Bitcoin Improvement Proposal
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The start screen under Fedora
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| Original author(s) | Satoshi Nakamoto |
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| Developer(s) | Bitcoin Core developers |
| Initial release | 2009 |
| Stable release | 0.15.1 (November 11, 2017) |
| Repository | github |
| Development status | Active |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Linux, Windows, macOS |
| Type | |
| License | MIT License |
| Website | bitcoincore |
 Visualization of code changes during 2015
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Bitcoin Core is the reference implementation of bitcoin. Initially, the software was published by Satoshi Nakamoto under the name Bitcoin, and later renamed to Bitcoin Core to distinguish it from the network. For this reason, it is also known as the Satoshi client. It is the reference implementation for bitcoin nodes, which form the bitcoin network. As of 2018[update], Bitcoin Core repositories are maintained by a team of maintainers, with Wladimir J. van der Laan leading the release process.
The MIT Digital Currency Initiative funds some of the development of Bitcoin Core. The project also maintains the cryptography library libsecp256k1.
Bitcoin Core includes a transaction verification engine and connects to the bitcoin network as a full node. Moreover, a , which can be used to transfer funds, is included by default. The wallet allows for the sending and receiving of bitcoins. It does not facilitate the buying or selling of bitcoin. It allows users to generate QR codes to receive payment.
The software validates the entire blockchain, which includes all bitcoin transactions ever. This distributed ledger which has reached more than 130 gigabytes in size must be downloaded or synchronised before full participation of the client may occur. A command line-based daemon with a JSON-RPC interface, bitcoind, is bundled with Bitcoin Core. It also provides access to testnet, a global testing environment that imitates the bitcoin main network using an alternative blockchain where valueless "test bitcoins" are used. Regtest or Regression Test Mode creates a private blockchain which is used as a local testing environment. Finally, bitcoin-cli, a simple program which allows users to send RPC commands to bitcoind, is also included.
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