BTCS, founded 11 years ago, initially launched as an e-commerce platform enabling customers to purchase goods with Bitcoin. As the cryptocurrency space grew, the company broadened its operations to become the first public Bitcoin miner.

However, the so-called crypto winter of 2016-2017 brought serious challenges, with Bitcoin prices falling over 70%, and fierce competition from larger mining operations in China and Canada growing, BTCS was forced to shut its mining operations.

In response, BTCS decided to innovate and shifted its focus to Ethereum staking, leveraging the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake model, which requires less hardware. Today, the company manages over 500 Ethereum nodes. 

In early 2024, BTCS further expanded into the Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) marketplace, optimizing transactions with specialized builders and relays to boost profitability.

Learning from its previous endeavors, it became clear that operational efficiency was key to its growth and after a thorough infrastructure evaluation by Ben Hunter its Vice President of Engineering, BTCS started to migrate its nodes from AWS to Latitude.sh.

Nasdaq: BTCS is currently the only pure-play publicly traded company in the crypto sector specializing in operating within the Ethereum infrastructure.  As BTCS continues to grow it plans to strengthen its partnership with Latitude.sh to support future expansion. 

Additionally, it's worth emphasizing that BTCS operates not only Ethereum nodes, but works with several other blockchain networks, including Avalanche, Cosmos, Akash, and Kava.

How Latitude.sh is Empowering BTCS

The transition to Latitude.sh has yielded immediate benefits for BTCS, with significant cost savings and improved performance. 

"We estimate we’re currently saving approximately 30%, but expect our savings to grow as we migrate additional machines run on AWS to Latitude.sh," said Michal Handerhan, Chief Operating Officer at BTCS. 

This cost efficiency is expected to increase as BTCS continues to migrate key infrastructure to Latitude.sh bare metal.

A pivotal development in this partnership is the ChainQ online analytics platform, designed to streamline blockchain transaction searches. 

"We're improving, ChainQ, our AI-powered online analytics platform which allows us to basically search through blockchain transactions," Handerhan explained. 

Utilizing best-in-class servers and technology hosted on Latitude.sh, BTCS has experienced a dramatic performance boost.

We're seeing around a hundred times faster queries than what we originally had on AWS, as a result of our shift to Latitude and other proprietary improvements.

Michal Handerhan, Chief Operating Officer

“With BTCS’s AI-driven platform ChainQ, you just type in a question, it gets converted into a SQL statement, on our data which is then returned back,” Handerhan described.

This efficiency not only improves performance but also reduces operational costs, further amplifying the financial benefits of the migration.

In contrast to the complexities of AWS billing, BTCS appreciates the simplicity and transparency of Latitude.sh's pricing model. 

"We were spending a fortune on traffic and even more on logs. AWS has so many cost factors that can add up, sometimes without you even realizing it," Handerhan shared. 

He recounted an instance where an unnoticed logging service resulted in an unexpected $6,000 bill. "With you guys, it's just one bill and we have everything we need," he concluded.

Why BTCS Chose Latitude.sh Over Competitors

“When evaluating infrastructure providers, we considered Latitude.sh, OVH, and Servers.com among others, and Latitude.sh was the clear winner,” said Benjamin Hunter, VP of Engineering.

These challenges underscored the reliability and professionalism that BTCS found exclusively in Latitude.sh when leveraging bare metal servers. According to Hunter, the benefits went beyond just customer service, as Latitude.sh offered several standout technical advantages:

• True Bare Metal Performance: "Latitude.sh provides consistent, high-performance compute without the ‘noisy neighbor’ effect common in AWS. More than that, we get lower latency and more predictable throughput, which is especially important for time-sensitive blockchain validation and consensus operations.”

• Cost Efficiency with Predictable Bandwidth: “Latitude.sh includes generous network allowances (20 TB of free egress and no ingress charges), significantly lowering the total cost of ownership when transferring large volumes of blockchain data..”

• Enhanced Customization and Control: "You can choose from various hardware configurations tailored for your exact workload requirements," Hunter noted. Latitude.sh's integration with tools like Terraform and robust APIs provides fine-grained infrastructure control.

• Superior Network Performance and Security: "Latitude.sh’s infrastructure is built on a premium network with features that support our specific needs," offering low-latency connections and built-in DDoS mitigation, ensuring secure, high-speed blockchain transaction processes.

• Simplified Management and Deployment: "Latitude.sh offers an intuitive user interface, simplified billing, and developer-friendly APIs that streamline server provisioning and management," Hunter noted. This contrasts with AWS's complex service catalog which can slow down operations. At Latitude.sh instance deployment takes only a few seconds.

• Tailored for High-Throughput, Data-Intensive Workloads: "Latitude.sh’s dedicated hardware is optimized not only for raw compute, but also for heavy storage and network demands. The last-generation NVMe drives work wonders for maintaining distributed ledgers, processing an extensive number of blockchain transactions, and supporting Web3 and DeFi applications with consistent performance.”

Through enhanced performance, cost efficiency, streamlined operations, and amazing customer service, Latitude.sh has become a key partner in BTCS's continued growth and innovation in the crypto space.

Are you ready to enhance your infrastructure like BTCS? 

Create your Latitude.sh account today and unlock the power of bare metal servers to boost your Web3 infrastructure.