Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency


*** ALERT ***  If you have version 0.3.9 or lower, you need to upgrade for an important security update!

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 million 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 0.3.11 for Windows (exe) (5.1MB)
Download Bitcoin 0.3.11 for Windows (zip) (5.1MB)
Download Bitcoin 0.3.11 for Linux (32-bit & 64-bit) (8.3MB)
Download Bitcoin 0.3.11 for Mac OS X (10.5+ Intel) (7.0MB)

SHA1 84b4416864cc3946f4079e84b9d2a70ec17fe238 bitcoin-0.3.11-win32-setup.exe
SHA1 d98890e22d829cb10ec2f113219e6b9c56f39c42 bitcoin-0.3.11-win32.zip
SHA1 a725f95f8cb78356d349d2222513c8085d6690ec bitcoin-0.3.11-linux.tar.gz
SHA1 cb6737211718332f2a27c71506d00f04a17ae0fc bitcoin-0.3.11-macosx.zip