🍎 Mining on macOS
About 30 minutes. Works on both Intel and Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4).
You'll use Terminal and Homebrew. No Xcode needed beyond the command-line tools.
Step 1 of 5
Install BurritoCoin Core
1
Open Terminal
Press ⌘ + Space, type "Terminal", press Enter.
2
Install Homebrew (if you don't already have it)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
If it's already installed, this command will tell you so. Skip if so.
3
Install build dependencies
brew install automake libtool boost pkg-config libevent sqlite miniupnpc zeromq fmt
Berkeley DB 4.8 (needed for the wallet) isn't available in Homebrew anymore, so
we'll build it from a script the BurritoCoin repo ships with — see the next step.
4
Clone the repo and build Berkeley DB 4.8
git clone https://github.com/BurritoCoinDev/BurritoCoin.git
cd burritocoin
./contrib/install_db4.sh .
This downloads and builds BDB 4.8 into a db4/ subfolder. Takes about
3-5 minutes. When it's done, it prints the exact BDB_* flags to use.
5
Build BurritoCoin Core
./autogen.sh
./configure --without-gui --disable-tests --disable-bench \
BDB_LIBS="-L$(pwd)/db4/lib -ldb_cxx-4.8" \
BDB_CFLAGS="-I$(pwd)/db4/include"
make -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)
sudo make install
This takes 10-20 minutes. The build produces burritocoind and
burritocoin-cli, installed into /usr/local/bin/.
Step 3 of 5
Get a Wallet Address
1
Create a wallet and get an address
burritocoin-cli createwallet "mining"
burritocoin-cli getnewaddress
Copy the address that prints — you'll need it in step 5.
2
Encrypt the wallet (recommended)
The wallet is unencrypted by default — anyone with access to your Mac can
spend your BRTO. Lock it with a passphrase:
burritocoin-cli encryptwallet "PICK_A_LONG_RANDOM_PASSPHRASE"
The node shuts down automatically after this command. Restart it:
burritocoind
Mining still works without unlocking — rewards go to the address you copied.
To spend later, unlock first:
burritocoin-cli walletpassphrase "your_passphrase" 60
(60 = seconds before it auto-locks again.)
Wallet passphrase ≠ RPC password. You now have two different
secrets. The RPC password (in burritocoin.conf)
lets cpuminer talk to the node — that's the one you put in the cpuminer
command. The wallet passphrase (just set above) only protects
spending your coins. Don't mix them up.
Write the passphrase down somewhere safe. If you forget it,
every BRTO in this wallet is gone forever. There's no recovery, and the
backup file is encrypted with the same passphrase.
3
Back up your wallet
Make sure the node is running again (the encryptwallet step
shut it down — restart with burritocoind if you haven't).
Then:
burritocoin-cli backupwallet ~/Desktop/wallet-backup.dat
Copy wallet-backup.dat off this laptop — USB drive, cloud,
anywhere. Without it, a dead drive means your BRTO is gone.
Step 4 of 5
Install cpuminer-opt
There's no Homebrew formula for cpuminer-opt with Scrypt support, so we'll build it
from source. It's quick.
1
Install cpuminer-opt's build dependencies
brew install curl openssl gmp jansson
2
Clone and build
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/JayDDee/cpuminer-opt.git
cd cpuminer-opt
./build.sh
If build.sh fails (it uses nproc which doesn't exist on
macOS, so this is common), build manually:
./autogen.sh
./configure CFLAGS="-O3" --with-curl
make -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)
The result is a binary called cpuminer in the current folder.
Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4): cpuminer-opt is primarily tuned for x86,
but Scrypt works fine on ARM. The build above produces a working ARM binary. If you hit
issues, an alternative is the original
pooler/cpuminer,
which is simpler and supports Scrypt cleanly.
Step 5 of 5
Start Mining
1
Verify the node is ready
Sanity-check before launching cpuminer:
burritocoin-cli getblockchaininfo
burritocoin-cli listwallets
The first should return JSON with "initialblockdownload": false
and blocks ≈ headers. The second is a JSON array — it should
contain "mining". If the array is empty ([]),
run burritocoin-cli loadwallet "mining". If
initialblockdownload is true, wait for sync to
finish before mining.
2
Run the miner
From the cpuminer-opt folder, replace YOUR_PASSWORD
with the RPC password from burritocoin.conf and
YOUR_BRTO_ADDRESS with the address you copied in Step 3:
./cpuminer -a scrypt \
-o http://127.0.0.1:9226 \
-O burritouser:YOUR_PASSWORD \
--coinbase-addr=YOUR_BRTO_ADDRESS
You should see lines like:
[2026-05-03 14:22:01] 8 of 8 miner threads started using 'scrypt' algorithm
[2026-05-03 14:22:05] CPU #0: 11.20 kH/s
[2026-05-03 14:22:05] CPU #1: 11.18 kH/s
...
You're mining. The thread count matches your CPU's logical cores (yours
may differ). The kH/s lines repeat continuously — that's normal idle
hashing.
If cpuminer errors with rule not supported or error -8:
BurritoCoin's daemon requires both
segwit and
mweb in
getblocktemplate's
rules array. Most recent
cpuminer-opt builds send these correctly. If yours doesn't, update to
the latest release from
JayDDee/cpuminer-opt
or use a fork that supports MWEB rules.
"accepted" never appears — is something wrong? No.
In solo mining, the accepted: N/N line you may have
seen in pool-mining tutorials only appears when you actually find a full
block, which on a tiny chain at low difficulty might still be minutes to
hours apart. When a block is found, 10 BRTO is added to your wallet —
verify with burritocoin-cli getbalance.
Heads up — your Mac will get warm. Mining uses 100% of your CPU. The
fans will spin up and the case will get hot. This is normal but you should not run a
laptop on battery this way for long. Plug in.