How BitLaunch’s cryptocurrency payment system keeps VPS hosting private

Privacy has become a hot issue across the world as citizens wake up to the surveillance and tracking they’re subjected to online. Extensive snooping by governments, advertisers and social media networks have made it difficult to remain truly private when you perform any activity on the web.

A big part of that is the payment methods many of us utilize daily. Information about your purchases is collected and sometimes monetized by your payment provider, while services require detailed information about you to verify that you’re the legitimate owner of a bank account.

Often, it feels like there’s little choice but to follow this route; the payment alternatives most retailers offer are usually more privacy-invasive, rather than less. BitLaunch, however, is ensuring that’s no longer the case – at least when it comes to VPS servers.

BLPay, launched in celebration of Bitcoin’s 12^th birthday, is BitLaunch’s effort to put payment privacy back in users’ hands. It currently supports Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum, with hopes to add more currencies soon.Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin are supported.

By accepting payments exclusively in cryptocurrency and only requiring an email for sign-up, BitLaunch allows users to spin up a VPS without needing to disclose their name, address, or any other personally-identifying information. This ensures that the user’s identity will be protected even in the case of a data breach or action by law enforcement.

“The more third-party services you utilize the harder it becomes to ensure that each link in the chain protects the privacy and security of your users,” said the company. “BitLaunch Pay ensures that we’re no longer utilizing a middle-man outside of our ecosystem. For you, the customer, that means better privacy.”

However, BitLaunch Pay, it seems, has advantages beyond privacy. The new payment system increases usability with zero-confirmation BTC deposits. As a result, users can make deposits to their account very quickly even when the bitcoin network is busy. Rather than wait around, they can spin up an AlgoVPN server, development environment and more in minutes. For currencies that don’t support zero confirmation, such as LTC and ETH, BLPay requires fewer on-chain commands.

Due to the elimination of middlemen, BLPay also cuts out third-party fees, a saving that BitLaunch says will be passed on to the consumer. Finally, an extended payment window, streamlined UI, and Tor browser support greatly increase usability and privacy.

BLPay ties into BitLaunch’s existing hourly payment system, which allows you to deposit as much as you like into your account and have it trickle down with each hour of server time. This gives users the freedom to experiment with servers without any long-term financial commitments.

Privacy first

As well as its private payment system, BitLaunch has various data control features that are likely to please the privacy-minded. The company only stores the data required to run its service and ensures it’s not personally identifiable. It also runs no trackers across its website and doesn’t block the use of anonymous, temporary email addresses.

Interestingly, though, BitLaunch encourages its users not to take its word for it.

“Companies have proven time and time again that they are willing to lie about their data collection and sharing practices,” it says on its website. “Maintaining privacy today requires a fundamental shift in how you think about privacy. It’s not enough that a service claims they don’t log – for true privacy the service must facilitate the use of, and provide tools to secure, delete, and anonymize your own data.”

As a result, it allows users to permanently destroy their server and account at any point via a simple button in their control panel. This data is then quickly wiped from its records. It also lets its users use Tor, run Tor exit nodes, and encrypts data in transit and at rest.

What can you do with BitLaunch?

BitLaunch lets you do anything you would with be able to with a standard VPS provider. It encourages users to set up their own Algo VPN server, self-host cloud storage, set up a development environment, and beyond, on a mixture of Windows RDP VPS and Linux servers.

That said, its first-party servers and the third-party Digital Ocean, Linode, and Vultr servers it resells offer one-click app installs. Users can quickly deploy privacy tools like WireGuard, OpenVPN, and Shadowsocks R, as well as LEMP/LAMP and WordPress.

For the more advanced user, BitLaunch offers programmatic payment and deployment via its SDK and API. As a result, developers can automate their server creation process for a fully hands-off experience. Users can additionally make use in-built DNS services to point their domain to their server.

Those who are interested in VPS use but don’t want to compromise their privacy can sign up for BitLaunch via its website. New users can request free credit from its 24/7 expert support and get started in minutes.

Editorial Note: This is a sponsored article. Opinions expressed are solely those of the sponsor and readers should conduct their own due diligence before taking any action based on information presented in this article.