Bitcoin Ordinals

Run a Bitcoin Full Node on AWS Under $30 a Month 💸

Learn about infrastructure and Bitcoin Core config optimisation to save money 💰

I bought my first Bitcoin in 2017 but never considered running a node. Here I am, six years later, looking for the most efficient and economical ways to run a full node. But why?

The answer is simply Bitcoin ordinals. Chasing valuable satoshis, inscribing unique art on the network… These are all exciting developments on the good old pet rock Bitcoin network. So, I had to get involved in it.

There are not many convenience tools as of now. It’s like wild nature out there. Everybody is on their own and trying to figure out how to get involved. One of the first requirements is running your full node so the indexer from the ord toolchain can index the inscriptions, and we can use its wallet to play with it.

I started by setting up everything on my gaming PC. But the full node size is around 500 GiB as of February 2023, and the ord index is over 100 GiB. It’s also heavy on internet usage as well. I quickly realized it was not the best use of my precious gaming PC 😅

I thought about Raspberry Pi, but it’s 2023. Why not just use cloud computing?