By using your own Bitcoin Node you can look up any transaction ever made in the Bitcoin blockchain. If you look up a transaction or address in someone else’s server then your IP address is matched with the transactions and addresses you looked up. That information could be used against you in the future. Worst case scenario if such a database is breached by bad actors then your safety is also at risk if someone knows that you hold a large amount of Bitcoin.

Cloud providers are great, if you don’t care about your privacy… Data stored on a server that you don’t control, is not your data.

StartOS comes with an easy backup functionality built-in! Just connect a USB stick, an external disk or a shared network location and with a press of a button all your services and data gets backed up.

Firstly, with cloud providers you pay a monthly subscription, which means that you accumulate an increasingly higher cost over time. Secondly, to have a similar processing power, RAM memory allocation and NVME SSD storage capacity similar to what a Tjugoen server has, then the monthly cost would be over 1,000sek/month. Finally, some of the convenience you get with cloud hosting, you pay with giving away your privacy.

Be that as it may, everyone is still a target for hackers, big marketing corporations and government agencies. The best place to collect vast amounts of data is in centralised server facilities. By self hosting then you decrease the chances of your data being abused even if you are not a direct target, most of the time people are are just “collateral damage”…

In case of the server breaking down then you can simply restore your services and data to another server. Any Bitcoin wallets created can also be restored in any software wallet you want, even on a phone app such as Blue wallet.