sircsq/original-bitcoin

BitCoin v0.1.3 ALPHA

Copyright (c) 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto Distributed under the MIT/X11 software license, see the accompanying file license.txt or http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php. This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/). This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young ([email protected]).

Intro

Bitcoin is an electronic cash system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending. It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority.

Operating Systems

Windows NT/2000/XP (and probably Vista)

Vista hasn't been tested yet. All the libraries used are cross-platform, so there's nothing preventing future Linux and Mac builds.

Setup

Unpack the files into a directory and run bitcoin.exe.

The software automatically finds other nodes to connect to. You should set your firewall to forward port 8333 to your computer so you can receive incoming connections, otherwise the nodes you can connect with will be limited.

To support the network by running a node, select:

Options->Generate Coins

and keep the program open or minimized. It runs at idle priority when no other programs are using the CPU. Your computer will be solving a very difficult computational problem that is used to lock in blocks of transactions. The time to generate a block varies each time, but may take days or months, depending on the speed of your computer and the competition on the network. It's not a computation that has to start over from the beginning if you stop and restart it. A solution might be found at any given moment it's running. As a reward for supporting the network, you receive coins when you successfully generate a block.