Bitcoin glossary
HODL, sats and the mechanics behind Bitcoin. Get the meaning of mining, halvings, nodes and payment channels, with examples and source references.
Bech32
An address encoding with error detection, introduced for native SegWit Bitcoin outputs.
Bitcoin
A peer-to-peer monetary network whose native asset is bitcoin, usually written as BTC.
Bitcoin Script
Bitcoin’s stack-based programming language for defining the conditions needed to spend transaction outputs.
Block reward
The Bitcoin block subsidy plus transaction fees that a miner may claim for a valid block.
Block weight
Bitcoin’s consensus measure of block capacity, introduced by SegWit.
Change output
A Bitcoin transaction output that returns unused input value to the sender.
Coinbase transaction
The first transaction in a Bitcoin block, through which the miner claims the permitted block reward.
Compact block
A Bitcoin block-relay format that sends short transaction identifiers so peers can reconstruct a block with less data.
Fee rate
A transaction fee stated per unit of transaction size or weight-derived size.
Halving
Bitcoin’s scheduled halving of the block subsidy every 210,000 blocks.
Hashrate
The number of hash calculations performed per second by mining equipment or a mining network.
HODL
Holding onto your crypto instead of selling when the market gets noisy.
Mining
The process of building candidate blocks, searching for valid proof of work and publishing successful results.
Mining difficulty
A measure of how hard it is to find a proof-of-work hash that meets the network’s target.
Mining pool
A group of miners that coordinates work and shares rewards using an agreed payout scheme.
Pay to public key hash
A Bitcoin output type that requires a signature and public key matching a committed public-key hash.
PSBT
Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction: a format for passing transaction data between wallets and signing devices.
Replace by fee
A relay-policy mechanism for replacing an eligible pending transaction with a higher-fee transaction.
Satoshi
One hundred millionth of a bitcoin, commonly shortened to sat.
SegWit
A Bitcoin upgrade that separates witness data, such as signatures, from the traditional transaction serialization.
Stale block
A valid block left outside the chain selected by the network's fork-choice rules.
Taproot
A Bitcoin output design supporting key-based spending and optional committed script spending paths.
Timelock
A spending constraint tied to a specified time or block requirement.
Transaction ID
An identifier computed from a transaction's protocol-defined serialized data.
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