MMGen = Multi-Mode GENerator
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##### a Bitcoin cold storage solution for the command line

Install on Debian/Ubuntu Linux:
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**Perform the following steps on both your online and offline computers:**

Install the pip Python installer:

		$ sudo apt-get install python-pip

Install required Python modules:

		$ sudo pip install ecdsa scrypt pycrypto bitcoin-python

Install MMGen:

		$ git clone https://github.com/mmgen/mmgen.git
		$ cd mmgen; sudo ./setup.py install

Install vanitygen (optional but recommended):

		$ git clone https://github.com/samr7/vanitygen.git
		(build and put the "keyconv" executable in your path)

At this point you can begin trying out MMgen, creating a test wallet and
generating keys as described in **Using MMGen** below.  To be able to track
addresses and create and sign transactions, however, you'll need to have
bitcoin daemons installed on your online and offline machines.

#### Bitcoind installation

The bitcoin daemon on the **offline machine** is used solely for signing
transactions and is therefore run without a blockchain.  The version bundled
with the prebuilt Bitcoin-QT is just fine for this purpose.  It can be obtained
here:

		https://bitcoin.org/en/download

After installation, locate the bitcoind executable and start it up:

		$ bitcoind -daemon -maxconnections=0

Note that in the absence of a blockchain the daemon starts very quickly and
uses practically no CPU once running.  Thus a low-powered computer such as a
netbook can serve quite nicely as an offline signing machine.

On the **online machine**, the bitcoin daemon is used for tracking addresses
and requires a full, updated blockchain.  For this a more powerful computer is
needed, especially when importing addresses.  Plenty of free disk space is also
required to accommodate the rapidly-growing blockchain (20GB in size at the time
of writing).

The standard bitcoin daemon at present lacks the watch-only address support we
need, so we must get and compile the special watch-only enabled version created
by Bitcoin core developer Pieter Wuille, aka Sipa.  If you have the necessary
dependencies installed, the build process is surprisingly painless.

		$ curl -O https://codeload.github.com/sipa/bitcoin/zip/watchonly
		$ unzip watchonly
		$ cd bitcoin-watchonly
		$ ./autogen.sh
		$ ./configure
		$ make -j4
		(You may have to install the libboost-all-dev package for the build to succeed)

With your online machine connected to the Internet, start the freshly compiled
daemon and let it synchronize the blockchain, taking care to **move any
existing wallet.dat out of harm's way** beforehand.  The daemon will create a
new wallet upon startup, which you'll use as your **tracking wallet**.

Congratulations!  Your MMGen installation is now complete.