691 THE CONNECTED BITCOIN ATLAS
Understand one idea.
Follow the whole system.
Every entry is a coordinate, not an island. Move from the monetary rule to the code that enforces it, the people who shaped it and the trade-offs it creates.
Atlas
691 verified coordinatesBitcoin
An open monetary network: what holding bitcoin means, how a payment is made and why nodes verify its acceptance.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin's authorship documented through its proposal, code and collaboration; civil identity remains a separate question.
Bitcoin Whitepaper
The 2008 design paper that explains electronic cash without a trusted ledger operator.
Genesis Block
Bitcoin’s first block, mined by Satoshi Nakamoto on 3 January 2009.
Timechain
Bitcoin’s proof-of-work-ordered history of valid blocks.
Proof of Work
A costly-to-produce and cheap-to-verify hash condition that gives valid Bitcoin histories measurable cumulative work.
Mining
The competitive construction and proof-of-work search that proposes new valid Bitcoin blocks.
Full Node
Software that independently validates Bitcoin’s complete rule set and maintains its own view of the valid chain and UTXO set.
Difficulty adjustment
Bitcoin’s feedback mechanism for keeping block production near one block per ten minutes as hashpower changes.
Transaction
A signed state transition that consumes existing outputs and creates new outputs under explicit spending conditions.
UTXO
A specific transaction output that exists in the current spendable set and can be consumed only in full.
Private Key
A secret scalar that can authorize spending under a corresponding public key.
Bitcoin wallet
Software or hardware that manages keys, discovers spendable outputs, constructs transactions and coordinates signing.
Block Subsidy
The block subsidy is newly issued Bitcoin that a valid block's coinbase transaction may claim in addition to transaction fees. Bitcoin Core starts the subsidy at 50 BTC and right-shifts it after each 210,000-block interval; validating nodes…
Halving
The programmed 50% reduction in Bitcoin’s block subsidy every 210,000 blocks.
21 Million
Bitcoin’s issuance cap is the consensus result of a block subsidy that halves every 210,000 blocks and integer satoshi arithmetic. Validating nodes reject a coinbase output above subsidy plus transaction fees; cumulative issuance approaches…
Mempool
A node’s local set of valid, unconfirmed transactions that may be relayed and selected for a future block.
Transaction fees
The difference between total input value and total output value, offered to the miner that confirms a transaction.
SegWit
A 2017 protocol upgrade that separated signature data and introduced block weight.
Taproot
The 2021 soft-fork upgrade combining Schnorr signatures, a key-path spend and selectively revealed script paths.
Lightning Network
A peer-to-peer network of Bitcoin payment channels that settles many updates off-chain and enforces final ownership on-chain.
Block
A consensus-valid batch of transactions joined to Bitcoin’s history by a proof-of-work block header.
Block header
The 80-byte structure hashed for proof of work and linking a candidate block to Bitcoin’s prior history and transaction set.
Cryptographic hash
A cryptographic hash deterministically maps exact bytes to a compact digest; Bitcoin uses several hash constructions for proof of work, identifiers, commitments and signature messages, each with different rules and security assumptions.
SHA-256
SHA-256 is the 256-bit member of NIST's SHA-2 family. Bitcoin uses the primitive both directly and inside precisely specified constructions, but its security depends as much on serialization, domain separation and consensus rules as on the…
Merkle tree
A deterministic binary hash tree that commits a block header’s Merkle root to every transaction identifier in the block.
Bitcoin address
A Bitcoin address is a wallet-facing encoding of an output script or witness program, not an account on the blockchain. Its prefix, payload and checksum help software construct the intended scriptPubKey, but only the spending condition—not…
Seed Phrase
Recovery words, wallet backups, safe storage, recovery checks and the scams that steal bitcoin.
BIP 39
BIP39 is an application-layer convention that turns 128–256 bits of computer-generated entropy into 12–24 words and then derives a 512-bit seed. It is a human backup transport, not Bitcoin consensus, not a private-key list and not a…
HD Wallet
An HD wallet is a key-management architecture in which one master extended key generates a reproducible tree of child keys. BIP32 reduces backup churn and permits scoped watch-only branches, but it does not define mnemonic words, Bitcoin…
Multisig
A spending policy that requires a threshold of several keys instead of one signature.
Cold Storage
Cold storage is an operating model that keeps Bitcoin signing secrets away from network-connected general-purpose systems. The bitcoin remains on-chain; an online watch-only wallet may track it and prepare transactions, while a separate…
Hardware Wallet
A dedicated signer that keeps private keys away from the general-purpose host computer.
Watch-only Wallet
A watch-only wallet tracks a defined set of Bitcoin scripts and can derive addresses, detect receipts and prepare unsigned transactions without containing the private keys required to spend. Its usefulness depends on importing the complete…
Coin Control
The deliberate choice of which UTXOs a wallet spends, allowing the user to manage fees, privacy and transaction structure.
Change output
A change output returns the part of selected Bitcoin inputs not paid to recipients or fees to a script controlled by the spender. It is an ordinary transaction output: the chain contains no change flag, so ownership is wallet knowledge and…
Confirmation
A Bitcoin confirmation is a transaction's depth in a node's currently active, fully validated chain: inclusion in a block is one confirmation and every valid descendant adds one. It is not a vote, receipt or irreversible seal; a…
Double-spend
A Bitcoin double-spend attempt uses two or more conflicting transactions to spend at least one identical UTXO into mutually exclusive histories. Nodes do not debit a balance twice: they validate an input against their UTXO and mempool…
Coinbase transaction
A coinbase transaction is the mandatory first transaction of every Bitcoin block. It has one special input that spends no earlier UTXO, lets the miner claim at most the height-dependent block subsidy plus the block's transaction fees, and…
Bitcoin Script
Bitcoin’s deliberately limited stack language for defining conditions under which an output may be spent.
Soft Fork
A soft fork tightens Bitcoin's consensus rules: every block valid under the new rules is still valid to old software, but some blocks old software would accept become invalid to upgraded nodes. Compatibility is therefore asymmetric, not…
Hard Fork
A non-backward-compatible rule change that can split participants onto incompatible chains.
BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal)
A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal is a numbered design document for information, a process or a proposed Bitcoin-related standard; BIP 2 defines the repository workflow. Authors draft rationale and specification, editors check format and…
Consensus rules
The deterministic validity rules every fully validating node applies independently.
Chain reorganization
A node replaces its current chain tip when it learns of a valid branch with more accumulated work.
Stale block
A valid block that loses a temporary race and is not part of the most-work chain.
ASIC Miner
Specialized hardware optimized for Bitcoin’s SHA-256 proof-of-work computation.
Mining Pool
A coordinator that aggregates miners’ work and distributes rewards under a payout scheme.
Hashrate
The estimated number of proof-of-work hash attempts performed per second.
Nonce
A block-header field miners vary while searching for a hash below the target.
Fee Rate
The transaction fee divided by virtual size, normally expressed in satoshis per virtual byte.
Replace-by-Fee (RBF)
A policy allowing an unconfirmed transaction to be replaced by one paying a higher fee.
CPFP (Child Pays for Parent)
A high-fee child transaction can raise the economic priority of its unconfirmed parent package.
Timelock
A transaction or spending condition that becomes valid only after a time or block threshold.
HTLC
A hash-and-time conditional transfer used to route atomic Lightning payments.
Payment Channel
A two-party contract whose latest signed state reallocates locked bitcoin without publishing every update on-chain.
Lightning Watchtower
A service that monitors the chain for an obsolete Lightning channel state and can publish a pre-authorized response while its client is offline.
Lightning liquidity
Lightning liquidity is the directional amount a channel can currently send or receive, not its total advertised capacity.
Lightning Routing
Lightning Routing selects one or more channel paths whose directional liquidity, forwarding policies and time constraints may deliver a particular payment.
Extended Public Key (xpub)
An Extended Public Key (xpub) is a BIP32 public key, chain code and metadata that can derive every non-hardened public descendant below one HD-wallet node without exposing its private key.
Output Descriptor
An Output Descriptor is a machine-readable description of a set of Bitcoin output scripts and the keys needed to derive them. It lets a wallet reproduce an address policy precisely, rather than merely restoring one key or address.
PSBT
A standard container for coordinating an unsigned or partially signed Bitcoin transaction without sharing private keys.
CoinJoin
A collaborative Bitcoin transaction that weakens simple ownership heuristics without promising complete anonymity.
Bitcoin Privacy
Bitcoin Privacy limits who can link public transactions to a person, balance, device, or commercial relationship. Bitcoin is a pseudonymous public ledger, not an automatically anonymous payment system.
Pseudonymity
Pseudonymity in Bitcoin means the protocol uses cryptographic identifiers rather than civil names. It is not anonymity: public transactions, metadata and service records can connect a pseudonym to a person.
KYC
KYC is part of AML/CFT controls through which a regulated institution identifies and verifies the customer, beneficial owner, purpose and risk. The Bitcoin protocol performs no KYC; duties attach to a provider, product and jurisdiction.
Self-custody
Direct control of the keys needed to spend bitcoin, with responsibility for verification, backup and recovery.
Custodial Exchange
A Custodial Exchange controls the private key to customers’ bitcoin and records their claims in its own ledger. An app balance is therefore not an independently spendable UTXO; the customer bears the operator’s operational, legal, liquidity…
Satoshi
A satoshi, abbreviated sat, is Bitcoin’s smallest native on-chain unit of value. One bitcoin contains exactly 100,000,000 satoshis, and on-chain amounts are whole-number counts of these units.
Fiat money
Fiat money is currency without a fixed redemption claim on a commodity, whose unit, base issuance and monetary framework are administered by public institutions. In practice the system combines central-bank cash and reserves with mostly…
Austrian economics
Austrian economics is a diverse tradition originating with Carl Menger. It studies individual action, subjective value, marginal choice, capital through time, entrepreneurial discovery and how prices coordinate dispersed knowledge.
Sound money
Sound money is a normative ideal for money that performs as a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value without arbitrary debasement. It is not one technical property or an automatic label for gold or Bitcoin.
Knowledge network
The lines are the product. Each page includes curated relationships and automatically generated backlinks.