Introduction

Start accepting Bitcoin today with BTCPay Server! This guide will walk you through the installation.

While our instructions cover how to install BTCPayServer in one click on Azure or Lunanode, BTCPay Server is not limited to those options.

You will find below information about how you can install BTCPay Server easily in any environment having docker available.

Architecture

As you can see, BTCPay depends on several pieces of infrastructure, mainly:

• A lightweight block explorer (NBXplorer),
• A database (PostgreSQL),
• A full node (eg. Bitcoin Core)

There can be more dependencies if you support more than just standard Bitcoin transactions, including:

• Core Lightning (CLN)
• LitecoinD and other coin daemons
• And more...

Note: The setup process can be time consuming, but is heavily automated to make it a fun and easy experience.

Take a look at how BTCPay works in a video below.

Here is a presentation of the global architecture at Advancing Bitcoin conference.

Full installation (for technical users)

You can also install BTCPay Server on your own machine or VPS instance.

The officially supported setup is driven by Helm.

Running locally

Requirements:

• minikube
• helm
• docker
• kubectl

The first time you run this application make sure you start minikube:

minikube start

To build the dependency run:

helm dependency build

To run the project locally simply run:

helm install btcpayserver btcpayserver -f btcpayserver/values-regtest.yaml --namespace regtest

To delete the project run:

helm delete btcpayserver --namespace regtest

To deploy the project create a kubeconfig file then run:

helm --kubeconfig=./path-to-kubeconfig.yaml install btcpayserver btcpayserver -f btcpayserver/values-regtest.yaml --namespace regtest

View the pods, services and the persistence volume claim by running

kubectl get po, svc, pvc --namespace regtest

There are 3 different environments:

• regtest
• testnet
• mainnet

Currently the only environment that isn't being supported is mainnet

Logging into btcpayserver locally:

1. Enable LoadBalaning on minikube run

   minikube tunnel

2. Get the EXTERNAL-IP for btcpayserver-nginx

   kubectl get svc or kubectl get svc

3. You should beable to login by grabbing the ip address from the following command and going to the site. The command should print out something that looks like http://10.110.218.162/login

   curl "http://$(kubectl get svc --namespace regtest | grep "23002" | awk '{print$3}'):23002/login"

Accessing the kuberenetes dashboard for monitoring locally

To access the kuberenetes dashboard locally follow the steps above but instead go to dashboard

echo "http://$(kubectl get svc | grep btcpayserver-nginx | awk '{print $3}')/dashboard"

or

chromium-browser "http://$(kubectl get svc --namespace regtest | grep "23002" | awk '{print$3}'):23002/login"

Forwarding a port

kubectl --kubeconfig=../k8-btcpayserver-kubeconfig.yaml --namespace=testnet port-forward service/btcpayserver 23002:23002

Run the following script from inside btcpayserver to get started using regtest

  #!/bin/bash
  apt update -y
  apt upgrade -y
  apt install curl -y
  apt install jq -y  
  export address='addr(bcrt1ppjj995khlhftanw7ak4zyzu3650rlmpfr9p4tafegw3u38h7vx4qnxemeg)'
  export descriptor='addr(bcrt1ppjj995khlhftanw7ak4zyzu3650rlmpfr9p4tafegw3u38h7vx4qnxemeg)#hzc3j2sf'
  export user=ceiwHEbqWI83 
  export password=XB62kURh0JUTOhIpC-WV7X6m4jGuVvwsyQV4m_EP9C4=
  export url=btcpayserver-bitcoin-core-0:43782

  curl --user $user:$password \
     --data-binary "{\"jsonrpc\": \"1.0\", \"id\": \"curltest\", \"method\": \"getdescriptorinfo\", \"params\": [\"$address\"]}" \
     -H 'content-type: text/plain;' \
     $url | jq

  curl --user $user:$password --data-binary "{\"jsonrpc\": \"1.0\", \"id\": \"curltest\", \"method\": \"createwallet\", \"params\": [\"my_wallet\", true, false,\"\",false,true,true]}" -H 'content-type: text/plain;' $url | jq
  curl --user $user:$password --data-binary "{\"jsonrpc\": \"1.0\", \"id\": \"curltest\", \"method\": \"importdescriptors\", \"params\": [[{\"desc\":\"$descriptor\",\"timestamp\":\"now\"}]]}" -H 'content-type: text/plain;' $url | jq
  curl --user $user:$password --data-binary '{\"jsonrpc\": \"1.0\", \"id\": \"curltest\", \"method\": \"generatetodescriptor\", \"params\": '[50, $descriptor]'}'  -H 'content-type: text/plain;' $url  | jq

  curl --user $user:$password \
     --data-binary "{\"jsonrpc\": \"1.0\", \"id\": \"curltest\", \"method\": \"generatetodescriptor\", \"params\": [150, \"$descriptor\"]}" \
     -H 'content-type: text/plain;' \
     $url | jq

https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.crds.yaml

https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/cert-manager/cert-manager

https://157.230.200.51:443/login?ReturnUrl=%2Fstores%2F

kubectl --kubeconfig=../k8-btcpayserver-kubeconfig.yaml --validate=false apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.15.0-beta.2/cert-manager.yaml

kubectl --kubeconfig=../k8-btcpayserver-kubeconfig.yaml -n testnet apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nginxinc/kubernetes-ingress/v3.5.1/deploy/crds.yaml