How To Run a Bitcoin Regtest Node

A regtest node is a Bitcoin node running regtest network. Usually it is ran locally and is useful because you control when a block get mined which is useful when testing, debugging or developing things.

In this example we show hot to run a regtest node using binaries provided by Bitcoin core. We will not cover howto build your own binaries as that would be an entirely separate guide of itself.

Let's dive in!

1. Download Binaries

1. Download Latest Bitcoin core: https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/
2. untar.gz them: tar -xzf <downloaded file>.tar.gz
3. move the uncompressed bitcoin-xx.x directory into whichever directory you want (eg: ~/projects/bitcoin/bitcoin-xx.x) and cd into it

2. Config

1. In your home directory create a .bitcoin dir: mkdir ~/.bitcoin
2. Create a bitcoin.conf file: touch bitcoin.conf
3. Add the follwing settings to the bitcoin.conf file:

server=1
regtest=1

txindex=1

[regtest]
rpcuser=secret-user
rpcpassword=secret-password
rpcbind=127.0.0.1
rpcport=18443

3. Run It

Go back into your uncompressed bitcoin directory, the one from step 1 and cd into the bin directory. All the binary files live there.

Start the bitcoin process: ./bitcoind

This will not run the process in the background. If you want to run bitcoind as a backround process you need to run in daemon mode which you can do by adding daemon=1 into the ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf file or by starting the process with the -daemon flag (eg. ./bitcoind -daemon).

4. Play with bitcoin-cli

Run ./bitcoin-cli help for overview of available commands.

If you ran the bitcoin process in daemon mode, you can sto is by running ./bitcoin-cli stop

Wallet

createwallet

In order to create addresses and send sats you need to create a wallet.

$ ./bitcoin-cli createwallet <wallet name>

$ ./bitcoin-cli createwallet first_wallet

loadwallet

Every time you start the bitcoin process it will start without a wallet. Upon start you have to load the wallet.

$ ./bitcoin-cli loadwallet <wallet name>

$ ./bitcoin-cli loadwallet first_wallet

unloadwallet

Unload the currently loaded wallet.

$ ./bitcoin-cli unloadwallet

$ ./bitcoin-cli unloadwallet

getnewaddress

Returns a new address for receiving funds

$ ./bitcoin-cli getnewaddress <label> <address_type>

$ ./bitcoin-cli getnewaddress "first address"

Address type is an optional field.

sendtoaddress

Returns a new address for receiving funds

$ ./bitcoin-cli sendtoaddress <address> <amount>

$ ./bitcoin-cli sendtoaddress bcrt1qkctscz9recalk3ar8gl9f59syj5ffs3zey35s5vhkaw6xgmacc7sk5wwh3 0.69

Mining blocks

generatetoaddress

Mines a block and sends funds to a given address.

$ ./bitcoin-cli generatetoaddress <nr of blocks> <address>

$ ./bitcoin-cli generatetoaddress 10 bcrt1q5rgmcrtg0zt63fk5h9efls6q26d86lszw25kl2 

Transactions

sendrawtransaction

Send a serialized, hex-encoded raw transactions.

$ ./bitcoin-cli sendrawtransaction <transaction>

$ ./bitcoin-cli sendrawtransaction 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 

decoderawtransaction

Decode a serialized, hex-encoded transactions into a JSON object.

$ ./bitcoin-cli decoderawtransaction <raw transaction>

$ ./bitcoin-cli decoderawtransaction 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 

decodescript

Get a JSON object of a hex-encoded script.

$ ./bitcoin-cli decodescript <hex string>

$ ./bitcoin-cli decodescript 63a8206bd66227651d0fe5c43863d7b29a4097e31dbf51e6603eee75947bff5e96ae438876a914a453eb499bcd75de0ff3c5a6d60850bcadae88bd675ab27576a914e9988c350aaa7a21367aea483c59f072962496956888ac 

gettransaction

Get a JSON object of an in-wallet transaction.

$ ./bitcoin-cli gettransaction <tx id>

$ ./bitcoin-cli gettransaction c14fb58a87e8662489438660d9d5aec8293eeb55e16e10a958507958d74fd360