Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency


Please upgrade to 0.3.3! There were important security updates in 0.3.2 and 0.3.3.
Caution: Do not use -server, -daemon or bitcoind with 0.3.2 or lower.

Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network based digital currency. Peer-to-peer (P2P) means that there is no central authority to issue new money or keep track of transactions. Instead, these tasks are managed collectively by the nodes of the network. Advantages:

  • Transfer money easily through the Internet, without having to trust middlemen.
  • Third parties can’t prevent or control your transactions.
  • Bitcoin transactions are practically free, whereas credit cards and online payment systems typically cost 1-5% per transaction plus various other merchant fees up to hundreds of dollars.
  • Be safe from the instability caused by fractional reserve banking and bad policies of central banks. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system’s money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout the network, not monopolized by the banks.

Bitcoin is an open source project created by Satoshi Nakamoto, and is currently in beta development stage. Bitcoin development is hosted at SourceForge.

Screenshots:

Main window screenshot

Sending dialog screenshot

Using Bitcoin:

Turn on Options->Generate Coins to get a few coins by helping to run the network. Bitcoin runs in the background when your computer is idle and should not slow down other programs. It may take days to successfully generate a coin, so be patient. The timing varies and depends on how much idle CPU time you contribute.

The total eventual circulation of Bitcoins will be 21,000,000 coins. There will never be more coins than that. The coins are entering circulation gradually, at a steady pace over many years, to nodes supporting the network in proportion to the CPU time they contribute.

To receive incoming connections, you need to set your firewall to forward port 8333 (TCP) to your computer. This increases the number of nodes you can connect with.

Bitcoin can be used through Tor with the command line:
bitcoin -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050

If you're trying to remain anonymous (pseudonymous, really), be careful not to reveal any information linking your bitcoin addresses to your identity. You should use a new bitcoin address for each payment you receive.

Downloads:

Download Bitcoin 0.3.3 for Windows (exe) (5.3MB)
Download Bitcoin 0.3.3 for Windows (zip) (5.3MB)
Download Bitcoin 0.3.3 for Linux (32-bit & 64-bit) (8.8MB)
Download Bitcoin 0.3.3 for Mac OS X (10.5+ Intel) (6.8MB)

SHA1 71b24201d4893c4fdea88388f4376ddee3b38a6b bitcoin-0.3.3-win32-setup.exe
SHA1 6e638fa0c46e901e58bc66130a4b8ff4b6340083 bitcoin-0.3.3-win32.zip
SHA1 ddb975bcaa2b673f2f312abce51f085f68527968 bitcoin-0.3.3-linux.tar.gz
SHA1 1eb3550fcd94edeb2f6c02d5977739b541745b3a bitcoin-0.3.3-macosx.zip