Important terms that are frequently confused.

[odolvlobo]

I thought I would list some important terms and clear up some common confusion:

• Address: Bitcoins are sent to an address. An address is derived from its public key. It is not a public key or a wallet.
• Private Key: Used to control the bitcoins at an address. A private key is not a password or a seed phrase.
• Public Key: A public key is used in a transaction, and it is rarely seen elsewhere. A public key is derived from its private key. It is not an address.
• Wallet: A wallet contains and controls private keys and their associated addresses. A wallet is not an address. A wallet typically uses a seed phrase to generate its private keys.
• Seed/Mnemonic/Recovery Phrase: Used by a wallet to generate private keys and their associated addresses. A seed phrase is not a passphrase or a private key. A seed phrase is also known as a recovery phrase because all of a wallet's private keys and associated addresses are derived from it, and, every wallet will generate the same private keys and associated addresses if given the same recovery phrase.
• Passphrase/password: A passphrase is used to encrypt a wallet, private key, or other information. A passphrase is not a private key or a seed phrase. Sometimes a seed phrase can contain an extra word or phrase that may be called a passphrase, but it is not.

Here are sets of terms that are frequently confused with each other:

• Public key <==> Address
• Address <==> Wallet
• Private key <==> Seed/Mnemonic/Recovery Phrase <==> Passphrase

Terms that should be avoided because they are ambiguous or are probably being used incorrectly:

• Wallet address: There is no such thing as the address of a wallet. As stated above, a wallet contains private keys and their associated addresses.
• Public address: Use of this term typically indicates a confusion between the terms "address" and "public key". All addresses are public.
• Public Key: Typically, this term is mistakenly used in place of "address".

I would like to point out that some of the confusion with "wallet address" may be due to how people use Ethereum wallets. A typical Ethereum user's wallet has one address (though it could have more) and that could be considered to be the address of the wallet.

Edit: minor tweaks after some suggestions.

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[bitmover]

These terms are really often used in a wrong way.

About seed. Seed is just a mathematical relationship between your different private keys of a deterministic wallet. Few years ago all private keys were randomly generated in your wallet. Only few years ago deterministic wallets showed up with seed and related private keys from that seed.

Wallet: A wallet contains and controls private keys and their associated addresses. A wallet is not an address. A wallet typically uses a

I think a wallet could be better described as an interface to access your private keys and manage your funds.

nice summary.

[Theb]

I haven't seen any confusion here with the terms wallet,address, and wallet address based from what I see in the forum. I see some newbies here even mixed up the terms from wallet address/bitcoin address/bitcoin wallet address and from what I see they know what they are talking about or at least still make some sense with their post. These maybe brought up by what they read in and outside the forum since even articles use the term "wallet address" when they are referring to the address of your wallet. We in the crypto industry really didn't have a proper education with regards to a lot of things so I think some popular phrases such as wallet address should be acceptable and understandable by everyone.

[mk4]

Wallet: A wallet contains and controls private keys and their associated addresses. A wallet is not an address. A wallet typically uses a

I think a wallet could be better described as an interface to access your private keys and manage your funds.

nice summary.

In a technical perspective it should've been worded as a "key" or "keychain" in the first place as some people also have said, instead of "wallet". Because of that, a lot of people actually think they literally have coins on their wallets. A "wallet" just sounds more natural and easier to understand. Maybe it won't matter in the long-term I guess.

[pooya87]

Seed/Recovery Phrase: Used by a wallet to generate private keys and their associated addresses. A seed is not a passphrase or a private key. A seed is also known as a recovery phrase because all of a wallet's private keys and associated addresses are derived from its seed.

"Used by a deterministic wallets..."
i don't know any wallets these days that isn't using BIP32 under the hood but they don't have to so there might be still some that don't do it.

it is worth mentioning that there is a difference between "seed" and "mnemonic". what is mentioned here (the recovery phrase which is a set of words) is "mnemonic" which is commonly (and falsely) referred to as "seed". the seed is actually derived from mnemonic using PBKDF2 function using mnemonic as its salt.

[odolvlobo]

I haven't seen any confusion here with the terms wallet,address, and wallet address ... since even articles use the term "wallet address" when they are referring to the address of your wallet. ...

There is no such thing as "the address of your wallet". You just demonstrated the confusion. A wallet contains addresses.

it is worth mentioning that there is a difference between "seed" and "mnemonic". what is mentioned here (the recovery phrase which is a set of words) is "mnemonic" which is commonly (and falsely) referred to as "seed". the seed is actually derived from mnemonic using PBKDF2 function using mnemonic as its salt.

That is true. However,  I wanted to keep it simple and I feel like there is no problem if a person doesn't know the difference between the mnemonic and the seed.

[bob123]

• Address: Bitcoins are sent to an address. An address is derived from its public key. It is not a public key or a wallet.

Bitcoins are not sent to an address.
Addresses do not exist on a technical level.

Bitcoins (or more precisely: UTXO's) are assigned to public keys.

• Seed/Recovery Phrase: [...] A seed is also known as a recovery phrase because all of a wallet's private keys and associated addresses are derived from its seed.

A seed is not a recovery phrase.
Quite ironic that you confuse terms in a thread explaining frequently confused terms  

A seed is a big random number.
A 'recovery phrase' is the seed encoded into something human-readable, for example into 12 or 24 words (-> mnemonic code) using BIP39 (or electrums encoding).


That's a confusion which happens quite often, and i think this should be outlined in the OP

[mk4]

Hey please explain what is REKT

Not necessarily affiliated to bitcoin or cryptocurrencies specifically, but it's just a slang term for "wrecked". People say things like "bitcoin got rekt" if bitcoin's price drops or something like that.

[Stedsm]

Hey please explain what is REKT

REKT means you're done. You've lost everything, gone bankrupt (at least in terms of capital that you've put up bets on BTC or alts with). It's a term generally used while anything of value loses it to an extent from where it can't be recoverable.


@OP,
What about those wallets which change addresses after each transaction takes place in a one-time use address (just for the sake of our privacy) like blockchain.com (formerly blockchain.info)?

As they advice us not to use those addresses again, it means we're not going to get private keys of those addresses to sign a message, what about such wallets? I use Electrum and it gives me access to all the privkeys associated with each and every address in my wallet.

[odolvlobo]

@OP,
What about those wallets which change addresses after each transaction takes place in a one-time use address (just for the sake of our privacy) like blockchain.com (formerly blockchain.info)?
As they advice us not to use those addresses again, it means we're not going to get private keys of those addresses to sign a message, what about such wallets? I use Electrum and it gives me access to all the privkeys associated with each and every address in my wallet.

Blockchain.com has a fairly simple wallet. They don't provide some of the features that other wallets provide, but you can always copy your private keys to another wallet that does provide the features you are looking for.

[Velkro]

These terms are really often used in a wrong way.

Its very young technology. It will be easier in time, when new software will be developed. I think most of this terms even as basic as mentioned ones, won't be needed as common knowledge people have.
Most people have no idea how Paypal works, they just use it, its same for almost everything.

[PrimeNumber7]

I haven't seen any confusion here with the terms wallet,address, and wallet address ... since even articles use the term "wallet address" when they are referring to the address of your wallet. ...

There is no such thing as "the address of your wallet". You just demonstrated the confusion. A wallet contains addresses.

I would consider the term "wallet address" to be slang or jargon. When someone would ask me what my "wallet address" is, I would take this as them asking what address I want them to send coin to in conjunction with an immediate transaction. When I have done this in the past, I had to use some context within the conversation.

One could read "wallet address" as being an address in a wallet.

[odolvlobo]

One could read "wallet address" as being an address in a wallet.

One could read it that way, but typically it is used to mean "the address of a wallet", which is incorrect and why I included it in that list.

[finaleshot2016]

As being newbie I have some doubt so please any one tell be difference between cryptocurrency and Blockchain. I know, ican find there a relevant answer . Please elaborate this.

Someone recently asked what's the difference of cryptocurrency and blockchain, can you add those terms on the OP?
There's a lot of terms that a newbie must know for her/him to understand the basics and it might help them to easily cooperate in every discussion.

--

FAQs

Blockchain & Cryptocurrency

Block chain is the technology on which the cryptocurrency is based on , it is more like the coding unit.

The cryptocurrency itself is the outcome of that ..

Block chain is a technology and cryptocurrencies are output , it will be helpful to know that besides the cryptocurrencies , the block chain is actually useful in all the sectors , the government , the hospital , the environment everywhere it is being used.

Satoshi - It's like a cent in Bitcoin.

..

[bob123]

Blockchain & Cryptocurrency

Block chain is the technology on which the cryptocurrency is based on , it is more like the coding unit.

The cryptocurrency itself is the outcome of that ..

Block chain is a technology and cryptocurrencies are output , it will be helpful to know that besides the cryptocurrencies , the block chain is actually useful in all the sectors , the government , the hospital , the environment everywhere it is being used.

I disagree with that definition of blockchain.

A blockchain is nothing more than just a data structure. It is comparable to a linked list where each element points to the element before.
It is used by a lot cryptocurrencies, however there are still many cryptos which do not use a blockchain at all (e.g. IOTA tangle or NANO block lattice).

Bitcoin is based on way more than just the blockchain. The blockchain itself is just the 'database' of bitcoin. Mining, verification, authenticity and much more also plays a huge role for the functionality and design of a cryptocurrency.

[odolvlobo]

It's about time to bump this post.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

You forgot to add the most misused word of them all -- Bitcoin.

Far far too many people seem to think that all crypto coins are "Bitcoin". They are NOT!!!
"Bitcoin" is NOT a generic term for all crypto coins - it is 1 specific coin. Only Bitcoin (BTC or BTC) is Bitcoin. All others are called altcoins or their given name such as LiteCoin, Doge, etc. The only all-inclusive generic terms for all coins is "crypto coins", "cryptocurrency" or just "crypto" for short.

Also might add that all the different coins also have their own coin-specific wallets and woe to anyone who sends the wrong coin to the wrong wallet...

[BlackHatCoiner]

Feedback; I think that you should give an example of how each term looks like. For example:

• Address: 15eA2cN1vmixbWuwJmFNztf6XXmBcAyAfx
• Public Key: 02f5d1d3e2cda664838a9b640bdfaec0657a09282d05a34ee94381b4970fef9920
• Private Key: KyAg6PunmpeaNFS5VoZbqeAaWjqqvZzTrTY4A1t1efaXEoFNCdRo (WIF)
• Wallet: Electrum

After all that's a great thread and I'll redirect any beginners here whenever I believe they ought to read it.

[odolvlobo]

bump

[KingsDen]

Terms that should be avoided because they are ambiguous or are probably being used incorrectly:

• Wallet address: There is no such thing as the address of a wallet. As stated above, a wallet contains private keys and their associated addresses.

Thank you for this. I had a debate with someone I felt is well knowledgeable in Bitcoin. Some little things are well overlooked. He called it wallet address , I told him to stop associating addresses to a particular wallet. He said that since the address is coming from a wallet, it can be called a wallet address.

I did one thing to solve the debate. I copied a segwit address from trust wallet and sent to him to tell me the wallet the address came from. Surprisingly he got it correctly that it's from Trust wallet. I was surprised, but in order to be sure it was a mere guess, I told him he was wrong that I copied it from binance. He couldn't argue further because there was no way he could know the wallet the address originated from, or is there a way?[/list]

[Rengga Jati]

For us who have been here and understand more about these, may not be a big matter.
but, it will be different for newbies or beginners who are newly coming to this crypto world.
moreover, it is actually very worrying if they cannot differentiate between the Private key and Public wallet, when they don't know and accidentally give their Privat key to other people instead of public wallet address, it's dangerous enough 
Some data must be stored very privately in which we should keep it from other people and not tell others about them.
So, just be careful and not trust anybody else if they are asking some private data as mentioned on the thread.

[Ahli38]

I am sometimes still confused by these terms at first. but now it has started to memorize. but lately i'm confused to back up my privatekey from trust wallet wallet. because I can't find it. there is only the option of backup mnemonies or recovery phrases. I need it to be imported into metamask. does anyone know?

[worle1bm]

Yes there are many terms which people confuse with each other and you have specified some of them and use them individually.Like keys are of two types public and private and private keys are used to sign the transaction and prove ownership of funds while public keys are visible.So thanks for sharing it man and bumping it up for newbies and us to check it once.

[witcher_sense]

Yes there are many terms which people confuse with each other and you have specified some of them and use them individually.Like keys are of two types public and private and private keys are used to sign the transaction and prove ownership of funds while public keys are visible.So thanks for sharing it man and bumping it up for newbies and us to check it once.

You're right, a private key, as the name suggests, is confidential information that should never be shared with anyone, except for rare cases such as matters of inheritance or educational purposes. A private key allows you to unlock certain UTXOs in a blockchain, namely those that contain specific coins sent to a specific address that corresponds to a given private key. A public key is another matter. While its name suggests that you can safely share it with the public, you don't necessarily need to do that. The basic rule is that the less information you give out, the better off you and your coins are. Also, I'd like to add to your thoughts about transaction verification. A private key is used to produce a digital signature which in turn is used to authorize your spending.  It is a way to prove that you actually have a right to spend without revealing private information. But in order to prove you do have this private information, you also have to provide your public key. Your public key is used to verify that your signature is valid and you actually own a private key. A public key is not visible until you make it visible by spending your coins.

[odolvlobo]

Bump.
Added some clarity regarding "wallet address" and Ethereum.