Book Image

Learning Bitcoin

Book Image

Learning Bitcoin

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Learning Bitcoin
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Installing the client


Bitcoin Core is publicly available for free from the official Bitcoin site (www.bitcoin.org). Installations are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Figure 5.1 - Downloading the client

You can download the client from https://bitcoin.org/en/download. The site gives detailed instructions on how to install the client on each operating system (Windows, OS/X, and Linux).With the client installed, you'll be able to execute commands on the network using command-line scripts or with other development tools.

Requirements

Due to the heavy use of processing and storage, several requirements must be met for proper performance:

  • At least 100GB of storage is recommended: The client will need to download the entire blockchain and validate it locally on disk. Today, the blockchain size is about 50GB. This will grow at a linear and predictable rate.

  • Adequate bandwidth is necessary for performance and accessibility: Some administrators may block ports on the network. Without access to...