Quote from: Holliday on March 20, 2017, 02:19:25 AM

Quote from: jbreher on March 20, 2017, 01:13:21 AM

Quote from: Holliday on March 19, 2017, 10:22:24 PM

If I have to rely on another person to provide me with the block chain data, that is clearly the need for a trusted third party.

As long as there is no force barring you from firing up a node of your own, your criteria of access to trustlessness is satisfied. If you are unwilling to spend the rather negligible amount of money required to do so, that is not a fault of the system.

You are talking to someone who has been running a node on dedicated hardware 24/7 for 6 years now.

Sorry - I did not mean to offend. That was the rhetorical 'you'. I know you run a node - you've told me so, and if not, I would have assumed you did from your other postings. As do I.

I am more referring to the notion that node operational costs must be kept to an absolute minimum. In my opinion, if a potential operator is not willing to have some skin in the game, they will be worthless as a node anyway.

Though I reiterate my main point above: As long as there is no force barring you from firing up a node of your own, your criteria of access to trustlessness is satisfied.