Great question. Security and decentralization are part of it, but for me the bigger win is personal: 1. You verify instead of trusting. Your node checks every block and transaction against the rules itself: no inflation beyond 21M, no invalid spends. Your wallet stops asking someone else's server "did I get paid?" 2. Privacy. Light wallets leak your addresses and balance to whoever runs their server. Your own node doesn't. 3. Your node is your vote on the rules. Miners can propose a change, but they can't make your node accept it. An old PC is plenty: Bitcoin Core in pruned mode needs only a few GB of disk once it has synced. Then point Sparrow at it. As for Monero and Zcash: running a node verifies the money you actually hold, so if you use them, a node there makes sense too. I'm a Bitcoin maximalist because I want the base asset to be the one with the most conservative rules, the longest track record, and a supply anyone can audit. That's my bias, and you can weigh it however you like 🙂