Cypherpunks believe in your right to control who sees what about you on the Internet. There was this guy named Eric Hughes, kind of a godfather to the digerati, who described the whole mindset back in the 1990s in his classic work, "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto." Among other things, he wrote, “We must defend our own right to privacy if we expect to have any...." His treatise spawned an intellectual movement, and today cypherpunks focus on projects that protect their digital privacy including remailers, anonymous peer-to-peer services, secure network tunnels, mobile voice encryption, untraceable electronic cash, secure operating systems, and the list continues. If you're a non-coder and you meet a cypherpunk, you'll probably wish he or she came with subtitles.

#bitcoin-otc is an over-the-counter market, where you can buy and sell bitcoin just as if you were buying or selling a stock.

"I agree with you" = +1; "I disagree with you" = -1

Okay, here's where you know coders are taking over the English language. These expressions--<*> and </*>--are a very basic form of coding. If somebody writes, "<sarcasm>True story<sarcasm>," it's like saying, "Give me a break."

1) Start bitcoin business. 2) Huh 3) Profit!

A humorous way of suggesting there may be a flaw in someones plan or logic.

Bitcoin works like the internal ledger of a bank. Say you and I are customers of the same bank. You send me money. I trust the bank's ledger to record the transaction. Similarly, people trust Bitcoin's ledger to record all transactions between two parties. Bitcoin's ledger is known as the "blockchain." It's posted on the Internet, and this is what's really important: No auditor or cartel of auditors controls more than 50% of the input into the ledger. If an attacker controled more than 51% of the input, the attacker could cook the books. Bitcoiners would lose their confidence, and the cryptocurrency would collapse.

An address is like a bank account. It's where you store BTC. It's where you send BTC when buying or selling products. Daves addresses is: xyz. You can send him BTC there. John uses: abc.

Advanced Encryption Standard. An algorithm for encrypting data.

Away from Keyboard

Gavin Andresen (part of the team that originally coded Bitcoin) has an “alert key.” If anything goes wrong with Bitcoin, he can simultaneously alert merchants to stop transactions and rally a global cavalry of coders to come fix the problem.

Short for "alternative" and often attached to the front end of words. An altcoin, for example, is an alternative to bitcoin.

Anti-Money Laundering. There are broad, very serious regulations that require financial services firms, such as bitcoin exchanges, to sniff out money laundering activities and report them to the authorities.

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.

Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. An advanced type of hardware used for mining.

It's the same lingo they use at Wall Street's trading houses, the price a seller is willing to accept for BTC. Along with the price, the ask quote will generally stipulate the amount of BTCs to be sold at that price.

Business-to-business. Commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. Contrasting terms are business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-government (B2G).

Most of the time when people mention BCrypt, they are talking about the adaptive hash algorithm, but it is also the name of an unrelated file encryption utility. Both are based on the Blowfish cipher algorithm published by Bruce Schneier in 1993.

Butterfly Labs. ASIC developers.

This is the opposite of Ask, the price a buyer is willing to pay for BTC. Same lingo as Wall Street.

Bitcoin Improvement Proposals. It's a system for submitting ideas for improvements or further developments.

Bitcoin is two things. First, it’s a way to transfer money without a bank or other intermediary. Say you want to make a payment. Go to your computer, smart phone, or tablet. Open your web account or Bitcoin wallet (an application). Enter two instructions. How much money to send and the Bitcoin address where you want your money to go. Hit send. The money goes to the other person. It’s Google simple.
Perhaps, you’re expecting to receive money. Go to your device. Check your online account. Or open your Bitcoin wallet. Is your money there?
Bitcoin transfers work because they’re posted on an Internet ledger for the whole world to see. BTCs leave my wallet and go to yours. The public ledger, called the “Blockchain,” shows the transaction.
Banks and other “trusted third parties” run ledgers, too. We trust the bank to maintain its ledger, and we pay fees to support the bank’s work. With Bitcoin, instead of moving money through a central point like the bank or PayPal or MasterCard, we go directly from one person to another, what we call “peer-to-peer.”
Bitcoiners trust the Blockchain ledger because it is public. No secrets. Nowhere to hide bad behavior. It is completely transparent and distributed in real time to everyone running the Bitcoin software. With the Bitcoin payment system, public scrutiny replaces banks and other “trusted third parties.” And fees are 100 percent optional. All good.There is a wrinkle. You can’t use the Bitcoin payment system to send fiat money. You can only send Bitcoin.
So, in addition to being a payment system, Bitcoin is a currency. Think of Bitcoin as an alternative to dollars, yen, and other legal tender. The difference is no central bank or government controls it. A seriously elegant computer code is steadily releasing 21 million Bitcoins into the world. Once the 21 million are out, there can never be any more.

When Roger Ver heard about the benefits of Bitcoin—relative anonymity, no fees, no banks to freeze accounts—he didn’t sleep for three days. He made himself sick with enthusiasm and later earned his nickname, “Bitcoin Jesus,” by giving away Bitcoins just to spread the word.

Bitcoin Foundation

The Bitcoin Foundation, co-founded by Charlie Shrem, is a not-for-profit organization. The organization’s mission is to standardize, protect, and promote Bitcoin.

A “Bitcoin Purist" believes Bitcoin technology will make the world a better place.

bitcoind is the core command-line interface for Bitcoin. It stands for "Bitcoin Daemon" and it's a process which runs in the background. Nitcoind connects to the Bitcoin network and passes transactions, updates the block chain, etc.

Bitcoiners are a new breed of techies. They're colorblind. They don’t care about religion or nationality. (We challenge you to find a more open and accepting community.) They're ripping the guts out of the whole financial infrastructure and, at the same time, breaking down social barriers. They even acknowledge their own faults—like the fact there are so very few women among them.

Blocks are a kind of digital file that record new data. In most cases, they are created to record transactions (money changing hands between two parties) and are then tacked onto existing blocks with data from previous transactions. The blocks line up in long, complicated strings, back to back. That's why the Bitcoin ledger system is called a blockchain.

A party celebrating the halving of the block reward. Every few years, the block reward halves. The first halving dropped the reward from 50 to 25 BTC. Many people were worried as to what would happen when the halving was triggered as it was a piece of code that has never been run before.

What about those poor auditors, who do all the work? How do they get paid? Right now the software compensates them with newly minted Bitcoin. When the full 21 million is in circulation, they will get whatever you want to give them.

Bitcoin transfers work because they’re posted on an Internet ledger for the whole world to see. BTCs leave my wallet, for example, and go to yours. The public ledger, called the “Blockchain,” shows the transaction.
Banks and other “trusted third parties” run ledgers, too. We trust the bank to maintain its ledger, and we pay fees to support the bank’s work. With Bitcoin, instead of moving money through a central point like the bank or PayPal or MasterCard, we go directly from one person to another, what we call “peer-to-peer.”
Bitcoiners trust the Blockchain ledger because it is public. No secrets. Nowhere to hide bad behavior. It is completely transparent and distributed in real time to everyone running the Bitcoin software. With the Bitcoin payment system, public scrutiny replaces banks and other “trusted third parties.” And fees are 100 percent optional. All good.

Back On Topic. Used to focus someone, who is going off topic and posting comments that are irrelevant to a discussion.

Bots are software robots that perform automated tasks over the Internet, like trading BTC.

A collection of internet-connected computers whose security defences have been breached and control ceded to a malicious party.

It's what you pay auditors to confirm transactions. Remember, after BTC totals 21 million no more are issued, meaning auditors don't get a reward through the BTC code for confirming transactions. Go back to your Bitcoin wallet or Internet account. There’s a third field where you can post a bounty that will speed the confirmation of your transaction. Auditors will compete with each other to confirm your transaction, post it on the Internet ledger, and earn the amount you designated. See also "Block reward."

A brain wallet refers to the concept of storing bitcoins in ones 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.

Browser Based Wallet

Some BTC wallets are online--or browser based wallets. You can set up an online wallet here: https://www.coinbase.com. There are many, many alternatives. BTC wallets can also be saved on computers or memory devices that are disconnected from the Internet. Many people with large amounts of BTC keep their money in wallets not connected to the Internet.

It's one style of hacking. That is, to test all conceivable passwords until you find one that works. Slow going, right?

This is the symbol for Bitcoin. To indicate an amount of BTC, put the number in front. For example: 20 BTC.

Bump & Bumping

Bumping is forum etiquette, or lack thereof. It's the tactic of creating a new discussion thread, which is only a continuation of an exiting thread. The sole purpose is to place new posts near the top of the thread so more people will notice them. Posts of this nature often include the word Bump.

The piece of software that is used to send and receive transactions, commonly known as a Bitcoin wallet.

A scheme which allows people to buy shares in hashing power without having to deal with any hardware.

When auditors confirm transactions, the Bitcoin code issues new BTC to pay them. These payments are totally transparent, out in the open and recorded in Bitcoin blocks just like any other transaction. The block that pays auditors is called "Coinbase." This transparency is one of many reasons why BTC users trust the blockchain ledger system.

Cold Wallet & Cold Storage

A Bitcoin wallet that has no connection to the internet (or other network) and, therefore, beyond the reach of computer hackers.

Someone hacked the Bitcoin Forum with “Cosbycoin.” That’s Cosby as in Bill Cosby, the guy who gave us Fat Albert and, more recently, questions about how he treats women. The hacker changed all the forum avatars to images of smiling Bill Cosby. Bitcoin became “Cosbycoin.” And a popup window greeted users with a status bar that read, “Converting Bitcoins to Cosbycoins…”

Modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software.

Cover Your Ass / Cover Your Own Ass

Dark Web, Deep Web, & Deepnet

These are websites that are not indexed by standard search engines and therefore hidden from the World Wide Web. TOR is a browser, like Safari or Chrome, which helps you find your way around the Dark Web. https://www.torproject.org

Think of "Darkleaks" as a Bitcoin-powered black market for secrets. The creator of Darkleaks was part of the original coding team for Bitcoin.

Dynamic Currency Conversion / Cardholder Preferred Currency. A financial service in which holders of credit cards have the cost of a transaction converted to their local currency when making a payment in a foreign currency.

Data Encryption Standard. Another algorithm for encrypting data.

Difficulty & Difficulty Adjustment

Okay, we'll start with "blocks." Auditors confirm Bitcoin transactiions, post them in blocks, and receive their fees. It's conceivable that auditors could obtain faster, next generation hardware and speed up the rate of confirmations--except for one thing. The Bitcoin code has a self-regulating speedometer that tries to limit the number of new blocks to one every ten minutes. Every 2016 blocks, which is about every two weeks, the code adjusts the difficulty of the ledger confirmations. Like looking at a speedometer and adjusting the weight of your foot on the gas pedal.

Satoshi programmed Bitcoin to broadcast its ledger and pending transactions to everyone in the Bitcoin community via the Internet. Anybody with a pulse can watch the details.
There’s no chance of a “double spend,” which is what coders call the problem of sending the same digital money twice.

Digital Signature Algorithm. An algorithm for authenticating data.

There was a huge fight between Dwolla, kind of a low-budget version of PayPal, and Tradehill, the first Bitcoin exchange in the United States. At issue were Dwolla's terms of service, whether they allowed for reversals or chargebacks from vendor accounts. One reading of the TOS said, "No." Another reading said, "Yes." Dwolla reversed charges from Tradehill, which is no longer functioning as of this post. Early members of the Bitcoin community are still furious about what happened.

Early Adopter Envy

Sour grapes you didn't buy all the BTC in sight when one unit was worth pennies. Yeah, well, we all have our own coulda-shoulda moments.

Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. This is an algorithm for authenticating data.

Escrow Service

Holds payments made for a service and releases them to the intended recipient only after it has been verified that the recipient has kept his end of the deal.

A place to exchange fiat money, like US dollars, into or out of BTC. In the early days of Bitcoin, exchanging money was painful. Most exchanges were located in Eastern Europe, and they all required personal and bank information to process incoming wires. Do you think anybody wants to hand over his or her vitals to some sketchy startup operation somewhere else?

A site which gives out free coins to get newbies started. Hint. There's more than one. Google "free Bitcoin" and see the 46.2 million results for yourself.

Government issued currency. Some Bitcoiners use the word with contempt.

It's named after Hal Finney (who is listed as a "cypherpunk" on Wikipedia. Basically, it's a high tech way to steal from merchants and it requires 1) a merchant who accepts unconfirmed payments or only waits a few seconds to complete a transaction after the payment is confirmed and 2) an auditor who is in the process of confirming a block on the Internet ledger. It sounds scary, but you won't find yourself in the middle of a Finney Attack while standing in line at McDonald's.

Field-Programmable Gate Array. A type of hardware used for mining.

Fractional Reserve

A banking system in which only a fraction of the deposits are backed by actual cash-on-hand and are available for withdrawal. This is done to expand the economy by freeing up capital that can be loaned out to other parties. Fractional-reserve systems permit the money supply to grow to a multiple of the underlying reserves of base money.

It's the first block of the blockchain ever released: Satoshi Nakamoto on Jan 4, 2009.

GLobal Bitcoin Stock Exchange. An exchange that provided services to users to buy/sell assets, stocks & bonds. GLBSE is now closed.

A “hacker house” is half apartment, half startup incubator.

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.

"Hard Fork" is both a coding problem and a historical Bitcoin event. In the early days of Bitcoin, there was a glitch in a software upgrade. Version .7 did not recognize Version .8, a problem that would have wreaked havoc on the Internet ledger. Bitcoiners dubbed this event the “hard fork.” Gavin Andresen used his alert key to rally a posse of volunteer coders to patch things up. Which they did. Without the fix, the two versions would have split, operated independently, and undermined the integrity of the currency.

Hashing power is the amount of power your GPU, CPU, or ASICS can contribute to mining Bitcoin

A unit of auditing 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)
Really, really fast.

If such a thing can exist, the "crazy, nastyass honey badger" is Bitcoin's mascot...embraced for its doesn't-give-a-shit fearlessness. To truly understand the Bitcoin culture, you must watch this loopy video about honeybadger. It went viral in 2011, 66 million views and counting.

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.

The act of obtaining BTCs with no intention of spending them. Sounds like saving or investing, right?

Any Bitcoin wallet attached to the Internet is considered "hot." That's because they're exposed to online attack, unlike "cold wallets" which are stored on memory devices not connected to the Internet...for the time being. Any wallet can go "hot."

I Am Not A Lawyer. Usually proceeded by legal advice from someone who is not qualifed to offer it.

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.

Internet Relay Chat. An internet base text messaging chat system that is designed to enable groups of people to communicate in real-time.

KiloBitcoin = 1 thousand bitcoins = 1000 BTC.

A piece of software that logs all keystrokes on a keyboard. They are often used nefariously to gain access to secret information such as passwords.

Krugman Fallacy

It is the view (attributed to Paul Krugman) that Bitcoin will fail because people "hoard" it, expecting the currency to appreciate later--even though the lack of spending is deflationary in and of itself. Krugman is no fan of Bitcoin. He wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled, Bitcoin is Evil. Go figure. What's so evil about cutting out financial middlemen who, among other things, brought us the financial crisis of 2008?

Know Your Customer. This is a legal requirement every financial adviser understands, the obligation to confirm a costumer's true identity. This policy helps prevent money laundering, and is now a common practice among companies operating in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Lesser General Public License. A software licence that is similar to GPL. The LGPL allows developers and companies to use and integrate LGPL software into their own (even proprietary) software without being required to release the source code of their own software-parts.

M, Mr M & The Manipulator

A real or imagined agent who controls the market value with his vast reserves of fiat and bitcoins.

MilliBitcoin = 1 thousandth of a bitcoin = 0.001 BTC.

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.

A data tree structure whose leafs contain the data and a hash is generated at each branch all the way down to the root. Changing the data at any leaf results in a change in the root hash.

Mining is the act of linking blocks into the blockchain by confirming transactions through a complex set of calculations.

Those “miners” you read about.... The ones who solve “inscrutable math problems.” Too confusing. Miners are more like auditors. They use their computers to verify Bitcoin transfers and broadcast them to everyone working on the Blockchain. No one can create a fake transaction or a fake ledger, because as long as the majority of “miners” are honest, they’ll discover and reject the fraudulent information.

A computer system used to perform the complex calculations for the Blockchain, usually custom built.

A Man-In-The-Middle attack is when hackers take over an existing Internet connection, intercept data, and ireplace it with false information. Say you're hooked up to the bank's website, and a MITM is in control and steals $50,000. You can't tel the money is missing, because the MITM sends fake data that makes it look like your money is still there.

MNW & Matthew N. Wright