And even after being hacked once due to !!! physical access to the servers !!! he was still looking for an "accessible" dedicated server instead of a trusted service or self hosting somewhere he could keep safe. He had more than 200 bitcoins. People are weird.

> once due to !!! physical access to the servers !!!

That was his inept deduction that was basically "well, I don't know how they got in so it must be hosting provider"

> some random vps provider.

devil's advocate: is DigitalOcean in this category?

vps provider, yes. Random, less so, since they're on the nyse.

How do you spend $55/month on a VPS? Isn't that the amount you spend on a reasonably popular application host?

He obviously is more of a software developer than an sysadmin, so maybe it's just a poorly optimized personal app host.