Alpha Coin works like Bitcoin — peer-to-peer digital money you fully control. This guide covers everything you should know before your first transaction, for individuals, businesses and developers.
If you're getting started with Alpha, there are a few things you should know. Alpha lets you exchange value in a different way than you normally do — treat it with the same care as your regular wallet, or even more.
Alpha makes it easy to transfer value anywhere while staying in control of your money — and that power comes with responsibility. Use an encrypted wallet, keep your keys private, and never share your WIF or seed. The web wallet encrypts keys with AES-256 in your browser — keys never leave your device.
Alpha has no central authority to reverse a mistake. If you permanently lose access to your wallet, your funds are gone — no one, not even miners or developers, can recover them. Always back up your keys and recovery information, and keep them private.
Holding your own private keys means you control your ALPHA — and you are responsible for keeping it secure. Leaving coins with a custodian or exchange introduces counterparty risk: their security and solvency stand between you and your funds. Self-custody removes that risk but requires you to secure your wallet and backups yourself.
All Alpha transactions are stored publicly and permanently on the blockchain — anyone can see the balance and transactions of any address. The identity behind an address stays unknown until you reveal it. Use a fresh address for each payment to protect your privacy.
An Alpha transaction cannot be reversed — it can only be refunded by the recipient. Do business with people you trust, and use the built-in escrow contracts and multisig for larger or trust-sensitive trades. Alpha won't send to a malformed address, but always double-check the recipient.
Transactions become irreversible gradually as they accumulate confirmations — blocks are found about every 10 minutes on average. For high-value transfers, wait for more confirmations:
| Confirmations | Safety |
|---|---|
| 0 | Only safe if you trust the payer |
| 1–3 | Reliable for everyday amounts |
| 6 | Recommended for high-value transfers |
| 100 | Coinbase (mining) rewards maturity |
The value of ALPHA can rise or fall unpredictably with adoption and market liquidity. Treat it as a high-risk asset — never store money in it that you cannot afford to lose.
Alpha is a young network evolving through active development. You may encounter changes, growing pains or bugs. Check the roadmap, consult documentation before major decisions, and remember nobody can predict the future.
Alpha is not an official currency, but most jurisdictions still require taxes on anything of value — income, sales, or capital gains. It is your responsibility to comply with the laws of your government and local municipalities.
Getting started does not require deep technical knowledge.
Alpha is different from what you use every day. Read the sections above to use it securely and avoid common pitfalls.
Web wallet for instant browser access (keys stay on your
device), or the full-node CLI wallet (alpha_cli.py) with BIP32 HD,
multi-address and AES-256 encryption.
Mine it with any CPU (browser mining or
mine_alpha.py), earn it for goods and services, or trade tokens for it
on the built-in DEX / AMM pools.
Send to any Alpha address, scan a QR code in the web wallet, pay merchant invoices and payment links, or swap tokens — settlement in about 10 minutes.
Send and receive money directly, anywhere in the world.
Two-step scan-and-pay: display your QR code in the web wallet and let the other party scan it. No sign-up, no card, no PIN.
Transactions are secured by mathematics and energy — ECDSA and Schnorr signatures stop others spending your coins; SHA-256d proof-of-work stops anyone undoing your transactions.
Like email, you don't need the recipient to use the same software — just their Alpha address. The network never sleeps, even on weekends and holidays — and nodes on the same LAN keep working even without internet.
Borderless by design — no banks, no three-day waits, no minimum or maximum. The same fee whether the payment crosses the street or the planet.
No fee to receive; you pick the fee when sending. Fees depend on transaction data size, not the amount — moving a large sum costs no more than a small one.
No card numbers to steal. Transactions are public but addresses aren't tied to your identity until you reveal it — use a new address per payment.
Hold your keys, hold your coins. The freedom comes with responsibility — secure your wallet and backups.
Create tokens, NFTs and .alpha domains, register a did:alpha:
identity, trade on the DEX, or provably burn coins — all on the same chain.
Accept secure payments directly from customers.
Payments are irreversible — no chargebacks, no chargeback fraud. The cost of fraud is no longer pushed onto merchants.
Create invoices and payment links (createinvoice), track payment status
on-chain, and accept QR payments at point-of-sale — no third-party processor
needed.
You never handle sensitive customer card data. You still secure your wallet and payment requests — but skip the PCI burden.
Require approval from several people to spend — e.g. a 3-of-5 board treasury (the same scheme securing the Alpha community reserve). Track who authorized what.
Every payment is verifiable on a public ledger — publish donation or revenue addresses and let anyone audit balances through the explorer.
Anchor product tracking events, tamper-evident certificates, audits and your business registry entry on-chain — immutable proof customers can verify.
Use on-chain escrow with arbiters and expiry, or collateralized loans, for trust-sensitive B2B deals.
Cross-border payments settle in ~10 minutes for a fee you choose — ideal for remittance and international suppliers.
The basics for a new user — a quick explanation.
A shared public ledger the whole network relies on. Every confirmed transaction is recorded in it, letting wallets compute spendable balances and the network verify the sender owns the coins. Its order and integrity are protected by cryptography.
A transfer of value between wallets, signed with your private key — a secret that proves the payment came from you and can't be altered afterward. Transactions broadcast to the network and usually confirm within 10–60 minutes through mining.
A distributed lottery that packs pending transactions into blocks following strict rules. It orders history, keeps the network neutral, and makes it impractical for any single party to rewrite the chain — while paying miners 50 ALPHA per block, halving every 210,000 blocks toward a 21M supply cap.
Alpha adds a meta-protocol on top of Bitcoin's design: OP_RETURN records anchor tokens, NFTs, domains, identities, oracles, supply-chain events and contracts — all validated by every full node with the same security as the coin itself. See the whitepaper for details.
Mine it (CPU, browser or node), accept it as payment, or swap tokens on the DEX/AMM. Testnet coins are free from the built-in faucet.
Broadcast is instant; first confirmation averages ~10 minutes. Six confirmations (~1 hour) are recommended for large amounts.
You choose. Fees are based on transaction size in bytes, not value sent — typical payments cost a fraction of a cent in ALPHA.
It has Bitcoin's exact monetary policy — 21M cap, halving schedule, predictable issuance — but as a young asset its price can be volatile. Don't invest what you can't afford to lose.
Yes — a node can mine, validate, and create/sign transactions offline, and nodes on the same LAN auto-discover each other via UDP 8334. Broadcasting to the global network and chain sync need a peer connection.
Nobody — and everybody. It's an open-source, permissionless network like Bitcoin: miners secure it, nodes validate the rules, and no central party can change the monetary policy.