Don't Trust, Verify

One of the phrases you will hear a lot of on Bitcoin Twitter is “Don’t Trust, Verify”, which emphases one of the key pillars of Bitcoin’s use of blockchain technology.

We have been so used to putting trust in 3rd parties to handle all kinds of things for us, whether it’s putting money in our bank account or our data, that we just accept what we’re told from them. With Bitcoin’s protocol though, as there are no 3rd parties, who do you turn to to trust?

This is where having no 3rd parties for final payment settlement flips the switch and puts the onus back on those using the network.

As all transactions are on a publicly distributed ledger, you can actually go back through verify them yourself to make sure everything is as it should be, instead of having to trust a 3rd party or someone else to tell you otherwise. Don’t worry, this won’t involve you having to manually do it yourself.

You can set up your own node which is a computer program that will verify all previous transactions to make sure nothing is double-spent and everything is as it should be.

Don’t trust, verify.