4 It is possible to run Bitcoin as a Tor hidden service, and connect to such services.
6 The following directions assume you have a Tor proxy running on port 9050. Many distributions default to having a SOCKS proxy listening on port 9050, but others may not. In particular, the Tor Browser Bundle defaults to listening on a random port. See [Tor Project FAQ:TBBSocksPort](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#TBBSocksPort) for how to properly
10 1. Run bitcoin behind a Tor proxy
11 ---------------------------------
13 The first step is running Bitcoin behind a Tor proxy. This will already make all
14 outgoing connections be anonymized, but more is possible.
16 -proxy=ip:port Set the proxy server. If SOCKS5 is selected (default), this proxy
17 server will be used to try to reach .onion addresses as well.
19 -onion=ip:port Set the proxy server to use for tor hidden services. You do not
20 need to set this if it's the same as -proxy. You can use -noonion
21 to explicitly disable access to hidden service.
23 -listen When using -proxy, listening is disabled by default. If you want
24 to run a hidden service (see next section), you'll need to enable
27 -connect=X When behind a Tor proxy, you can specify .onion addresses instead
28 -addnode=X of IP addresses or hostnames in these parameters. It requires
29 -seednode=X SOCKS5. In Tor mode, such addresses can also be exchanged with
32 In a typical situation, this suffices to run behind a Tor proxy:
34 ./bitcoin -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050
37 2. Run a bitcoin hidden server
38 ------------------------------
40 If you configure your Tor system accordingly, it is possible to make your node also
41 reachable from the Tor network. Add these lines to your /etc/tor/torrc (or equivalent
44 HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/bitcoin-service/
45 HiddenServicePort 8333 127.0.0.1:8333
46 HiddenServicePort 18333 127.0.0.1:18333
48 The directory can be different of course, but (both) port numbers should be equal to
49 your bitcoind's P2P listen port (8333 by default).
51 -externalip=X You can tell bitcoin about its publicly reachable address using
52 this option, and this can be a .onion address. Given the above
53 configuration, you can find your onion address in
54 /var/lib/tor/bitcoin-service/hostname. Onion addresses are given
55 preference for your node to advertize itself with, for connections
56 coming from unroutable addresses (such as 127.0.0.1, where the
57 Tor proxy typically runs).
59 -listen You'll need to enable listening for incoming connections, as this
60 is off by default behind a proxy.
62 -discover When -externalip is specified, no attempt is made to discover local
63 IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. If you want to run a dual stack, reachable
64 from both Tor and IPv4 (or IPv6), you'll need to either pass your
65 other addresses using -externalip, or explicitly enable -discover.
66 Note that both addresses of a dual-stack system may be easily
67 linkable using traffic analysis.
69 In a typical situation, where you're only reachable via Tor, this should suffice:
71 ./bitcoind -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050 -externalip=57qr3yd1nyntf5k.onion -listen
73 (obviously, replace the Onion address with your own). If you don't care too much
74 about hiding your node, and want to be reachable on IPv4 as well, additionally
77 ./bitcoind ... -discover
79 and open port 8333 on your firewall (or use -upnp).
81 If you only want to use Tor to reach onion addresses, but not use it as a proxy
82 for normal IPv4/IPv6 communication, use:
84 ./bitcoin -onion=127.0.0.1:9050 -externalip=57qr3yd1nyntf5k.onion -discover