Bitty Kitty: Cat Spoils Bitcoin Node During Price Crash With 'Dirty Protest'

The story of a Bitcoiner cat who sought to disrupt the decentralized network with a "dirty protest".

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A bitcoin node is a central element of the bitcoin (BTC) protocol. For bad actors, attacking nodes and taking them offline is a good strategy to undermine network resilience. For one British Bitcoiner, such an attack happened because his feline friend's actions made his Bitcoin node "unreachable".

Bodl_hodler (who wishes to remain anonymous) told Cointelegraph that he “started using Raspberry Pi as an Umbrel node in January 2021” because he wanted to contribute to the overall decentralization of the Bitcoin network.

Below is a photo of the node in question before the attack. Notice the air vents on the knot, a crucial part of the saga.

Bodl Bitcoin Node. Source: @Bodl_Hodl

Node has been running smoothly since login, confirming Bitcoin blocks on average every 10 minutes based on difficulty adjustment. However, at the end of May 2022, when the price began to drop below $30,000, Bodl "connected to the node for the first time in a long time and it is nowhere to be found on the network".

"So I pulled him out from behind the couch to find he was covered in a crusty diaper of sick cat."

To his horror, Bodl discovered that his big black cat, Pablo, had vomited on the Bitcoin node. The "dirty protest" had affected the node's ability to connect to the internet and function. Bodl explains, "The vomit went through the vents and took the node offline."

Pablo the Bitcoin node attacker and the cat. Source: Bodl

Indeed, if a Bitcoin node goes offline, it no longer contributes to the security of the network, potentially jeopardizing...