Bitcoin Academy

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…

Bitcoin Academy

What Is Replace-By-Fee (RBF) in Bitcoin?

Replace-By-Fee (RBF) lets a sender replace an unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with a version paying a higher fee, useful…

Bitcoin Academy

What Is a Bitcoin Confirmation? Why Do They Matter?

A confirmation counts how many blocks have been mined since a Bitcoin transaction was included, with each additional…

Bitcoin Academy

What Is the UTXO Model? How Bitcoin Tracks Balances

The UTXO model is how Bitcoin tracks ownership: instead of account balances, the ledger consists of discrete Unspent…

Bitcoin Academy

What Is a Multisig Wallet? How Multi-Signature Works

A multisig wallet requires multiple private keys (an M-of-N setup, like 2-of-3) to authorize a transaction, so losing…

Bitcoin Academy

What Are Bitcoin Script and Smart Contracts?

Bitcoin Script is the built-in programming language defining exactly how coins can be spent, deliberately limited (no loops)…

Bitcoin Academy

What Is the Taproot Upgrade?

Taproot is a 2021 Bitcoin upgrade combining Schnorr signatures and MAST so complex multi-party transactions can look identical…