HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
spesmilo
electrum
Python2013–2024
spesmilo / electrum

electrum

Electrum Bitcoin Wallet

20Distinct people
21Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
8.7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Electrum Bitcoin Wallet

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year21 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-10-01 14:21:47 UTC to 2024-03-16 13:38:09 UTC.

02462013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 2 submissions, 5 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 3 submissions, 3 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC725
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC633
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Electrum - Lightweight Bitcoin client Licence: MIT Licence Author: Thomas Voegtlin Language: Python (>= 3.10) Homepage: https://electrum.org/ Getting started (If you've come here looking to simply run Electrum, you may download it here.) Electrum itself is pure Python, and so are most of the required dependencies, but not everything. The following sections describe how to run from source, but here is a TL;DR: $ sudo apt-get install libsecp256k1-dev $ ELECTRUM_ECC_DONT_COMPILE=1 python3 -m pip install --user ".[gui,crypto]" Not pure-python dependencies Qt GUI If you want to use the Qt interface, install the Qt dependencies: $ sudo apt-get install python3-pyqt6 QR code scanning QR code recognition uses QtMultimedia and zxing-cpp: $ sudo apt-get install python3-pyqt6.qtmultimedia libzxing3 # (or libzxing4) libsecp256k1 For elliptic curve operations, libsecp256k1 is a required dependency. If you "pip install" Electrum, by default libsecp will get compiled locally, as part of the electrum-ecc dependency. This can be opted-out of, by setting the ELECTRUM_ECC_DONT_COMPILE=1 environment variable. For the compilation to work, besides a C compiler, you need at least: $ sudo apt-get install automake libtool If you opt out of the compilation, you need to provide libsecp in another way, e.g.: $ sudo apt-get install libsecp256k1-dev cryptography Due to the need for fast symmetric ciphers, cryptography is required. Install from your package manager (or from pip): $ sudo apt-get install python3-cryptography hardware-wallet support If you would like hardware wallet support, see this. Running from tar.gz If you downloaded the official package (tar.gz), you can run Electrum from its root directory without installing it on your system; all the pure python dependencies are included in the 'packages' directory. To run Electrum from its root directory, just do: $ ./run_electrum You can also install Electrum on your system, by running this command: $ sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools python3-pip $ python3 -m pip install --user . This will download and install the Python dependencies used by Electrum instead of using the 'packages' directory. It will also place an executable named electrum in ~/.local/bin, so make sure that is on your PATH variable. Development version (git clone) (For OS-specific instructions, see here for Windows, and for macOS) Check out the code from GitHub: $ git clone https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum.git $ cd electrum $ git submodule update --init Run install (this should install dependencies): $ python3 -m pip install --user -e . Create translations (optional): $ sudo apt-get install gettext $ ./contrib/locale/build_locale.sh electrum/locale/locale electrum/locale/locale Finally, to start Electrum: $ ./run_electrum Run tests Run unit tests with pytest: $ pytest tests -v (can be parallelized with -n auto option, using pytest-xdist plugin) To run a single file, specify it directly like this: $ pytest tests/test_bitcoin.py -v Creating Binaries Linux (tarball) Linux (AppImage) macOS Windows Android Contributing Any help testing the software, reporting or fixing bugs, reviewing pull requests and recent changes, writing tests, or helping with outstanding issues is very welcome. Implementing new features, or improving/refactoring the codebase, is of course also welcome, but to avoid wasted effort, especially for larger changes, we encourage discussing these on the issue tracker or IRC first. Besides GitHub, most communication about Electrum development happens on IRC, in the #electrum channel on Libera Chat. The easiest way to participate on IRC is with the web client, web.libera.chat. Please improve translations on Crowdin.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

21 sources
Here [1] is the explanation: I had 1,400 BTC in a wallet that I had not accessed since 2017. I foolishly installed the old version of the electrum wallet. My coins propagated. I attempted to transfer about 1 BTC however was unable to proceed. A pop-up displayed stating I was required to update my security prior to being able to transfer funds. I installed the update which immediately triggered the transfer of my entire balance to a scammers address. [1] https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/5072#issuecommen...
In I just lost 1,400 BTC
Yea, only allowing servers to send a naked error code matched against a list of preloaded human-readable strings on the clients seems to be the only option that's actually social-engineering proof. If custom error messages are really needed, you could allow them as a special option while making it obvious through the client UI that this is sent from an untrusted source (field hidden by default, warning displayed when full error message is expanded). The safest option now is just to consider Electrum as insecure by default. Same with Ethereum's Parity desktop and Metamask. They're convenient for day to day use but don't trust them with big amounts. EDIT: Seems that's already been discussed in the issue: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/4968#issuecommen...
In Users report losing Bitcoin in clever hack of Electrum wallets

Showing the 15 most recent of 21 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.