bitcoin/doc/README.md

3.5 KiB

Bitcoin Core

Setup

Bitcoin Core is the original Bitcoin client and it builds the backbone of the network. It downloads and, by default, stores the entire history of Bitcoin transactions (which is currently more than 100 GBs); depending on the speed of your computer and network connection, the synchronization process can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or more.

To download Bitcoin Core, visit bitcoincore.org.

Running

The following are some helpful notes on how to run Bitcoin on your native platform.

Unix

Unpack the files into a directory and run:

  • bin/bitcoin-qt (GUI) or
  • bin/bitcoind (headless)

Windows

Unpack the files into a directory, and then run bitcoin-qt.exe.

OS X

Drag Bitcoin-Core to your applications folder, and then run Bitcoin-Core.

Need Help?

Building

The following are developer notes on how to build Bitcoin on your native platform. They are not complete guides, but include notes on the necessary libraries, compile flags, etc.

Development

The Bitcoin repo's root README contains relevant information on the development process and automated testing.

Resources

Miscellaneous

License

Distributed under the MIT software license. This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit. This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com), and UPnP software written by Thomas Bernard.