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 since February 2024. Since the v4 hard fork (block 62 191) the chain runs CryptoNight-GPU, an algorithm built for graphics cards, so hijacked CPU botnets earn nothing worth stealing. The v5 rules (rings of 12, size-based fees, half of every fee burned) activate at block 62 500.
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 eleven others from the chain (a ring of 12, up to 40). 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.
CryptoNight-GPU since block v4
The proof-of-work is chosen by block version. Blocks v1–v3 used CryptoNight; from block 62 191 the chain hashes with CryptoNight-GPU (xmrig cn/gpu), built for graphics cards. Difficulty was reset at the fork so the new algorithm started from a clean floor.
Fees by size, half of them burned
From block v5 a transaction pays 0.002 BTCS per kilobyte, never less than 0.005. Half of every fee is destroyed forever and half is paid to the network fund by a mandatory coinbase output that every node verifies. Miners live on the block reward alone. Oversized blocks are still penalised.
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.
Rings of twelve
From block v5 every input hides among at least 12 possible senders (up to 40). For denominations that are still rare on the chain the node relaxes the rule deterministically, so no coin is ever stuck.
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 two public nodes
A checkpoint every 100 blocks is published as a signed-by-history CSV and loaded by every node, so a deep reorganisation can't rewrite payments that have already cleared. Two public nodes on separate hosts keep the network reachable.
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. Block 1 minted 500 000 000 BTCS (5% of supply) to the founding wallet, which now serves as the network fund; everything else is mined. 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.
Download desktop wallet (Linux x64, v5) Desktop wallet on GitHubMine with your GPU
CryptoNight-GPU (cn/gpu) is built for graphics cards: floating-point heavy, 10–20× less efficient on a CPU. Point xmrig with CUDA or OpenCL at the pool and use your BTCS address as the login.
xmrig -a cn/gpu \ -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%, no hidden cuts.
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 194.61.89.3:11222 \ --load-checkpoints checkpoints.csvDownload node + wallets (Linux x64, v5) Daemon source on GitHub
Checkpoints are published at scan.cryptosymbiotic.com/checkpoints.csv. Second public node: 187.124.50.202:11222.
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.