TerminologyCommonly used abbreviations, words, names and phrases on bitcointalk.
SectionsBITCOINTALKBITCOINPEOPLEPLACESALTCOINSBUSINESS & FINANCESLANG & EMOTICONSTECHNOLOGYOTHERINDEXACKNOWLEDGEMENTSBitcointalk'Alt'
Alternative, for example, an altcoin is an alternative to bitcoin.
'ANN'
Announcement.
'Bounty'
A sum of money offered as a reward. The reward is given to the first person to satisfactorily complete the relevant task.
'BT'
BitcoinTalk, this forum.
'Cosbycoin'
Someone hacked into this forum and injected some code that, among other things, causes a bunch of Bill Cosby popups, simulates uploading of a wallet.dat file, changes all avatars to images of Bill Cosby, and even changes the word bitcoin to Cosbycoin.
'Bump' & 'Bumping'
Bumping is posting in a thread with the sole purpose of moving the thread to the top of the recent posts list. Often posts of this nature include the word 'Bump'.
'Early Adopter Envy'
A sense of jealousy for those who were able to buy a significant amount of bitcoins at a fraction of the price they are today.
'Edit', '/edit:' & '[Edit]'
A note to inform the reader that this part of the post has been edited.
'GLBSE'
GLobal Bitcoin Stock Exchange. An exchange that provided services to users to buy/sell assets, stocks & bonds. This exchange has now closed.
'Goxxed'
MtGox is a bitcoin exchange that many claim is plagued with technical problems. The term 'goxxed' refers to being impeded by technical issues.
'Group Buy'
Also known as collective buying, offers products and services at significantly reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of buyers would make the purchase.
'M', 'Mr M' & 'The Manipulator'
A real or imagined agent who controls the market value with his vast reserves of fiat and bitcoins.
'OBO'
Or Best Offer.
'OP'
Original Post / Original Poster. This could refer to either the user that started the thread or the first post in the thread. If you are in the hardware section then it could also mean 'Over Power'.
'Pizza'
An often referenced event. The most bitcoins paid for a pizza is 5,000 BTC. In fact, it was two pizzas for 10,000 BTC.
(See -
The pizza thread)
'PPT'
Pirate Pass Through. An investment operation run by Pirateat40 which many claimed was a ponzi scheme, which in fact it was.
'Scamcoin'
An altcoin which is designed just to con people out of money.
'Scammer Tag'
A scammer is someone who has stolen other people property using manipulation. Anyone found guilty of scamming gets a scammer tag which is publicly visible on all their posts.
'Shitlist'
A list of bitcoin scammers.
(See -
bitcoin-shitlist.com)
'Shut Up And Take My Money!'
Used to imply that a financial offer is at least poorly thought out or at worst a con.
'Sockpuppet'
A sockpuppet is an online identity used for the purposes of deception.
'Sounds Legit' & 'Seems Legit'
Its a safe assumption that when you read this phrase it is actually sarcasm. You should read it as 'I don't trust you and I think your trying to con me'.
'Sticky'
A sticky thread is a thread that will stay pinned to the top of the recent posts list and will not move even if a new post is posted.
'Three-pronged Attack'
Named after a method made famous by Bruce Wagner. A multi-vector attack which includes indirect techniques combined with more direct ones.
'We're Going To Pattaya!'
Originally coined by Bruce Wagner. It's now the de facto response when a major announcement is forthcoming.
'WTB', 'WTS' & 'WTT'
Want To Buy / Want To Sell / Willing To Trade.
'YABC'
Yet Another Bitcoin Company.
'Zhoutonged'
Zhou Tong is the creator of Bitcoinica, a margin trading platform that no-longer exists. Being 'Zhoutonged' means loosing all your money.
'1) Start bitcoin business. 2)
3) Profit!'
A humorous way of suggesting there may be a flaw in someone's plan or logic.
'+1' & '-1'
I agree with you / I disagree with you
'<*>tags</*>'
In order to convey subtle meanings in a statement, tags are often used. For example, you can convey sarcasm as follows - "<sarcasm>Good idea!</sarcasm>".
'@'
Used to direct a question or statement at someone. For example '@OP' would mean the following is directed at the original poster.
Bitcoin'Address'
An address is a metaphysical location where bitcoins can be stored. When you make a transaction, bitcoins are sent from one address to another.
(See -
Bitcoin Address)
'Armory'
An open source wallet management application. While Armory is feature rich it does still require the 'Satoshi Client' to be installed and running in order to function.
(See -
Armory)
'BIP'
Bitcoin Improvement Proposals. A system for submitting ideas for future development.
(See -
Wiki: Bitcoin Improvement Proposals)
'Bitcoin Foundation'
An organization setup for the purposes of standardizing, protecting and promoting bitcoin.
(See -
Bitcoin Foundation)
'Bitcoind'
Bitcoin Daemon. A program that implements the bitcoin protocol for command line and remote procedure call. This makes it useful for integration with other software or in larger payment systems.
'Block'
A block is a record of all or some of the most recent transactions.
(See -
Wiki: Blocks)
'Blockchain'
To publish a block a miner must solve a cryptographic puzzle which links the block being published with the previous block, forming a blockchain.
(See -
Wiki: Blockchain)
'Block Party'
A party celebrating the halving of the block reward.
'Block Reward'
Miners get a reward, a fresh batch of bitcoins straight out of the oven, every time they successfully publish a block.
'Brain Wallet'
A brain wallet refers to the concept of storing bitcoins in one's own mind by memorization of a passphrase. The passphrase is used to generate all your private keys and addresses. It should be noted that if you forget your passprase then your bitcoins are lost forever.
(See -
Wiki: Brainwallet)
'Browser Based Wallet'
An online wallet, usually accessed via a website.
(See -
Wiki: Browser Based Wallet)
'BTC'
Bitcoin. Used as a postfix to specify that a denomination is in bitcoins. For example, one bitcoin can be expressed as '1 BTC'.
'Change' & 'Change Address'
When you send a transaction, the value, at the address you're sending from, must be spent in its entirety. If you only want to spend part of the funds at that address, then the client generates a 'Change Address', and sends the difference there. You should be especially careful when sending from a 'Paper Wallet', as there have been several situations where people using paper wallets have lost some of their BTC because they are not aware that, depending on the client they imported their key into, the remainder of their unspent BTC is not necessarily sent back to the original address on the paper wallet.
(See -
Wiki: Change)
'Client'
The software application used to send and receive transactions.
'Coinbase'
All bitcoins can be traced back to the point where they were created as a reward for the miner. The coinbase transaction is the transaction inside a block that pays the miner his block reward.
'Cold Wallet' & 'Cold Storage'
A wallet that has no connection to the internet (or other network). As it is stored 'off-line' it's not susceptible to attack via a network and is therefore more secure than its 'Hot Wallet' counterpart.
(See -
Cold Storage)
'Confirmations'
Depth of the block containing your transaction in the blockchain. When a block is published it has a depth of 0 as it is the top block. As more blocks are published the previous blocks get deeper in the chain.
(See -
Wiki: Confirmation)
'Deterministic Wallet'
A wallet that you need to backup only once. It creates all your bitcoin addresses, and private keys, from a random number called a "seed". Your wallet can be recovered from the seed, if the wallet file is accidentally deleted.
(See -
Wiki: Deterministic Wallet)
'Difficulty' & 'Difficulty Adjustment'
The bitcoin network has a target rate of block production which is one every ten minuets. In order to control block production rates the network adjusts the difficulty of the cryptographic puzzle miners need to solve in order to publish a block. Difficulty adjustments occur once every 2016 blocks, which is about every two weeks.
(See -
Wiki: Difficulty)
'Electrum'
An open source, lightweight (thin) client that doesn't download the blockchain. It instead connects to a remotely hosted server.
(See -
Electrum)
'Faucet'
A site which gives out free coins to get newbies started.
'Finney Attack'
A type of double spend attack originally described by
'Hal Finney'. It targets merchants accepting zero confirmation transactions and requires the cooperation of a powerful miner.
(See -
Wiki: Weaknesses)
'Fork'
1) See - 'Software Fork'.
2) See - 'Soft Fork'.
3) See - 'Hard Fork'.
'Genesis Block'
The first block of the blockchain released by Satoshi Nakamoto on Jan 4, 2009.
(See -
Wiki: Genesis Block)
'Hard Fork'
When there are a sufficient number of bitcoin clients on the network that disagree on the rules about how blocks are created and recorded in the blockchain. It leads to a split in the chain, one set of bitcoin clients follow one branch and another set follows the other. To fix hard forks some action must be taken by us.
'Hash'
A hash is a unique string of data. They are used in the bitcoin network and most often discussion of hash values relates to mining performance.
(See -
How bitcoin works)
'Hash Rate'
A unit a mining performance expressed as follows;
1 h/s = 1 hash per second
1 Kh/s = Kilohash per second. 1,000 h/s
1 Mh/s = Megahash per second. 1,000 Kh/s (1,000,000 h/s)
1 Gh/s = Gigahash per second. 1,000 Mh/s (1,000,000,000 h/s)
1 Th/s = Terahash per seond. 1,000 Gh/s (1,000,000,000,000 h/s)
'Hop', 'Hopping' & 'Hop Proof'
Pool hopping is the act of switching from pool to another. Miners do this in order to increase their likely profitability. There is a discussion on whether this if fair to non-hoppers, as their profit are diminished, so some pools implement 'Hop Proof' systems.
'Hot Wallet'
A wallet that is accessible via the web, or other network connection. It should be noted that 'Hot Wallets' are vulnerably to a variety of online attacks and are not as secure as their 'Cold Wallet' counterparts.
(See -
Hot Wallet)
'Instamine'
The act of generating coins without having to perform any traditional mining techniques. This is often used by new altcoins as an alternative to premining.
'kBTC'
KiloBitcoin = 1 thousand bitcoins = 1000 BTC.
'Krugman Fallacy'
The view that Bitcoin will not succeed because of its deflationary nature. People will "hoard" it instead of spending it, expecting it to raise in value later.
'mBTC' & 'BTM'
MilliBitcoin = 1 thousandth of a bitcoin = 0.001 BTC.
'Merged Mining'
Allows a miner to mine for more than one blockchain at the same time. The benefit is that every hash the miner does contributes to the total hash rate of both (all) currencies, and as a result they are all more secure.
(See –
Wiki: Merged Mining Specification)
'Mine'
Mining is the act of linking blocks into the blockchain by solving cryptographic puzzles.
(See -
Wiki: Mining)
'Miner'
Mining software, or someone using mining software.
'Mining Rig'
A computer system, usually custom built and used for mining bitcoins.
'Node' & 'Full Node'
A computer that is connected to the bitcoin network. Nodes are described as full if they accept new incoming connections.
'Online Wallet'
See - 'Browser Based Wallet'
'Orphaned Blocks'
Whenever a 'Soft Fork' or 'Hard Fork' occurs, the blockchain is split into two paths. One of these chains will eventually be considered the valid one, and the other will be the invalid chain. Block that are in an invalid chain are called orphaned blocks.
'Paper Wallet'
A paper wallet is a way to store bitcoins by printing the addresses and private keys directly on a piece of paper, or other material.
'Pool'
A group of miners that all work together in order to improve their chances of solving a block.
'POS'
1) See - 'Proof Of Stake'.
2) Point Of Sale. Location where a transaction occurs, usually associated with electronic cash registers.
3) Piece Of Shit.
'POT'
Pay On Target. A type of reward scheme for miners that is similar to PPS. However, You get more for shares of higher difficulty, meaning you get a bigger reward if you're the block finder.
(See -
The POT thread)
'POW'
See - 'Proof Of Work'.
'PPS' & 'Pay Per Share'
A pooled mining reward scheme with an instant flat rate for each share that is solved. The payout is offered from the pool's existing balance and can therefore be withdrawn immediately.
'Premine'
Before some altcoins are released to the public they are premined. This generates coins for the developers, who hope to profit from them in the future.
'Proof Of Stake'
An alternative to Proof of Work. With Proof of Stake, the resource that's compared is the amount of bitcoins a miner holds rather than computational effort expended.
(See -
Wiki: Proof Of Stake)
'Proof Of Work'
Underpinning bitcoin is it's proof of work algorithm. It is a computational problem which when solved proves you expended some computational effort.
(See -
Wiki: Proof Of Work)
'Reward Halving'
Bitcoin enforces artificial scarcity by halving the reward given to miners every 4 years. Eventually, in the year 2140, all the bitcoins will have been mined and there will be just under 21 million of them.
'SAT' & 'Satoshi'
Smallest possible denomination of bitcoin, which is 0.00000001 BTC.
'Satoshi Client'
The original bitcoin client.
(See -
SourceForge &
GitHub)
'Share'
In pooled bitcoin mining, a share is awarded by a mining pool to the clients who present a valid proof of work for the current bitcoin block header that is being mined.
'Soft Fork'
1) A situation where two or more competing blocks are published at the same height in the blockchain. These kinds of forks will solve themselves without any intervention from us.
2) See - 'Software Fork'.
'SPV Client'
Simplified Payment Verification Client. A lightweight Bitcoin client that downloads only part of the blockchain.
(See -
Wiki: Simplified Payment Verification)
'Stale' & 'Stale Share'
Mining pools give each miner some "job" to be done - a bitcoin block header that the miner will hash in search of a share. When a new block is found, or new transactions are added to existing block by the pool, the old block header becomes stale. If someone finds a share calculated from the stale block header, it's considered a stale share and is wasted work.
'Taint'
Taint is a measure of how closely related your bitcoins are to a particular address. Taint is often used as a way of tracking stolen bitcoins.
'Thin Client'
A client that doesn't maintain a blockchain or validate transactions.
'TNBTC'
Bitcoin Test Net. The testnet is an alternative bitcoin blockchain that is used for testing.
(See -
Wiki: Testnet)
'Transaction Fee'
When you make a transaction it is possible to include a transaction fee. The miner that publishes the block containing your transaction gets to keep the transaction fee. It should be noted that once all the bitcoins have been mined the transaction fee will be the only reward for miners.
(See -
Wiki: Transaction Fee)
'TX'
Transaction.
'uBTC' & 'μBTC'
MicroBitcoin = 1 millionth of a bitcoin = 0.000001 BTC.
'Vanity Address' & 'Vanity Generator'
A vanity address is a bitcoin address that has been generated with a vanity generator and contains personalized words and numbers, much like a vanity license plate.
(See -
Wiki: Vanitygen)
'Wallet'
A data store for keeping private keys in.
(See -
Wiki: Wallet)
'Web Wallet'
See - 'Browser Based Wallet'
'51% Attack'
Bitcoin is designed with the belief that a single attacker will never have more than 50% of the total network processing power. If an attacker did have 51% or more they could perform a double spend, amongst other things.
(See -
Wiki: Weaknesses)
'
BTC'
The bitcoin symbol. Used as a prefix to specify that a denomination is in bitcoins. For example,
BTC1 = 1 BTC.
People'Alex Green / Ryan Kennedy'
Long-time internet scammer, most recently involved with Mintpal.
'Andreas Antonopoulos'
Andreas is involved with many different bitcoin projects. His contributions consist of, but not limited to; Raising funds for Dorian Nakamoto, who was falsely identified as Satoshi Nakamoto and speaking in front of the Banking, Trade and Commerce committee of the Senate of Canada.
'Atlas'
A member of this forum. He used to post frequently and the content of his posts were often questionable. Today, Atlas is still posting but the content of his posts has improved. The name Atlas is sometimes used to describe people with a high post count but very little meaningful content.
'Bruce Wagner'
Once the public face of bitcoin, he fell into disrepute after loosing his customers money claiming his business 'MyBitcoin' was hacked.
'Dorian Nakamoto'
In February 2014, Newsweek’s Leah McGrath Goodman claimed to have tracked down the real Satoshi Nakamoto. Dorian S Nakamoto has since denied he knows anything about bitcoin, eventually hiring a lawyer and releasing an official statement to that effect.
'Dread Pirate Roberts' aka 'Ross Ulbricht'
Owner of the illicit marketplace known as 'The Silk Road'.
'Gavin Andresen'
Project leader of the open source, decentralized, and anonymous virtual currency project called Bitcoin.
(See -
Facebook: Gavin Andresen)
'Hal Finney'
Cryptographer and one of the earliest adopters of bitcoin. He was the first person besides Satoshi to run the bitcoin client, and was the recipient of the very first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to him as a test. Sadly Hal suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease and on the 28th of August 2014 he died, aged 58.
(See -
"Bitcoin and me" by Hal Finney)
'MNW' & 'Matthew N. Wright'
A previously productive member of this forum who foolishly made a 10,000 BTC bet. He lost the bet, didn't pay up,
and has now withdrawn from the forum and is now trying to make amends for his wrong doing.
(See -
The 10,000 BTC bet thread)
'Pirate', 'Pirateat40' & 'Trendon Shavers'
An infamous bitcoin criminal.
(See -
Wiki Pirateat40)
'Satoshi Nakamoto'
Inventor of bitcoin.
Places'Casascius'
Maker of physical bitcoins.
(See -
Casascius)
'CLAG'
Cryptocurrency Legal Advocacy Group. A trusted source of legal news related to cryptocurrencies.
(See -
CLAG)
'DCAO'
Secret society formed by MNW when he was rejected by the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group.
'EFF'
Electronic Frontier Foundation / Electronic Freedom Foundation. An international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States.
(See -
The Electronic Frontier Foundation)
'FSF'
Free Software Foundation. Non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistributing, understanding, and modifying computer programs
(See -
Free Software Foundation)
'SA' & 'Something Awful'
A forum with strong opinions about everything, including bitcoin.
(See -
Something Awful)
'SR' & 'SilkRoad'
An online marketplace that is infamous for its illicit offerings.
Altcoins'DVC'
Devcoin, an altcoin designed to support open source developers.
'Dwolla'
A United States-only e-commerce company that provides an online payment system and mobile payments network by the same name.
(See -
Dwolla)
'DWUSD'
Dwolla USD.
'FRC' & 'Freicoin'
An altcoin with demurrage. Freicoins can be created forever as a reward for the miners. Each time a transaction is done a percentage of the freicoins in the transaction are destroyed, depending on how much time they have been held since the last transaction.
'IXC' & 'Ixcoin'
Altcoin with a faster rate of maturity. All Ixcoins will be mined 18 years before the last bitcoin.
'Liberty Dollar'
A private currency produced in the United States. The currency was issued in minted metal rounds (i.e. coins) and gold/silver certificates.
(See -
Wiki: Liberty Dollar)
'Linden Dollar' & 'L$'
A virtual currency that is used in the multi-player online environment called Second Life.
(See -
Wiki: Economy of Second Life)
'LR', 'LRUSD' & 'LREUR'
LibertyReserve / LibertyReserve USD / LibertyReserve EUR. A private currency exchange system issued by Liberty Reserve S.A. of San José, Costa Rica. Often used for transferring funds to and from bitcoin exchanges.
(See -
Wiki: Liberty Reserve)
'LQC' & 'Liquidcoin'
Defunct altcoin.
'LTC' & 'Litecoin'
Altcoin designed to be a lite version of bitcoin.
'MoneyPak'
A cash top-up card provided by the Green Dot Corporation.
(See -
Wiki: MoneyPak)
'NMC' & 'Namecoin'
An altcoin that is also a key/value store. It's primarily used as a domain name system.
'PP', 'PPUSD', 'PPEUR' & 'PPGBP'
Paypal / Paypal USD / Paypal EUR / Paypal GBP.
'PPC' & 'PPCoin'
Altcoin incorporating proof of stake.
(See -
Wiki: PPCoin)
'Ripple'
An open-source decentralized payment network with a monetary honor system based on trust that already exists between people in real-world social networks.
(See -
Wiki: Ripple)
'SC' & 'Solidcoin'
Defunct altcoin.
'SLL'
Second Life Linden. See - 'Linden Dollar'.
'TRC' & 'Terracoin'
An altcoin with a block production target rate of 2 minutes. A total number of 42 million terracoins will ever be produced.
'USD', 'EUR', 'GBP', 'CAD' & 'AUD'
U.S. Dollar / Euro / Pound Sterling / Canadian Dollar / Australian Dollar
'XRP'
See - 'Ripple'.
For a complete list of altcoins please see the List of all cryptocoins thead.[…]
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