diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..227ec1cd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+pyaes>=0.1a1
+ecdsa>=0.9
+pbkdf2
+requests
+qrcode
+protobuf
+dnspython
+jsonrpclib-pelix
+PySocks>=1.6.6
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 3375061b1..80330b1cf 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ import platform
 import imp
 import argparse
 
+with open('requirements.txt') as f:
+    requirements = f.read().splitlines()
+
 with open('requirements-hw.txt') as f:
     requirements_hw = f.read().splitlines()
 
@@ -17,7 +20,7 @@ version = imp.load_source('version', 'lib/version.py')
 if sys.version_info[:3] < (3, 4, 0):
     sys.exit("Error: Electrum requires Python version >= 3.4.0...")
 
-data_files = ['requirements-hw.txt']
+data_files = ['requirements.txt', 'requirements-hw.txt']
 
 if platform.system() in ['Linux', 'FreeBSD', 'DragonFly']:
     parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
@@ -38,17 +41,7 @@ if platform.system() in ['Linux', 'FreeBSD', 'DragonFly']:
 setup(
     name="Electrum",
     version=version.ELECTRUM_VERSION,
-    install_requires=[
-        'pyaes>=0.1a1',
-        'ecdsa>=0.9',
-        'pbkdf2',
-        'requests',
-        'qrcode',
-        'protobuf',
-        'dnspython',
-        'jsonrpclib-pelix',
-        'PySocks>=1.6.6',
-    ],
+    install_requires=requirements,
     extras_require={
         'hardware': requirements_hw,
     },