Glossary of Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Blockchain terminology

A Glossary of commonly used Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency & Blockchain terminology 
glossary
Altcoins – A general term that covers all the other non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Dash, Monero, Bitcoin Cash 

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Bit – This is a sub-unit of a bitcoin, which has one million bits.

bitcoin – This refers to the unit of bitcoin currency.

Bitcoin – The upper case B refers to the entire Bitcoin technology, such as the software, community and the protocol.

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bitcoin halving - the process whereby the supply of Bitcoin is halved every 4 years, therefore increasing it's difficulty to be mined

Bitcoin wallet – The Bitcoin wallet can be either a physical paper / hardware or a software Cryptocurrency purse that is used to hold and store an individual's Bitcoins, plus public and private keys.

Bitcoin address -The same as Public Key - The alphanumeric visible public address key that receives the coins from others.

Block – pertaining to Blockchain, which refers to a group of transactions that are awaiting verification

Blockchain – This refers to the universal public ledger that records all bitcoin transactions to date.

BTC - An abbreviation for Bitcoin

Cold storage – Refers to a secure way of storing Bitcoin private keys offline to help to prevent hacking.

Confirmation – This is what Miners do with a bitcoin transaction’s validity, and is achieved every 10 minutes after a block has been mined.

Cryptography – Cryptography refers to a branch of Computer Science and mathematics and computer science, withought which we could not have cryptocurrencies.

Ether - The unit of Currency associated with the Ethereum Blockchain

Fiat Currency - A traditional currency such as the Dollar, Euro, Pound yen, etc, aligned with a particular nation or group of nations, issued by governments

FUD – fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Hard Fork – A Hard Fork is a software update on a blockchain protocol that is not backward compatible.

Hardware wallet – This is an offline device, such as a USB drive, that stores, Crypto Coins public and private data keys.

HD wallet – This type of wallet enables a hierarchical structure of public and private keys to be generated from the root seed key.

HODL - Hoarding ones Bitcoins - Holding On for Dear Life

ICO – An Initial Coin Offering is a new fundraising mechanism where new blockchain related new projects sell their new crypto tokens in exchange for bitcoin and ether.

Lightcoin - An alternative type of Cryptocurrency, gaining popularity

Miner / Mining – This is the process of a computer or computers running powerful mathematical calculations to confirm transactions which enhance the security of the Bitcoin / Blockchain distributed network. Bitcoin Miners are those people who initiate, oversee and manage this process.

Private key – This is the Bitcoin/Crypto currency owners secret alphanumeric password or number that is only ever used to send and spend cryptocurrencies.

Public key  – The same as Bitcoin address - The alphanumeric visible public address key that receives the coins from others.

Pump & Dump – This simply refers to the basic method of trading through buying and selling bitcoins when the price levels are favourable.

Recovery phrase or seed keywords – These are random 12, 18 and 24 words that are used to derive many pairs of private and public keys.

Satoshi Nakamoto - The name of the inventor of the Bitcoin and the open source software that powers the technology

Satoshi – the smallest unit of a Bitcoin that can be traded, equal to 0.00000001 bitcoin and named after Satoshi Nakamoto. (see reference)

Smart Contract - This is a computer code running on top of a blockchain containing a set of binding rules under which the parties to that smart contract agree to interact with each other. If and when the pre-defined rules are met, the agreement is automatically enforced, requiring no human third parties, such as lawyers etc. Although they can be incorporated on to most Blockchains, most Smart Contracts are currently written on the Ethereum blockchain, as this gives unlimited processing capability.

Soft Fork – a software update on a blockchain protocol that is backward compatible

Transaction fee – A usually very small fee that bitcoin user pays before a transaction is completed.

Transaction ID – an alphanumeric string that contains details of a transfer, including the currency amount sent, the sending/receiving address and the date of transfer.

Tron - An alternative type of Cryptocurrency, gaining popularity

XBT  – As well as BTC, an abbreviation of bitcoin.