Explore the Bitcoin Network

Bitcoin is not a company or a server. It is thousands of computers around the world agreeing on one ledger. BTC Mate lets you see that network on a globe.

Short answer: BTC Mate shows reachable Bitcoin nodes on an interactive globe you can rotate, with a timeline from 2009 to today, and current network figures such as hashrate, difficulty and block height. The node data is refreshed periodically from a public node-crawler snapshot, so it is current rather than second-by-second.

What is a Bitcoin node?

A node is a computer running Bitcoin software. It keeps a copy of the blockchain, checks every new transaction and block against the rules, and passes valid ones on to other nodes. Nobody assigns this job; anyone can run a node, and the network exists because many people do. A miner needs a node, but most nodes do not mine: they verify.

"Reachable" nodes are the ones that accept incoming connections, so a crawler can find and count them. Many more nodes run behind home routers or over Tor and are not counted this way, which is why any node count is a lower bound.

Why node distribution matters

The more independent nodes there are, and the more widely they are spread across countries, networks and operators, the harder it is for any single party to change the rules or censor transactions. A network concentrated in one data centre or one jurisdiction would be easy to pressure. Looking at the map is a quick way to see how decentralised the system actually is, not just how decentralised it is said to be.

What the map shows

Reachable nodes on a globe. Each glowing point is a location where reachable nodes were found; brighter clusters mean more nodes. Drag to rotate, tap a hub for details. Links between hubs illustrate how nodes relay data to one another; they are drawn for understanding, not as a literal map of connections.
A timeline from 2009 to today. Scrub or play it to watch the network grow from the first node to today's count. Halvings are marked on the timeline.
Network figures. Reachable nodes, hashrate, block height and difficulty, each with a small trend chart, plus mempool size and recommended fees.
Explanations. How a transaction travels through the network, what the mempool is, how halvings shape the supply, and a glossary. More on the educational content.

Where the numbers come from

Node positions and counts come from a public node crawler that periodically scans the network and publishes a snapshot; BTC Mate refreshes that snapshot about once an hour. Locations are approximate, derived from the network address of each node, and a node behind a VPN or Tor may appear elsewhere or not at all. Hashrate, difficulty, block height and mempool figures come from a public blockchain data provider. BTC Mate displays this public data; it does not run a Bitcoin node itself.

Reading hashrate and difficulty

Hashrate is the total computing power miners are applying to the network, measured in exahashes per second. A higher hashrate means an attacker would need more hardware to rewrite recent history. Difficulty is the network's automatic dial that keeps blocks arriving about every ten minutes: every 2,016 blocks, roughly two weeks, it adjusts up or down to match the hashrate. BTC Mate shows the current difficulty, the estimated change at the next adjustment and how many blocks remain until then.

How this relates to your own Bitcoin

The same public ledger the nodes maintain is what BTC Mate reads when you track a Bitcoin address. Understanding that the ledger is verified by thousands of independent computers, rather than by any company, is the reason a public address can be trusted to show the true balance, and the reason nobody, including BTC Mate, can move your coins without the private key.