Reading level: Everyday use. Choose this guide when you need the task it describes.
| Term |
Meaning for a wallet user |
| Bitcoin / BTC |
The network and its monetary unit. A wallet manages keys and transactions rather than storing physical coins. |
| Satoshi / sat |
One hundred-millionth of a bitcoin: 100,000,000 sats = 1 BTC. |
| Address |
A payment destination derived from spending conditions. Use a fresh one for each receipt. |
| UTXO / coin |
An unspent transaction output available to be spent as a whole input. |
| Input |
A reference to a previous output being spent. Several inputs can fund one transaction. |
| Output |
A new destination and value created by a transaction. |
| Change |
Value returned to your wallet when selected inputs exceed the payment plus fee. |
| Transaction ID / txid |
An identifier for a transaction. Sharing it reveals which public transaction you are discussing. |
| Mempool |
A node’s collection of unconfirmed transactions. Different nodes can have different views. |
| Confirmation |
Inclusion in a block, followed by further blocks building on it. |
| Fee rate |
Satoshis paid per virtual byte of transaction size; distinct from total fee. |
| vByte |
The size unit used to compare fee rates across transactions with different witness data. |
| RBF |
Replace-by-fee: a pending transaction may be replaced under node policy, commonly to increase its fee. |
| CPFP |
Child-pays-for-parent: spending an output with a higher-fee child can encourage confirmation of its unconfirmed parent too. |
| Dust |
An amount too small to be useful under a particular policy or cost assumption. A wallet threshold and network policy are not necessarily the same. |
| Term |
Meaning for a wallet user |
| Block / blockchain |
A batch of transactions and the chain of blocks building on earlier history. |
| Miner / proof of work |
A participant assembling candidate blocks and performing the work used by Bitcoin’s chain-selection rules. |
| Coinbase transaction |
The first transaction of a block, creating its permitted mining reward; unrelated to a particular exchange account. Its outputs require maturity before spending. |
| Consensus rules |
Rules a validating node applies to decide whether blocks and transactions are valid. |
| Difficulty |
A measure governing the proof of work required for a block; it does not determine your wallet balance. |
| Mainnet / RegTest |
The real Bitcoin network and a separate local testing mode, respectively. Coins do not move between them. |
| BIP |
A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, documenting a proposed standard or process. A published BIP does not mean every wallet implements it. |
| HD wallet |
A hierarchical deterministic wallet deriving many keys from initial secret material and conventions. |
| Hash |
A compact identifier calculated from data. A transaction ID identifies data, not a person’s account name. |
| Fungibility |
The practical interchangeability of units; third-party history classifications can affect their treatment even when they are valid bitcoin. |
Lightning, payment channels, multisignature construction, public testnet/Signet setup, and scripting internals are outside this release’s documented end-user workflows. Their presence in a general Bitcoin glossary does not establish a Ginger feature.
| Term |
Meaning for a wallet user |
| Private key |
Secret information that authorizes spending. Never share it with support. |
| Public key |
Information used to verify signatures; it is not a spending secret, but can still be privacy-sensitive. |
| Recovery words / mnemonic / seed phrase |
The ordered word backup from which wallet keys can be recreated with the correct passphrase and wallet conventions. |
| BIP39 passphrase |
Additional text used with recovery words to derive a wallet. Every different passphrase selects different keys. |
| Device PIN |
A hardware-wallet access control. It is not the same as a BIP39 passphrase. |
| 2FA |
A second authentication factor. Ginger uses an authenticator and service-dependent local wallet-file encryption at startup. |
| xpub / extended public key |
Information that can derive many related public addresses. It cannot directly sign, but can expose a wallet’s activity. |
| Derivation path / account |
A convention identifying a branch of a wallet’s keys. Recovery tools need compatible conventions. |
| Gap limit |
The run of unused addresses a recovery scan tolerates before stopping its search along a branch. |
| Watch-only wallet |
A wallet record that can observe activity but lacks the local signing keys. A hardware device may supply signing separately. |
| Hardware wallet |
A separate device designed to protect keys and approve supported transactions. |
| PSBT |
A partially signed Bitcoin transaction file carrying a proposed transaction and signing information. |
| SegWit / Taproot |
Bitcoin output and spending formats. Native mainnet receiving addresses commonly start bc1q and bc1p, respectively. |
| Term |
Meaning for a wallet user |
| CoinJoin |
A collaborative transaction with inputs from multiple participants, intended to make ownership links harder to infer. |
| WabiSabi |
The credential-based protocol used for Ginger’s CoinJoin coordination. It does not erase the transaction from the blockchain. |
| Coordinator |
A service organizing a round. It can affect availability and eligibility without normally holding the participants’ private keys. |
| Remix |
Further CoinJoin participation using funds meeting the service’s remix conditions; mining fees can still apply. |
| Anonymity score |
Ginger’s local estimate used to classify coin privacy, not a verified headcount of independent people. |
| Anonymity set |
A conceptual group of plausible alternatives. It is not automatically identical to the wallet’s calculated score. |
| Cluster |
Addresses or coins an observer infers belong together. Some associations are facts; others are fallible heuristics. |
| Address reuse |
Receiving more than once at the same address, directly linking those receipts. |
| Coin control |
Deliberate inspection and selection of coins for a payment. |
| Tor |
A network relay system helping separate an application’s connections from the user’s IP address. |
| Block filter |
A compact summary used to identify blocks that may contain wallet-relevant transactions before processing those blocks locally. |
| Full node |
Software validating Bitcoin data against its consensus rules. It has a different role from a CoinJoin coordinator. |
| PayJoin |
A collaborative payment in which the receiver can contribute an input. Ginger’s released sending flow has fallback and compatibility limits. |
| Discreet Mode |
Concealment of supported sensitive display fields, not encryption or a wallet lock. |
| KYC |
A provider’s identity-verification process. Tor does not hide information submitted directly to it. |
| Fiat |
Government-issued currency, used for quotes or display estimates; distinct from the BTC settled on-chain. |
Terms such as “private” and “secure” describe different properties. Ask what is protected, from whom, and under which conditions rather than treating either word as an unconditional guarantee.
