My first impressions of the Casa Bitcoin Node

When Casa announced their plug-and-play Bitcoin and Lightning node, I immediately pre-ordered one for myself. It was an impulse buy — I certainly didn’t need a Bitcoin node nor would I call myself an avid early adopter or tinkerer.

Motivation

My prior experience with running a Bitcoin full node had been mediocre. I didn’t have 210+ GB of disk space to spare on my main PC, so I thought about using a spare notebook instead. But even there I would have to wait hours every time I wanted to use it while it downloaded all the latest blocks I had missed while the notebook was offline.

The Casa Node promised to change that: a small box that would sit unobtrusively next to my router in the living room, always in sync and ready to make and receive payments. My main motivation behind testing the Casa node was to see if there was a magical experience to be had. A product that would make running a full node accessible to regular people, without home servers that are always online, or the time to wait for their home computer node to catch up.

Unboxing

Around two months after my initial order, I received a letter. Instead of my Casa Node, it was a notice from my local customs office. I don’t remember exactly what the problem was (wish I had taken a photo of their letter) but I was able to resolve it by sending them copies of the order history and payment receipt (within seven days, after which they would have simply returned the…