Is blockchain.com the only place where you can see the blockchain? I've been investigating Bitcoin and when I would try to find out where the blockchain is stored, I was told that it is stored on everyone's computer. Then I would ask where was the blockchain stored on my computer and the response was it is stored in your wallet.
Since Bitcoin is decentralized, I supposed that it must be found anywhere. But I found no information about that.
My question is actually: Where can I see the blockchain without going to blockchain.com?
Blockchain.com is a wallet service and provides a &quot;blockchain explorer&quot;. The company is named after the Bitcoin network's transaction journal, the blockchain.
Bitcoin is a permissionless peer-to-peer network. Users interact with the network by running software that implements the Bitcoin protocol.
There are various types of software that interact with the network to different degrees, but the backbone of the network are the so called &quot;fully validating nodes&quot; or fullnodes. Fullnodes distinguish themselves by downloading and verifying the complete blockchain. Archival nodes maintain a complete copy of the blockchain, while pruning nodes discard the oldest parts of the blockchain data after using it to calculate the current ledger. New nodes joining the network download the blockchain data from existing nodes.
Most Bitcoin software does not download, verify and store the complete blockchain. These &quot;thin-clients&quot; rely on other nodes or central services to serve data about the Bitcoin network's state to them. Wallet software (such as e.g. the Blockchain wallet) usually belongs to this category of node.
So, to answer your other question: your computer only stores the blockchain if you run a fullnode, e.g. Bitcoin Core. Then you can &quot;see&quot; the blockchain by requesting data from the fullnode. There are various projects that bundle visualization or blockexplorer software with the fullnode, to make the &quot;seeing&quot; part a bit more user friendly. ;)