Download PCoin
One command per platform. Every installer checks the download against a published SHA-256 before it runs, and refuses rather than half-installing. PCoin mines on ordinary CPUs — there is no GPU or ASIC to buy.
Run one line in PowerShell
Press Win, type PowerShell, open it, and paste this. It downloads the archive, verifies the checksum, installs the node and miner, and puts a shortcut on your desktop.
# -Threads is how many CPU cores mine. Use 0 to install without mining.
& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://pc.am/dl/install.ps1))) -Threads 4
Leave a core or two free if you want the machine to stay responsive. You can change this later from the tray icon.
If Windows shows a blue warning
It will say “Windows protected your PC”. Click More info, then Run anyway.
Watch it sync, then mine
A PCoin icon appears in the system tray, near the clock. Click it for hashrate, block height and the address your rewards go to. The chain is small — syncing takes minutes.
-Threads 0, start mining from the tray once your height matches
the explorer.
Prefer to do it by hand?
The archive is a plain zip — no installer, nothing written to the registry.
Unzip it anywhere and run PCoinTray.exe.
| File | What it contains |
|---|---|
| pcoin-win64-miner.zip | Node, CLI and the tray miner |
# check it before you run it
Get-FileHash .\pcoin-win64-miner.zip -Algorithm SHA256
Compare that against pc.am/dl/SHA256SUMS.txt.
Inside are bitcoind.exe, bitcoin-cli.exe and
PCoinTray.exe. The tray app is the only one you need to launch.
-datadir=C:\PCoin\data) to keep the two apart. The installer does
this for you.
One command
Verifies the download against the published SHA-256, installs the node, then runs a short setup wizard.
curl -fsSL https://pc.am/dl/install.sh | sudo sh
Answer three questions
Where block rewards should be paid, how many threads to mine with, and a CPU ceiling. The address is validated by a running node rather than a regex, so a typo is caught before it can cost you a block reward.
CPUQuota, which is a hard cap rather than a
priority hint. Left uncapped the miner sits at a flat 100% of a core on an idle
box — exactly the sustained load that earns a fair-use warning on a
shared-vCPU plan. Our own two Linux miners run at 20%.
Watch it work
# live view: hashrate, share of network, block ETA # press b to scan the chain for your payout address, q to quit pcoin-mine
Day to day:
sudo systemctl status pcoin-miner # is it mining? sudo systemctl stop pcoin-miner # stop mining, node keeps running sudo pcoin-setup # change address, threads or CPU cap journalctl -u pcoin-miner -n 40 # why it is or is not mining
Packages, if you would rather not pipe to a shell
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| pcoin-linux-amd64-miner.deb | Debian/Ubuntu package — same contents the one-liner installs |
| pcoin-linux-x86_64-miner.tar.gz | Plain binaries, any distribution |
curl -fsSLO https://github.com/pars5555/pcoin/releases/download/v1.3.0/pcoin-linux-amd64-miner.deb curl -fsSL https://pc.am/dl/SHA256SUMS.txt -o SHA256SUMS.txt sha256sum --ignore-missing -c SHA256SUMS.txt sudo apt install ./pcoin-linux-amd64-miner.deb
--ignore-missing is not optional.
The list covers every file in the release and you downloaded one of them. Without
that flag sha256sum reports failures for files you never asked for.
Two apps from one codebase. Both carry a full PCoin node and a wallet; the difference is whether mining is compiled in at all.
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| pcoin-android-miner.apk | Node, wallet and mining |
| pcoin-android-wallet.apk | Node and wallet, no mining |
Install the APK
Download it on the phone, tap it, and allow installation from your browser when prompted. These are not on Google Play, so Android asks once.
Write the recovery phrase on paper
On first run the app shows twelve words. They are the only way back to your coins if the phone is lost or wiped.
Expect modest hashrate, and some heat
A phone does real work but far less than a desktop, and sustained mining warms the battery. The miner has a thermal limit and a dead-man’s switch: if the OS kills the app, mining stops rather than being left running unsupervised.
The published builds are not reproducible yet — each was produced once, on one machine. If you want a guarantee stronger than a checksum served from the same place as the download, build it yourself.
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake pkgconf python3 \
libevent-dev libboost-dev libsqlite3-dev
git clone https://github.com/pars5555/pcoin.git
cd pcoin
cmake -B build -DBUILD_GUI=OFF -DENABLE_WALLET=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j "$(nproc)"
./build/bin/bitcoind --version
Binaries land in build/bin/. Run the consensus tests with
./build/bin/test_bitcoin --run_test=pow_tests.
Verifying what you downloaded
Checksums are published in two places that would have to be compromised together to fool you: pc.am/dl/SHA256SUMS.txt and the GitHub release each file came from — the list names the release beside every entry, because the wallet and the miner ship separately and no longer come from one release. The two must agree.
Common questions
Windows says the file is dangerous. Is it a virus?
No, and two different Windows features get confused here. SmartScreen warns about any executable it has not seen widely downloaded, regardless of what is inside it — that is the blue “Windows protected your PC” box, and a paid code-signing certificate is what removes it. Defender is the antivirus, and it does not flag PCoin: every release is checked on a real machine with real-time protection on, current signatures, and a forced scan of the extracted binaries. If your antivirus does quarantine something, please tell us — a mining program is a common false-positive shape and we would rather chase it down than have you guess.
How much can I earn?
Each block pays 50 PCN and arrives roughly every ten minutes, shared among everyone mining. Your share is your hashrate over the network’s. The calculator on the front page does the arithmetic with live numbers. PCN is not traded on any exchange, so there is no market price — treat this as a young project, not an income.
Do I need to forward a port?
No. The node makes outbound connections and finds peers by itself. Forwarding port 9444 lets others connect to you and helps the network, but nothing about mining requires it.
Can I mine with a GPU or an ASIC?
No, and that is the point. PCoin uses RandomX, which runs well on ordinary CPUs
and badly on specialised hardware, so a laptop is a legitimate participant.
xmrig and every SHA-256 miner are useless against this chain.
Where do my coins actually go?
To an address you control. On Windows and Android the app holds a wallet and can forward to any address you set. On Linux the miner pays a bare address you supply, so the machine holds no key at all — which is what you want on a rented server.
I run a shop or a service. Can I accept PCN?
Yes — the integration guide is at docs.pc.am. It covers deposit addresses, confirmations, reorg handling and custody, with the mistakes that have already cost this project money written down so nobody repeats them.