Guide: How to run BC with Tor nodes connected only?!?


Setup: Moderate (TL;DR install Tor, reconfigure BC, find and add nodes)
Time: ~25 minutes
Privacy: High (hides you completely behind other Tor nodes)


It's recommended to do the basic tutorial first: 1 How to run BC with the Tor Browser Bundle - this will speed things up. This tutorial is quite similar but with some extra steps. 

Step by step:

  1. Get the latest version of the Tor Browser Bundle from the tor project website: https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
    Make sure you get the latest version, chose any language you like but I recommend en-US. Some operating systems like linux may have the tor browser in their repositories, check them out, this simplyfies upgrades. But make sure they always offer the latest version.
  2. Install the browser bundle, start it and hit connect. You will see a window popping up which shows the status of the Tor connection and it will open the browser as soon as it is connected.
  3. Navigate to http://expressobutiolem.onion/blog/best-onion-sites-on-dark-web/  with the Tor browser. If you see the website, your Tor was set up correctly! The Tor browser includes a SOCKS proxy listening on port :9150 which allows you to dip into the deep web. Now we are going to set up BC.
  4. Tell BC to use the Tor proxy by either passing the -onion=127.0.0.1:9150 command line argument to the client or adding this line to your config file onion=127.0.0.1:9150.
  5. Tell BC to only use Tor nodes to connect to by passing the -onlynet=onion command line option to the client (or adding it to the config file accordingly).
  6. Find some onion addnodes. The first one could be ibt4q3cri3hs47f2.onion . Pass the nodes as command line argument -addnode=ibt4q3cri3hs47f2.onion or add it to the config file. Use a search engine to find more nodes. Here is a location to share BC onion nodes: Go to BC Discord Server #anonymity  channel

A sample BC config file for using the Tor browser bundle looks like that: 

# Bitcoin Confidential wallet config file
onlynet=onion #tell BC to only use tor nodes (no ipv4/6)
addnode=ibt4q3cri3hs47f2.onion  # required addnodes to find some connections
addnode=ibt4q3cri3hs47f2.onion  # more addnodes
addnode=ibt4q3cri3hs47f2.onion  # the more the better
onion=127.0.0.1:9150  # tell BC to use tor browser proxy


If you want to pass this to the command line, this should do it: 

./bitcoinc-qt -onion=127.0.0.1:9150 -onlynet=onion  -addnode=ibt4q3cri3hs47f2.onion -addnode=ibt4q3cri3hs47f2.onion -addnode=ibt4q3cri3hs47f2.onion


Note: You need to start the Tor browser each time you want to run BC through Tor. Else BC will fail to connect.

Note: If you prefer a native Tor over the Tor browser bundle, you might want to use port :9050.