I can walk you through the process of building Bitcoin-Qt.exe on Ubuntu 18.4, first with the latest version (0.8.1) and then with older versions. However, please note that creating an executable for Bitcoin-qt.exe is a bit more complicated than just compiling it.

Build Bitcoin-0.8.1

To build Bitcoin-0.8.1 on Ubuntu 18.4, you need to install the “build-essential” package, which provides the necessary tools to build executables:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential libssl-dev libz-dev libncrypt-dev curl git

Now download the Bitcoin source code from [bitcoin.org] ( and follow these instructions to compile it on Ubuntu 18.4:

• Clone the repository: Clone the Bitcoin repository with Git:

git clone  bitcoin-0.8.1

• Change directory: Change to the newly cloned directory:

cd bitcoin-0.8.1

• Create Bitcoin: Create Bitcoin using the “make” command (this will take some time depending on your CPU and RAM):

make -j $(nproc)

This assumes you are building for the x86_64 architecture, but you can specify the target architecture by adding-t :

make -j $(nproc) -t arm64

./configure --build=linux-64 --host=linux-64

make -j $(nproc)

• Install: Install the resulting binaries and libraries:

sudo make install

Build Bitcoin-0.8.1 (with older versions)

If you want to build Bitcoin-0.8.1 from another version, you need to follow these general steps again, but with a specific version number and the changes required for that version:

0.7.x or earlier
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential libssl-dev libz-dev libncrypt-dev curl git
cd bitcoin-0.8.1
git checkout 

Build Bitcoin with the "make" command (this may take some time depending on your CPU and RAM)
make -j $(nproc)

Configure Bitcoin
./configure --build=linux-64 --host=linux-64

Build binary
make -j $(nproc)

Install
sudo do install

Replace with the version of Bitcoin you want to build.

Creating a Windows executable (.exe)

To build a Bitcoin-qt.exe executable from one of these versions, we will use msysbuild.exe (included with MinGW) or Cygwin:

• Build and configure: First, make sure the build process has completed successfully.

• Install MSYS2

  

  : If you are using Windows 10/11, install [MSYS2]( on your system if it is not already installed.

• Get Bitcoin source code

  : Download the latest version of the Bitcoin source code from [bitcoin.org] ( and extract it to a directory where you can easily run MSYS2 commands, e.g. For example, “C:\Bitcoin” (or another path that is appropriate for your system).

• Go to the Bitcoin source code: Go to the directory “bitcoin-0.8.1” that was extracted during the build process.

• Use and install Cygwin libraries: Build and install the necessary Cygwin libraries:

cd C:\Bitcoin\bitcoin-0.8.1

Install the Cygwin libraries if you haven't already
msysbuild.exe -q install -v bitcoin-dev

Now create the executable
msysbuild.exe -q build-msys

Create a Windows executable (.exe)
msysbuild.exe /p:CONFIG=Debug /p:EXE_OUTPUT=C:\Bitcoin\bitcoin-0.8.1\build\bitcoin.exe /p:OUT_DIR=C:\Bitcoin\bitcoin-0.8.1\build\bin

Replace the path in the field with C:\Bitcoin\bitcoin-0.8.1\build\bitcoin.