Is it possible to run Bitcoin on Google App Engine? / alternatives? This question is cross-posted on bitcoin.stackexchange, stackoverflow and bitcointalks.



I'm planning to build an application on Google App Engine that will heavily make use of Bitcoin trading. I've been Googling along a little but I couldn't find whether it is possible to run Bitcoin itself on App Engine (with Java). I have some experience with App Engine, but limited to a pure web-app centered usage.
I've read about a few people that have made applications using Bitcoin with App Engine as well that are hosting Bitcoin separately on an Amazon EC2 instance.

So, does anyone here either has experience with running Bitcoin in App Engine for Java or would anyone have an idea how this could possibly be done? 
I know there are a lot of Bitcoin applications out there, I'd like to know how these manage their Bitcoin traffic.

I'm trying to avoid needing a separate Amazon service running all the time next to App Engine.

In fact, receiving Bitcoin can easily be done by using passive APIs like blockexplorer or blockchain, so I'm considering to find a reliable API to handle my outgoing payments. But this approach causes extreme dependency on this API service, which I actually want to avoid as much as possible.
You should have a look at this (my master thesis topic connected to running Bitcoin on GAE).

While it is possible to run a Bitcoin-related application on Google App Engine, the service will inherently depend on another application to run. GAE only allows one to use the most basic ports for HTTP and HTTPS communication, whereas running an independent Bitcoin node requires the use of TCP/IP. It is possible to write a simple program to convert HTTP calls into TCP/IP ones, but that would need to be hosted elsewhere. If you want to use Bitcoind as the way to communicate with the Bitcoin network, things get significantly easier.

I've tried writing my own implementation of a Bitcoin client on Google App Engine in Go, but was ultimately defeated by OP_Checksig and its lack of documentation. But honestly, I found using Bitcoind for everything Bitcoin-related to be a lot simpler.

What you also need to consider are the costs of running apps on Google App Engine. I personally found the write and read operations to be a bit limiting if you want to stay on a free tier, but depending on what you will actually want to do, there can be other factors to consider.