A look at the geographical distribution of Bitcoin and Ethereum listening nodes

They embody the verify don't trust ethos of cryptocurrency. 

Non-mining nodes are software that confirm the rules of the network, allowing users to validate transactions. Don't trust that your bitcoin purchase on a wallet is legitimate? A node can verify.

They also allow crypto holders share block data with other users. Still, tracking the exact number of nodes in the network is close to impossible because some nodes deliberately don’t have a TCP port (port 8333) open to allow other nodes to connect and therefore are not publicly visible. Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr’s site estimates that there are now about 73,900 Bitcoin nodes while Bitcoin statistics page Statoshi estimates about 78,500.

What can be tracked accurately, though, are the so-called listening nodes with open TCP ports, which makes them publicly visible. There are currently about 9,400 Bitcoin and 8,200 Ethereum listening nodes. 

Since listening nodes also broadcast an IP address, if we assume that they are not using a VPN or Tor to obfuscate their origin, we can also deduce the country from which they are running. Currently, the U.S. has the most Bitcoin and Ethereum nodes (4,762) by far, followed by Germany (2,690), China (1,595), Singapore (962) and France (780).

Source: Earn, ethernodes.org, The Block

Still, this doesn't necessarily tell the entire story. In order to ascertain a more precise of node activity in each country, the size of the country should be considered. Diving the number of nodes by the country’s population, shows Singapore easily leads the way with 171.4 nodes per million people; followed by Hong Kong (100.0). Apart from Singapore and Hong Kong, several European countries follow — Ireland (46.0), Finland (44.8), Netherlands (39.3), Germany (32.5), Luxembourg (24.9), and Lithuania (24.7).

Source: Earn, ethernodes.org, The Block

Source: Earn, ethernodes.org, The Block

East West Divide

Interestingly, the number of bitcoin nodes as a percentage of the total number of nodes varies drastically on a country by country basis. Denmark, Lithuania and Czech Republic are the most skewed to Bitcoin. In contrast, China, Hong Kong and South Korea are the most skewed towards Ethereum. Asian countries tend to be skewed towards Ethereum while European countries towards Bitcoin. 

Source: Earn, ethernodes.org, The Block

Source: Earn, ethernodes.org, The Block