Bitcoin Academy
What Is Bitcoin Mining Profitability? How It’s Calculated
Mining profitability weighs Bitcoin earned (block reward plus fees, dependent on hash rate and price) against costs (mainly…
Bitcoin Academy
Bitcoin Academy
What Is a Bitcoin Public and Private Key Pair?
Every Bitcoin address is derived from a public key, which is derived from a secret private key using…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is Bitcoin’s Digital Signature Scheme (ECDSA)?
ECDSA is the cryptographic scheme Bitcoin uses to let someone prove they control a private key and authorize…
Bitcoin Academy
How Does Bitcoin Achieve Decentralized Time-Stamping?
Decentralized timestamping is how Bitcoin establishes a verifiable order of transactions without a central clock -- each block's…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is the Lightning Network’s Payment Channel?
A payment channel is the Lightning Network's core building block: two parties lock funds in one on-chain transaction,…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is a Bitcoin Sidechain?
A sidechain is a separate blockchain pegged two-way to Bitcoin's main chain, letting developers experiment with different features…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) Process?
A BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) is a formal document describing a proposed protocol change, discussed publicly and adopted…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is a Soft Fork vs a Hard Fork?
A soft fork tightens Bitcoin's rules in a backward-compatible way (like SegWit and Taproot), while a hard fork…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is Bitcoin’s Genesis Block?
The Genesis Block is Bitcoin's first block, mined by Satoshi Nakamoto on January 3, 2009, containing an embedded…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is a Bitcoin Orphan Block?
An orphan block is a validly mined Bitcoin block that gets discarded because a competing block at the…