Bitok

It's Bitcoin, but not Bitcoin. It's new, but also old. And yes, you can actually mine it with your laptop.

What Is This

I took the last version of Bitcoin that Satoshi worked on (0.3.19 from December 2010), updated it to compile on modern systems, and replaced SHA-256 mining with Yespower so GPUs don't have a massive advantage.

New genesis block. Separate network. Same rules otherwise.

Why

In 2010, Satoshi wrote:

It's nice how anyone with just a CPU can compete fairly equally right now.

That stopped being true about a year later. Now it's true again, at least for this chain.

Quick Start

# Download and run (Linux)
./bitokd                    # start a node
./bitokd -gen               # start mining
./bitokd getinfo            # check status

Mining uses all CPU cores by default. Limit it with -genproclimit=4 or whatever.

In the GUI: Settings > Options > Generate Coins

Specifications

Same economics as Bitcoin. Different mining algorithm. Different genesis.

Genesis Block

Hash:    0x0290400ea28d3fe79d102ca6b7cd11cee5eba9f17f2046c303d92f65d6ed2617
Message: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"
nBits:   0x1effffff
nNonce:  37137

The message is the same as Bitcoin's. Seemed appropriate.

What Changed From Original Bitcoin

Three things:

1. Build system updated for OpenSSL 3.x, Boost 1.74+, wxWidgets 3.2, etc. Modern Ubuntu compiles it now.

2. SHA-256 replaced with Yespower for proof-of-work. Your laptop can find blocks. A GPU won't help much.

3. New genesis block. Separate network.

Everything else is identical to v0.3.19:

• Same transaction format
• Same script system
• Same wallet behavior
• Same networking code
• Same 21M cap, same halving schedule
• All security fixes from the Satoshi era included

No SegWit. No new opcodes. No BIPs. No layer 2. The protocol is frozen at December 2010.

Building

Ubuntu 24.04

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libdb5.3-dev libboost-all-dev

# Daemon only
make -f makefile.unix

# With GUI
sudo apt-get install libwxgtk3.2-dev libgtk-3-dev
make -f makefile.unix gui

Other Platforms

• BUILD_UNIX.md - Linux/BSD build instructions
• BUILD_MACOS.md - macOS build instructions
• BUILD_WINDOWS_MINGW.md - Windows MinGW/MSYS2 build
• BUILD_WINDOWS_VC.md - Windows Visual Studio build

Running

Daemon:

./bitokd                          # run node
./bitokd -gen                     # run node + mine
./bitokd -daemon                  # background mode
./bitokd stop                     # stop daemon

Configuration: Settings can be passed via command line or config file.

Config file location:
| OS | Path |
|----|------|
| Linux (daemon) | ~/.bitokd/bitok.conf |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/Bitok/bitok.conf |
| Windows | %APPDATA%\Bitok\bitok.conf |

Example config file:

server=1
rpcuser=user
rpcpassword=pass
gen=1
addnode=1.2.3.4

Then run:

./bitokd -daemon

RPC:

./bitokd getinfo                  # node status
./bitokd getbalance               # wallet balance
./bitokd getnewaddress            # new receiving address
./bitokd sendtoaddress <addr> <amount>
./bitokd help                     # list all commands

See RPC_API.md for the full API.

GUI:

./bitok

Point and click. Mining checkbox in options.

Mining

./bitokd -gen                     # all cores
./bitokd -gen -genproclimit=4     # 4 cores

The algorithm uses ~128KB of memory per hash. This is intentional. It's what makes GPUs inefficient.

Your CPU will automatically use SSE2/AVX/AVX2 if available. No configuration needed.

See BITOKPOW.md for technical details on Yespower.

Data Directory

Back up wallet.dat. If you lose it, coins are gone. There's no recovery. That's not a bug, that's how Bitcoin works.

Peer Discovery

Uses IRC bootstrap, same as original Bitcoin. Connects to irc.libera.chat and finds other nodes in #bitok.

If IRC is down, you can manually add peers:

./bitokd -addnode=<ip>

What This Is Not

• Not trying to replace Bitcoin
• Not a fork of BTC (different genesis entirely)
• Not promising you'll get rich
• Not going to add features or "improve" the protocol
• Not going to have a foundation, governance, or roadmap

This is software. It runs. Run it or don't.

Security

This is 2010 code adapted for 2024. The cryptography is fine (ECDSA, SHA-256 for non-mining hashes). The networking and RPC are... from 2010.

Don't put your life savings in this. Don't run it on a machine you care about without understanding what you're doing. Don't blame me if something goes wrong.

All the security fixes from Satoshi's final release are included:

• Value overflow protection (184B coin bug)
• Blockchain checkpoints
• DoS limits
• IsStandard() filtering

Documentation

General

• MANIFESTO.md - Why this exists
• CHANGELOG.md - Version history

Mining

• BITOKPOW.md - Yespower proof-of-work details
• SOLO_MINING.md - Solo mining guide with cpuminer
• POOL_INTEGRATION.md - Mining pool integration guide
• MINING_OPTIMIZATIONS.md - Performance tuning

API & Integration

• RPC_API.md - Complete JSON-RPC API reference
• RPC_MINING_IMPLEMENTATION.md - Mining RPC implementation details

Building

• BUILD_UNIX.md - Linux/BSD build instructions
• BUILD_MACOS.md - macOS build instructions
• BUILD_WINDOWS.md - Windows build overview
• BUILD_WINDOWS_MINGW.md - Windows MinGW/MSYS2 build
• BUILD_WINDOWS_VC.md - Windows Visual Studio build

License

MIT, same as original Bitcoin. See license.txt.

Author

Tom Elvis Jedusor

(It's an anagram. Don't worry about it.)

Writing a description for this thing is bloody hard. There's nothing to quite relate it to.

- Satoshi Nakamoto, January 2009

Still true.