The "just use a VPS" advice is actually correct about 80% of the time, which is what makes it so frustrating for the self-hosting crowd.
Hetzner's auction servers run about 30-40 EUR/month for hardware that would cost you $800+ to buy and $15-20/month in electricity alone to run at home. You're not beating that on cost unless you already own the hardware and have cheap power.
Where the VPS bro falls apart is sovereignty. OVH's Strasbourg fire in 2021 vaporized 3.6 million websites in one night because people treated "it's in a data center" as a backup strategy. Hetzner has locked accounts over DMCA disputes with zero appeal process.
For Bitcoin stuff specifically, the calculus flips. Running your node on a VPS means your ISP and the hosting provider see your transaction patterns. The whole point of sovereignty is that your financial activity doesn't route through a third party who can be subpoenaed or pressured. A $200 mini PC under your desk with a Tor connection is worth more than a $500/month bare metal server for that use case.
The "just use a VPS" advice is actually correct about 80% of the time, which is what makes it so frustrating for the self-hosting crowd.
Hetzner's auction servers run about 30-40 EUR/month for hardware that would cost you $800+ to buy and $15-20/month in electricity alone to run at home. You're not beating that on cost unless you already own the hardware and have cheap power.
Where the VPS bro falls apart is sovereignty. OVH's Strasbourg fire in 2021 vaporized 3.6 million websites in one night because people treated "it's in a data center" as a backup strategy. Hetzner has locked accounts over DMCA disputes with zero appeal process.
For Bitcoin stuff specifically, the calculus flips. Running your node on a VPS means your ISP and the hosting provider see your transaction patterns. The whole point of sovereignty is that your financial activity doesn't route through a third party who can be subpoenaed or pressured. A $200 mini PC under your desk with a Tor connection is worth more than a $500/month bare metal server for that use case.