Money that doesn't know your name.
Bitcoin Symbiotic is a proof-of-work coin with privacy built into the protocol. Every payment is signed by a ring of possible senders, lands on a one-time address and can't be traced back on the chain. Mined on ordinary CPUs since February 2024.
Three things the chain refuses to know
Most coins publish who paid whom and how much, forever. The BTCS protocol records that a payment happened without recording the people behind it.
Who sent it
Each transaction carries a ring signature: your output is mixed with at least two others from the chain, up to thirty. The signature proves one member of the ring paid, not which one.
Who received it
Funds never go to your public address. The sender derives a fresh one-time address for every payment, so two payments to you look unrelated on the chain, and your balance stays yours to reveal.
Who holds what
Outputs can't be linked to an owner, so nobody can total up an address, watch a wallet grow or flag a payment because of where the coins had been before.
A protocol built to keep evolving
The BTCS protocol has five block versions and switches rules at fixed heights, so upgrades happen on-chain and every node agrees on when. Here is what is already inside.
LWMA retargeting
Difficulty is a linearly weighted moving average over the last 60 blocks, so it follows miners within minutes and block times stay near 120 seconds even when hashrate swings.
Hash variant tied to block version
The proof-of-work variant is chosen by block version, not hard-coded. Block v3 switched the network to CryptoNight v1; the next variants are already wired in and activate at their upgrade heights.
Penalty for oversized blocks
From block v2, miners who push a block past the median size lose part of the reward and fees. Spam stays expensive and the chain stays light enough to sync on a laptop.
Fusion transactions
Wallets can merge dust into a few clean outputs with a zero-fee fusion transaction, keeping ring signatures cheap and wallet files small after years of mining payouts.
Wider rings
Ring size runs from 3 up to 31 members, with the limit extended to 41 in the next block version. Bigger rings, more possible senders to hide among.
Tail emission
Once the curve flattens, every block still pays 10 BTCS. Miners keep securing the chain without depending on fees alone.
Payment gateway built in
The daemon ships a wallet service with JSON RPC, payment IDs and batch transfers, so shops, exchanges and pools integrate BTCS without writing wallet code.
Checkpoints and locked history
Hard-coded and DNS-served checkpoints pin the settled history, so a deep reorganisation can't rewrite payments that have already cleared.
A supply you can compute by hand
Block rewards follow a fixed formula: every 120 seconds the chain pays out one part in 16.7 million of what hasn't been minted yet, never less than 10 BTCS. No premine, no allocation, no schedule that a person can change.
The chain in numbers
Parameters as compiled into the daemon. None of them can be adjusted by an operator; changing any would be a different chain.
Get started in a minute
Keep BTCS
The web wallet runs in your browser: keys are generated on your device and never leave it. Save the 25-word seed and you can restore the wallet anywhere.
Open the web walletOr install a desktop wallet
A native wallet for Linux, macOS and Windows with the full node inside. Source and releases live on GitHub.
Desktop wallet on GitHubMine with your CPU
CryptoNight v1 favours ordinary processors. Point any compatible miner at the pool and use your BTCS address as the login.
xmrig -a cn/1 \ -o pool.cryptosymbiotic.com:3333 \ -u YOUR_BTCS_ADDRESS -p x
Ports 3333, 4444 and 5555 for low, medium and high hashrate. Payouts from 0.2 BTCS, pool fee 1%.
Pool dashboardRun your own node
Build the daemon from source and connect it to the seed node. The public node also serves RPC for wallets and explorers.
./btcsd --add-peer 194.61.89.3:11222Daemon source on GitHub
Everything runs in the open
Every service below talks to the same public node. If one is down, the chain keeps going; if you don't trust one, run your own.