Hi everyone,  I wanted to try and vet some concerns I've had over the past few years regarding updating my Bitcoin core nodes.  It's my hope that the community here can help pet them to rest but if not I can always stick to my v.20x nodes. 

As you know there is no one single piece of software that makes bitcoin bitcoin, but if you look at it in terms of dominant influence over the ecosystem, you would have to say it would be the bitcoin core node.  That being said, here are two big flags I've seen recently that have me hesitant on upgrading from an older version of core:


- The first red flag issue I had when the download package the Windows signing key for one of their releases (sometime after v 20.1).

- The current issue is there is an obvious discrepancy between what bitcoin dot org and bitcoincore dot org list as the current version (the former states v 23 and the later v 24).

Obviously there have been tons and tons of changes since v. 20 and clearly the most powerful organizations on earth do not want bitcoin to eat their lunch (banks, governments etc).  That said I'm sure that these entities have been constantly trying to tweak bitcoin to their liking-whatever that may entail.  That said, if anyone has any feedback on the two noted concerns above I'd really appreciate it. 

TIA!