Bitcoin network and mining glossary

Reference · 45 terms · Published 14 October 2026 · By TradeSignalsHQ

Short, plain definitions of the words used across our network desk, trackers, explainers and trade ideas. Each entry links to the page that explains it in full. Definitions describe how Bitcoin works today; where a number is involved, it comes from the protocol rules, not from a forecast.

ASIC: Application-specific integrated circuit: a chip built to do one job. Bitcoin mining machines use ASICs that compute only SHA-256 hashes, far faster and more efficiently than general-purpose computers. Read more.
Block: A batch of transactions with a header that links it to the block before it. A new block is added roughly every ten minutes on average; its header must hash below the current target. Read more.
Block height: The number of blocks before a given block in the chain. The first block, the genesis block, has height 0. Halvings and difficulty adjustments happen at fixed heights. Read more.
Block reward: What the miner of a block is allowed to pay itself: the block subsidy plus the fees of every transaction in the block. Read more.
Block subsidy: The newly created bitcoin in each block. It started at 50 BTC and halves every 210,000 blocks; it has been 3.125 BTC since block 840,000 in April 2024. Read more.
Block weight: The measure of block size since SegWit. A block may weigh at most 4,000,000 weight units; a transaction's virtual size in vbytes is its weight divided by four. Read more.
Break-even electricity price: The power price at which a mining machine's expected revenue exactly covers its electricity bill. Below it the machine covers its running cost; above it, it does not. Read more.
Coinbase transaction: The first transaction in every block, in which the miner pays itself the block reward. Its outputs cannot be spent until 100 more blocks have been added. Not related to the exchange of the same name. Read more.
Confirmation: A transaction has one confirmation when it is included in a block, and one more for each block added after it. More confirmations make reversal less likely.
CPFP (child pays for parent): A way to speed up a stuck transaction by spending one of its outputs in a new transaction with a high fee, so that a miner who wants the new fee must include both. Read more.
Difficulty: How hard it is to find a valid block compared with the easiest-ever target. Doubling the difficulty doubles the expected number of hashes per block. Read more.
Difficulty adjustment: The rule that resets difficulty every 2,016 blocks so the next period takes closer to two weeks. One adjustment can move difficulty by at most a factor of four. Read more.
EH/s (exahash per second): One quintillion (10¹⁸) hashes per second. The whole Bitcoin network is measured in EH/s. Read more.
Entry: In a trade idea, the price or zone where the idea starts. If price never reaches it, there is no trade. Read more.
Epoch (difficulty period): A run of 2,016 blocks between difficulty adjustments. "Halving era" is used for the 210,000 blocks between halvings. Read more.
Fee rate: The price of block space, in satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB). The fee of a transaction is its fee rate times its size; miners prefer higher fee rates. Read more.
Funding rate: A periodic payment between long and short holders of a perpetual future that keeps its price near the spot price. Positive funding means longs pay shorts. Read more.
Genesis block: Block 0, created on 3 January 2009. Its 50 BTC subsidy cannot be spent. Read more.
Halving: The cut of the block subsidy by half every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years. The next one is at block 1,050,000. Read more.
Hash: The fixed-length output of a hash function such as SHA-256. Any change to the input changes the output unpredictably, which is what makes mining a search by trial and error. Read more.
Hashprice: Expected miner revenue per unit of hashrate per day, usually in dollars per PH/s per day: block subsidy plus average fees, times blocks per day and price, divided by network hashrate. Read more.
Hashrate: The number of hashes computed per second, for one machine or the whole network. Network hashrate is estimated from difficulty and the time between blocks. Read more.
Invalidation: In a trade idea, the condition that cancels it — the stop-loss price, or an event such as a data release before the entry is reached. Read more.
J/TH (joules per terahash): A mining machine's efficiency: the energy it uses per trillion hashes. Power draw in watts equals hashrate in TH/s times J/TH. Read more.
Mempool: Each node's pool of valid transactions waiting to be included in a block. There is no single mempool; nodes' pools differ slightly. Read more.
Mining pool: A group of miners that combine hashrate and share rewards in proportion to work contributed, so each member earns a steadier income. Pools charge a fee. Read more.
Nonce: A field in the block header that miners change on each attempt to produce a different hash.
Orphan or stale block: A valid block that lost a race: another block at the same height became part of the longest chain, so the stale block's reward is lost.
PH/s (petahash per second): One quadrillion (10¹⁵) hashes per second, or 1,000 TH/s. Hashprice is usually quoted per PH/s. Read more.
Proof of work: The system in which a block is valid only if finding it took, on average, a known amount of computation. It makes rewriting history expensive. Read more.
PUE (power usage effectiveness): Total facility energy divided by the energy used by the machines themselves. A PUE of 1.10 means 10% extra for cooling and other overhead. Read more.
R (risk unit): In a trade idea, the distance from entry to stop-loss. A target at 2R is twice that distance from the entry in the direction of the trade. Read more.
RBF (replace-by-fee): A rule that lets a sender replace an unconfirmed transaction with a new version paying a higher fee. BIP 125 describes the original opt-in signal. Read more.
Retarget: Another word for the difficulty adjustment. Read more.
Satoshi (sat): The smallest unit of bitcoin: one hundred-millionth (0.00000001) of a bitcoin. Read more.
SegWit: Segregated Witness, the 2017 upgrade (BIP 141) that moved signature data into a separate structure and replaced the block size limit with a weight limit. Read more.
SHA-256: The hash function Bitcoin uses for proof of work, applied twice to each block header.
Slippage: The difference between the price you expected and the price you got, common with market orders and stops in fast markets. Read more.
Stablecoin: A token designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar, backed by reserves or other mechanisms. Total supply is tracked on our stablecoin desk. Read more.
Stop-loss: In a trade idea, the price at which the idea is wrong and the position is closed at a loss. It decides position size. Read more.
Target: In a trade idea, a price where part or all of a position would be closed at a profit. A level to watch, not a prediction. Read more.
Target (mining): The number a block header's hash must not exceed. A smaller target means higher difficulty. Read more.
TH/s (terahash per second): One trillion (10¹²) hashes per second. A single modern mining machine is rated in TH/s. Read more.
UTXO: Unspent transaction output: a discrete piece of bitcoin that a wallet can spend. Spending many small UTXOs makes a transaction larger and costlier. Read more.
vByte (virtual byte, vB): The unit used to measure transaction size for fees: weight divided by four. Read more.

Risk warning. Educational content only, not financial or investment advice. Crypto assets are highly volatile and you can lose all the money you put in.

Bitcoin network and mining glossary

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