Not sure if I can assist you directly. I compiled the code myself from the Github bitcoin/bitcoin [site][1]. Just compiled bitcoind for OSX 10.9 and 10.10. Notice that the results below are for v0.9.4. Here are the "getinfo" results I get for the testNet. (FYSA - had to apply a soft link so that I didn't have to supply a fully qualified file path name.) Skaht% bitcoin-cli -conf=testNet.conf getinfo { "version" : 90400, "protocolversion" : 70002, "walletversion" : 60000, "balance" : 0.00000000, "blocks" : 322742, "timeoffset" : 0, "connections" : 1, "proxy" : "", "difficulty" : 1.00000000, "testnet" : true, "keypoololdest" : 1423202150, "keypoolsize" : 102, "paytxfee" : 0.00000000, "relayfee" : 0.00001000, "errors" : "" } Its a little disturbing to see the difficulty factor is shown to be one. However, when I issued a "coin" RPC to the bfgminer connected to the testNet bitcoind I received a valid difficulty factor. [1]: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin