Two ways to take part: mining (produce blocks, earn the miner share) and bidding (compete on the Bitcoin chain to become a term's beneficiary). Both are described below. This page is educational; it makes no claims of value, investment, or return.

1. Mining

Mining ThankBitcoin is the same as mining Bitcoin (SHA256d proof of work), with one extra requirement: your node must be able to read the Bitcoin chain, because at each term boundary the node needs Bitcoin data to decide the beneficiary. You choose how it reads Bitcoin — that is the only real setup choice.

Step 0 — Build the node

Step 1 — Start the node (pick ONE Bitcoin data source)

Example A — you run your own Bitcoin full node (recommended)

Zero third-party trust: your node reads Bitcoin from your own bitcoind over local JSON-RPC.

Example B — you do NOT run a full node

Read Bitcoin from a public data service instead. No 900+ GB node to maintain; the tradeoff is trusting that source's view of the Bitcoin chain.

B1. Built-in REST source (simplest, zero setup): the node speaks directly to a public Esplora/mempool.space-style API over HTTPS. No proxy, no token.

B2. getblock.io (or any JSON-RPC provider): the node's JSON-RPC client speaks plain HTTP, while getblock.io is HTTPS-with-token. So run the tiny local proxy (getblock_rpc_proxy.py) that forwards local HTTP → getblock.io HTTPS, and point the node at the proxy:

<ANCHOR> (the Bitcoin height ThankBitcoin anchors term 1 to) and the seed node(s) are published at launch. -tbbtcstartheight should be a bit below the anchor so the poller only fetches the relevant Bitcoin range (not the whole chain from height 0).

Step 2 — Wallet + mine

thankbitcoin-cli createwallet miner
ADDR=$(thankbitcoin-cli getnewaddress)
thankbitcoin-cli generatetoaddress 1 "$ADDR"     # produce one block to your address

The miner share of each block goes to your address; transaction fees also go to the miner. The beneficiary share goes to whoever won that term's bid (or is burned in a no-bid fallback term) — that part is decided on the Bitcoin chain, not by you.

Note on generatetoaddress: this is built-in CPU mining — fine while difficulty is low (early/cold-start). As real hashrate joins and difficulty rises, CPU mining stops finding blocks; the standard approach then is external mining hardware or a pool driving your node via getblocktemplate (same as Bitcoin, since the PoW is SHA256d).

2. Bidding

Bidding is how you compete to become a term's beneficiary (the address that receives the beneficiary share of every block in that term). You do it by publishing one structured transaction on the Bitcoin chain — no ThankBitcoin server involved.

Bidding spends real Bitcoin, irreversibly.

Your bid amount goes to a fixed address you do not control and cannot get back — win or lose, the bid is spent. There is no refund.
Keep your own keys. Build and sign the transaction in your own wallet. This page never asks for your keys and cannot touch your funds.
Winning is not guaranteed and is not an investment. Only spend what you are fully prepared to lose.

The exact transaction format

A qualifying bid is one Bitcoin transaction with these outputs, in this order:

  vout[0]  → bid recipient        amount = your bid   (≥ 1092 sat)
            = bc1qp6ejw8ptj9l9pkscmlf8fhhkrrjeawgpyjvtq8   (fixed; bitcoin.org donation address)

  vout[1]  → previous beneficiary amount ≥ 1092 sat   (the "link" output; read it from the explorer)

  vout[2]  → change               back to your own address

  vout[3]  → OP_RETURN, 0 value, 52 data bytes:
            6a 34 || <32B: H_end> || <20B: your payout address HASH160>

Output	What it is
vout[0] — bid	Your bid, sent to the fixed recipient above. Higher bid = better rank inside the decisive block. Min 1092 sat; set it higher to actually win. Spent and unrecoverable.
vout[1] — link	A small output (≥1092 sat) to the current term's nominal beneficiary (for public bids from term 2 on, this is the previous term's winning bidder). Chains the lineage. Read the exact address from the explorer.
vout[2] — change	Your own change. No special meaning.
vout[3] — data	OP_RETURN with the previous term's last block hash `H_end` (binds the bid to this round; prevents replay) + the 20-byte HASH160 of your payout address. Must not be all-zero.

Where to get the values

H_end — hash of the current term's last block (height 1000·n − 1: 999, 1999, …), from the block explorer, pasted exactly as shown. A bid is only valid after that block exists.
vout[1] recipient — the current nominal beneficiary, from the explorer.
Your payout HASH160 — bitcoin-cli getaddressinfo <your-bc1q-addr> → the witness_program field (40 hex) is the 20-byte HASH160.

How the winner is chosen (bid at the right time)

Nodes scan the Bitcoin chain from the term's start height upward.
The decisive block is the first Bitcoin block that contains a qualifying bid and has reached 8 confirmations.
Inside that one block, the highest bid wins (ties by txid).
Important: winner = highest bid inside the decisive block, not the global highest. A higher bid in a later block does not count. Getting into the earliest block costs a competitive Bitcoin fee — part of the real cost of bidding.

Building it yourself (Bitcoin Core example)

Pass outputs as an ordered array [{...},{...}] so order is preserved. createrawtransaction rejects a repeated address, so vout[0] (fixed bid address) and vout[1] (previous beneficiary) must be different — which they are for normal public bids (term 2 onward).

IN='[{"txid":"<your-utxo-txid>","vout":<n>}]'

# 52-byte OP_RETURN data = H_end (64 hex) + your payout HASH160 (40 hex) = 104 hex
DATA=<64 hex of H_end><40 hex of your HASH160>

# ordered array: bid, link, change, data.  amounts in BTC (0.00005 = 5000 sat; vout[0],[1] ≥ 1092 sat)
OUTS='[{"bc1qp6ejw8ptj9l9pkscmlf8fhhkrrjeawgpyjvtq8":0.00005000},'\
'{"<previous-beneficiary-addr>":0.00001092},'\
'{"<your-change-addr>":<change-amount>},'\
'{"data":"'$DATA'"}]'

bitcoin-cli createrawtransaction "$IN" "$OUTS"
bitcoin-cli signrawtransactionwithwallet <rawtx>   # sign in YOUR wallet
bitcoin-cli sendrawtransaction <signedtx>

Again: the bid is spent whether or not you win. No refund. Not an investment. Bid only what you are fully prepared to lose.

ThankBitcoin — How to Participate