How to Connect to Bitcoin

Learn how easy it is to connect to the Bitcoin blockchain via RPC or WebSocket with Blockdaemon.

Connect to Bitcoin with Blockdaemon

It's easy to connect to your Bitcoin infrastructure via RPC or WebSocket. If you haven't already configured any Bitcoin infrastructure, visit the Bitcoin protocol page to learn more about Blockdaemon's Bitcoin options.

How to Access Your Blockdaemon Bitcoin Credentials

Once you have purchased your Blockdaemon Bitcoin infrastructure, you can access your credentials by

  1. Logging into the blockdaemon app.
  2. Navigating to the node overview

There are multiple ways to use these to connect to your node/cluster. In this guide, we will cover the following simple methods of connection to your infrastructure:


Bitcoin RPC Connection via cURL

The following describes how to run a simple cURL command that prints the current blockchain information from the node.

The cURL command below can be used to retrieve the blockchain status of your node.

You will need to replace  with your node's endpoint plus the authorization token from the Connect page.

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Note

To get your address from your node dashboard click 'Connect' when logged in at blockdaemon.com.

curl --user blockdaemon:blockdaemon --data 
'{"method":"getblockchaininfo","params":[],"id":1,"jsonrpc":"2.0"}' -H 
"Content-Type: application/json" -X POST https://<node endpoint>

Bitcoin RPC Connection via Python

The following describes how to run a simple Python application that prints the current best block.

➡️1. Install Python libraries

Install the Python library python-bitcoinrpc. We will use this library to communicate with the RPC interface.

pip3 install python-bitcoinrpc

➡️ 2. Copy script

Copy the following Python program into a file called bitcoin_rpc.py

import pprint from bitcoinrpc.authproxy import AuthServiceProxy, JSONRPCException

rpc_user = "blockdaemon" 
rpc_password = "blockdaemon" 
rpc_connection = AuthServiceProxy("<your node endpoint>" .format(rpc_user, rpc_password)) 
best_block_hash = rpc_connection.getbestblockhash() 
best_block = rpc_connection.getblock(best_block_hash) 
pprint.pprint(best_block)

➡️3. Start the Python script

python3 bitcoin_rpc.py

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Note:

Bitcoin does not require an extra auth header. You:

  • can still use extra auth user in header (existing curl example)
  • can use basic auth
  • can use X-Auth-Token in header without auth user
  • can use bearer token in header without auth user
  • can pass auth as url param

Useful Links

👋 Need Help?

Contact us through email or our support page for any issues, bugs, or assistance you may need.