe’s largest association of hackers with 7700 registered members.

There are quite a few bitcoin coders there of course, including some bitcoin core developers, and who knows, Satoshi Nakamoto himself may well be in Germany.

Another explanation however may well be that America is facing a bit of a backlash due to the entrenched banking interests having significant influence over regulators which are engaging in a power grab without a mandate from law making bodies.

Some crypto companies are now starting to ban USA from participating so as to deny it jurisdiction, creating a somewhat more restrictive atmosphere there.

Cryptonians therefore may start running VPNs by default, or for bitcoin nodes they may start running them over Tor, concealing the geographical presence of the operator.

That indicates a changing wind of sorts as America’s global influence dwindles, largely to the gains of Europe which does not have mass surveillance and does not have the same level of economic capture by the banking establishment that appears to have all the key positions in USA.

The political environment in Europe therefore is a lot more permissive and liberal, with Germans free to reveal their location without fear of the state. While in USA, two decades of war have eroded the constitutional limits of state power as well as general political accountability with some regulators acting as a government onto itself.

Talent wants freedom, and therefore it is no wonder that in what now must be the most free country in the world of size is where most bitcoin nodes are being run, and per capita it is by far so.