How the Bitcoin protocol actually works

How the Bitcoin Protocol Actually Works — My Review of Michael Nielsen’s Classic Guide (+ Everything You Need to Know With FAQ)

Ever wish someone would explain Bitcoin without the hype and hand-waving? If you’ve been stuck between buzzwords and contradictory threads, this is the shortcut you’ve been looking for.

I read Michael Nielsen’s classic “How the Bitcoin protocol actually works” so you don’t have to wrestle with it alone. I’ll show you what you’ll actually learn from it, what’s still spot on in 2025, and what to watch for as you explore Bitcoin today.

By the end, you’ll have a clean mental model of keys, transactions, UTXOs, blocks, proof-of-work, confirmations, and incentives—enough to read mempool charts with confidence, use wallets correctly, and make smarter calls in crypto.

The pain: scattered info, outdated takes, and too much jargon

If you’re new (or even not-so-new), it’s easy to get lost. One source swears Bitcoin is anonymous; another says it’s fully traceable. Some tutorials explain hashing but skip why proof-of-work exists at all. Others never touch UTXOs, so fees, “inputs,” and change outputs feel like magic tricks.

Real talk—here’s what trips people up:

• Anonymous vs pseudonymous: Addresses aren’t tied to names by default, but transactions live forever on a public ledger. Peer-reviewed research (USENIX Security, 2013) showed how clustering and external data can often link activity to identities. That’s why mixing “privacy” claims with reality gets messy fast.


• Fees feel random: When the mempool is busy (NFT-style inscriptions, exchange churn, or a bull run), fees spike. If you don’t understand transaction size and UTXOs, you’ll overpay—or wait forever.


• UTXO confusion: Bitcoin doesn’t work like your bank app. You don’t have “an account balance” that’s one number; you have a set of spendable chunks called UTXOs. That’s why your wallet sometimes shows multiple inputs and a separate change output.


• Proof-of-work, explained badly: Headlines argue about energy, but skip the key point: making block creation costly keeps the system neutral and hard to rewrite—no referee required.


• Outdated guides: Plenty of posts predate SegWit/Taproot, modern fee markets, or today’s wallets. You’re left reconciling old screenshots with new rules.

When your learning path is split across Reddit threads, YouTube explainers, and marketing pages, it’s no surprise things don’t click. That’s exactly why Nielsen’s guide still matters: it explains the system’s moving parts in a way that sticks.

What I promise in this guide

I keep it simple, accurate, and practical. Here’s what you’ll get:

• A clear mental model that matches how Bitcoin actually works today: keys, signatures, UTXOs, mempool, blocks, and proof-of-work.


• What Nielsen’s piece teaches in plain English—and how it maps to today’s Bitcoin without getting lost in edge cases.


• Quick answers to the big questions people ask all the time (fees, confirmations, security, privacy—what’s real vs wishful thinking).


• Confidence to read Bitcoin data like mempool charts and block explorers so you can spot congestion, estimate fees, and track confirmations without guesswork.

I won’t bury you in math. No hand-waving. Just the essential logic of how the protocol ticks so you can use Bitcoin smarter.

Who this is for, and how to use this review

Whether you’re building, investing, or just crypto-curious, this is for you if you want signal over noise.

• Builders: Get the right mental model so your product decisions line up with how Bitcoin actually settles transactions.


• Investors: Understand confirmations, fee pressure, and security so you’re not relying on vibes when moving value.


• Curious readers: Cut through jargon and walk away with a “click”—the moment Bitcoin finally makes sense.

How to get the most from this review:

• Skim the parts you need now; come back to the rest when you hit a question in the wild.


• Keep a block explorer open while you read—seeing a transaction move from mempool to confirmed makes everything stick.


• Bookmark the original guide: michaelnielsen.org. It’s still one of the best foundational explainers online.

Ready to see what’s actually inside Nielsen’s guide—and why it still works in 2025? Let’s unpack that next and answer the question everyone asks first: what does “how Bitcoin works” really mean in practice?

What’s inside Nielsen’s guide—and why I still recommend it

If you’ve ever felt that gut-level confusion when a “Bitcoin explainer” throws ten new terms at you in one sentence, this piece feels like oxygen. It reads like a calm walk through the system, not a brag about how smart the author is. The story is simple: how a spend is constructed, how the network agrees it’s valid, and how that agreement becomes expensive to undo. That’s it—no magic, just sturdy mechanics you can actually use.

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work.”
— Satoshi Nakamoto (Bitcoin whitepaper)

Why does that quote matter here? Because this guide shows exactly how Bitcoin replaces “trust” with rules anyone can verify—without drowning you in math symbols.

The structure that makes it click

What makes this article special isn’t just what it covers; it’s the order. Each idea answers a question your brain is already asking, so the next piece lands cleanly. You go from “How do I spend digital coins without double-spending?” to “Okay, show me the machinery.”

• Start with a spend you can picture: sending 0.015 BTC to a friend. Why does change come back to you as a new piece of bitcoin? The guide shows it with real transaction shapes, not buzzwords.


• Layer on signatures the moment you wonder about permission: who’s allowed to spend what, and how everyone else can check it in a split second.


• Only then introduce blocks and proof-of-work: you already understand the “what,” so the “how we order this fairly” lands without hand-waving.


• Finish with the security intuition: confirmations aren’t superstition—they’re stacked cost. Each block added behind your transaction raises the price of rewriting your history.

That pacing does something rare: it gives you a mental model that sticks. The next time your wallet shows two inputs and a tiny “change” output, you won’t shrug—you’ll know exactly why it looks that way.

What you’ll learn in one sitting

If you give it a single focused read, here’s what locks in—and stays locked:

• Bitcoin is a ledger of UTXOs: not account balances. Your “balance” is just the sum of spendable chunks under your keys.


• Transactions transform UTXOs: inputs consumed, outputs created. Fees are simply the leftover difference—no mystery line item.


• Proof-of-work makes ordering costly to cheat: miners don’t “vote;” they prove they burned energy. Everyone else can verify in milliseconds.


• Confirmations measure confidence: one block is “probably good,” six is “very hard to undo,” and the right number depends on what’s at stake.

Practical payoff: after reading, you can open a block explorer (mempool.space works great), click any transaction, and actually read it—inputs, outputs, change, fee rate, the lot. That alone is worth the time.

What’s a bit dated—and what’s still solid

The core is still right. The parts that aged are around the edges: how people use Bitcoin today and the scale of the system.

• Fees and block space: The fee market is more competitive now. Bursts of inscription activity and general demand can push fees to triple digits in sats/vB (we saw this multiple times in 2023–2024 on mempool.space). The guide’s mechanics hold, but your expectations about “typical” fees should adjust.


• SegWit and Taproot in the wild: SegWit now dominates transactions (well over half of spends), shrinking weight and helping throughput; Taproot is steadily used for spends and batching, with specialized use cases (like inscriptions and MuSig2-style multisig) growing. The original article predates this, but nothing it teaches breaks—your mental model just needs the “new formats” note.


• Mining is industrial-scale: ASICs rule, energy strategies are sophisticated, and hashrate is at all-time highs. For context, pool concentration and regional energy dynamics are tracked in places like CBECI and pool dashboards (BTC.com). The security story in the guide still stands; it’s just happening on a bigger stage.


• Wallet UX is smarter: Modern wallets default to Replace-by-Fee (RBF), offer Child-Pays-for-Parent (CPFP), batch outputs, and support descriptors and PSBT for safer, multi-device signing. The guide explains why these are possible, even if it doesn’t name them.

So yes, some screenshots in your head will look different in 2025. But the engine—the part that matters—runs exactly as described. That’s the magic: once you learn the rules, you can watch the ecosystem evolve without losing the plot.

One more reason I still point people to this piece: it respects your time. No fluff, no conspiracy takes, no guilt-tripping about “not getting it.” Just a clear path from “How does this even work?” to “I can track a transaction through the network and explain what I’m seeing.” That kind of clarity is rare in crypto, and honestly, a little calming.

If a friend sent you a small amount of BTC right now, could you explain how it becomes “final” as blocks tick by—and why sometimes a higher fee buys you minutes back? If you’re not 100% there yet, you’re going to love what’s next.

Bitcoin’s core mechanics explained (the way Nielsen frames them)

Keys, addresses, and signatures

I like to think of a Bitcoin wallet as a remote control for money that only works if you have the right cryptographic batteries. Those “batteries” are a public/private key pair. Your private key is the secret—never shared. Your public key (or a hash of it, which becomes an address) is how the network recognizes who’s allowed to move a specific chunk of bitcoin.

When you send bitcoin, your wallet builds a transaction and signs it with your private key. That signature is math-proof, not trust. Every node can verify it using your public key or address without ever seeing your private key. That’s the magic: spend authorization that’s public to check, private to create.

Real-world note: modern wallets usually show you a human-friendly address (like a bech32 address starting with “bc1…”). Under the hood, it’s still just a way to lock a future coin to your key so the network can verify your signature later.

“Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required.” — Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin whitepaper

Transactions and the UTXO model

Bitcoin doesn’t track balances the way your bank app does. It tracks UTXOs—unspent transaction outputs. Think of each UTXO as a discrete, spendable coin. A transaction simply consumes some UTXOs (inputs) and creates new ones (outputs).

A simple, concrete example:

• You control two UTXOs: 0.030 BTC and 0.005 BTC.


• You want to pay a designer 0.032 BTC.


• Your wallet selects both inputs (total 0.035 BTC), then creates:
  
  
  
  • One output: 0.032 BTC to the designer’s address
  
  
  • One output: 0.0029 BTC back to you (your “change”)
  
  
  
  


• The 0.0001 BTC difference is the fee (inputs − outputs).

Two big takeaways:

• Change is normal. If inputs are larger than what you pay, the remainder returns to a new address you control. That’s why wallets ask you to back up your seed phrase—not the addresses. New addresses are derived from your seed automatically.


• Fees depend on size in bytes, not bitcoin amount. A transaction with more inputs (each input adds bytes) usually costs more, even if you send a small amount of BTC.

If you’ve ever wondered why your wallet shows “inputs” from different past payments, this is why. Your balance is just the sum of all your UTXOs.

Blocks, timestamps, and proof-of-work

Nodes verify transactions all the time, but miners do the heavy lifting of ordering them. They bundle transactions into a block and compete to find a special value (a nonce) that makes the block’s hash land below a network-set target. That’s proof-of-work.

Why it matters: finding that nonce takes real energy and time, but verifying the result is instant. Once a block is mined, it points to the previous block, forming a chain. Rewriting history would require redoing the work for the block you want to change and every block after it. That escalating cost is Bitcoin’s security backbone.

A few nerdy-but-useful facts:

• Block time averages ~10 minutes, but it’s a probabilistic process. Two minutes or twenty minutes can both happen.


• Difficulty adjusts roughly every two weeks to keep that ~10-minute target consistent, no matter how many miners join or leave.

Network propagation and mempool basics

Transactions don’t instantly land in a block. They first flow through the network’s gossip layer:

• Your wallet broadcasts the signed transaction to a node.


• That node checks the rules (signatures, inputs, scripts) and relays it to peers.


• Transactions that pass validation sit in each node’s mempool—a waiting room—until a miner includes them in a block.

Fees are a market signal. When the mempool is busy, you pay more to jump the queue; when it’s quiet, you can pay less. Most wallets now suggest a fee rate in sat/vB (satoshis per virtual byte) based on current conditions. If you’re paying a time-sensitive invoice, it’s smart to follow that suggestion.

Under the hood, improvements like Compact Blocks (BIP152) helped push block propagation latencies down, which reduces the chance of two miners producing competing blocks at the same time. That’s a big reason the stale/orphan block rate stays low (typically well under 1%; see analyses by BitMEX Research).

Double-spends, confirmations, and security

If someone tries to spend the same UTXO twice, the network will accept only the transaction that’s included in the canonical chain. A confirmation is each block added on top of the block with your transaction. More confirmations = harder to reorganize = higher confidence.

Real-world rhythm:

• 0 conf: seen in the mempool; some merchants accept it for small, in-person transactions.


• 1 conf: typically ~10 minutes; good for normal payments.


• 3–6 conf: used for larger transfers and exchanges; the cost to reverse becomes wildly impractical.

It’s not about blind trust; it’s about compounding cost. Each confirmation is like another lock on a vault door. Could a powerful attacker reorganize a few blocks? Theoretically, yes. Practically, it’s expensive, visible, and coordinated hash power doesn’t come easy.

Incentives and new bitcoins

None of this works without skin in the game. Miners are paid two ways:

• Block subsidy: newly-minted BTC in each block’s coinbase transaction (this halves roughly every four years).


• Fees: all the transaction fees inside that block.

That reward structure is the alignment layer: miners secure the ledger because it pays. Every ~four years, the halving reduces issuance, guiding total supply toward 21 million. The shift in emphasis from subsidy to fees is by design; as adoption grows and block space remains scarce, fees carry more of the weight.

You can see this in action during peak demand. When the mempool swells—think NFT-like inscriptions or market turbulence—fees surge and miners earn more from transactions. When activity cools, fees drop. It’s an open market for block space, and it keeps miners economically tethered to the network’s health.

There’s a quiet thrill when you watch your first transaction confirm. It’s value moving through pure math and open rules—no help desk to unblock it, no bank holiday to get in the way.

Curious how nodes actually check signatures, or how many confirmations is “safe” for different payment sizes? I’ve got the fast answers you’ll want next—without the buzzwords.

FAQ: real questions people ask (answered fast)

How does the Bitcoin protocol actually work?

I think of Bitcoin as a public scoreboard that everyone can check and no one can secretly edit. Here’s the short version:

• You create a transaction that spends your existing UTXOs (your “coins”) and creates new UTXOs for the recipient and your change.


• Nodes validate it against the rules (signatures, scripts, no double-spends, proper fees).


• Miners package valid transactions into a block and run proof-of-work to secure the ordering.


• The chain with the most accumulated work wins. Nodes follow it automatically. That’s consensus.

Example you can picture: I send 0.015 BTC to a friend. My wallet combines two small UTXOs (say, 0.010 and 0.007 BTC), pays 0.015 BTC to them, and 0.0015 BTC comes back to me as change after fees. It broadcasts; miners pick it up; once it’s in a block, it has 1 confirmation.

What is proof-of-work and why is it needed?

Proof-of-work (PoW) is a math puzzle that’s hard to solve but easy to check. Miners burn real energy to find a hash below a target. That expense makes rewriting history brutally costly, so no one can just “flip” the ledger for free.

• Neutrality: No central referee. Hash power is the arbiter.


• Security budget: Miners are paid block rewards + fees to defend the chain.


• Predictable pace: Difficulty adjusts roughly every 2 weeks to keep blocks ~10 minutes apart, even as hardware improves.

Context: the network now secures itself with hundreds of exahashes per second as of 2025—industrial-level security.

“The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.” — Satoshi Nakamoto

How are Bitcoin transactions verified?

Every full node does the work locally—no trust needed. A typical checklist includes:

• Signatures: Are the inputs correctly signed with keys that match the spending conditions?


• Inputs exist and are unspent: The UTXOs you’re using must be real and not already spent.


• Scripts: P2PKH, P2WPKH, P2TR, multisig—all must evaluate to true.


• Consensus limits: Size, weight (vbytes), and standardness rules are respected.


• Fees: Inputs minus outputs equals the fee; it can’t be negative.

If it passes, nodes relay it and miners may include it in a block.

Is Bitcoin anonymous or pseudonymous?

Pseudonymous. Addresses aren’t tied to your name on-chain, but transactions are forever public. With enough external data (exchanges, merchant logs, IPs), identities can be inferred.

• Classic research like Meiklejohn et al., 2013 showed how clustering and heuristics link addresses to entities.


• On-chain analytics has only improved since then.

Good hygiene helps—fresh addresses, avoiding address reuse, coin control—but if you want privacy guarantees, you’ll need tools that go beyond Bitcoin’s base layer.

How long does a Bitcoin transaction take, and how many confirmations do I need?

Blocks come every ~10 minutes on average. Your wait depends on your fee and current congestion.

• Small, everyday amounts: Many accept 0–1 conf if the fee is reasonable and RBF isn’t enabled.


• Larger amounts: 3–6 confirmations are common policy. Security rises exponentially per confirmation.

Reality check: during quiet periods, a 1–2 sat/vB fee can confirm within an hour. During spikes (think inscriptions or halving-day mania), you might need 50–200+ sat/vB to land quickly. On the April 2024 halving block, fees briefly exceeded 37 BTC in a single block—pure fee market at work.

Can Bitcoin be hacked? Who controls it?

There’s no central switch. The rules live on thousands of nodes. Could an attacker cause chaos? Only by amassing huge hash power to temporarily reorganize blocks—expensive, obvious, and usually not profitable. The more common “hack” is human:

• Phishing and malware stealing seed phrases


• Fake wallets or signing blind transactions


• SIM swaps that take over exchange accounts

Hardware wallets, multi-sig, and never typing your seed on an internet-connected device are the boring but effective defenses.

Where do new bitcoins come from?

Miners earn newly created BTC in each block, plus fees. That issuance halves roughly every four years. After the 2024 halving, the block subsidy is 3.125 BTC. This continues until issuance trends toward zero, capping supply at 21 million.

What is the blockchain vs Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is the currency and the set of rules. The blockchain is the append-only ledger those rules maintain. The chain is a component; the system (nodes, rules, incentives) is the whole machine.

What is a UTXO in simple terms?

A UTXO is a spendable “bill” on the ledger. Your balance is just the sum of all your unspent bills. When you pay, your wallet picks enough bills to cover the amount, then creates new bills for the recipient and your change.

Why do fees vary so much?

Block space is scarce, and fees are a real-time auction. When demand spikes, the price to get into the next block spikes with it.

• Transaction weight matters: Larger or complex transactions (many inputs, multisig, non-SegWit) cost more.


• Market cycles and on-chain trends: BRC-20, inscriptions, and airdrop crazes have pushed fees to extremes.


• Tools help: Replace-By-Fee (RBF) and Child-Pays-For-Parent (CPFP) can rescue stuck transactions; SegWit/Taproot reduce weight.

Tip you can use today: check a live fee estimator (like mempool.space) before sending, and set RBF so you can bump the fee if conditions change.

“I just want this to feel simple and safe.” That’s the point. Once you see Bitcoin as signed transformations of UTXOs secured by proof-of-work and validated by everyone, the noise fades and your decisions get calmer.

Curious which parts of Nielsen’s classic still nail it in 2025—and where I think you should read with a modern lens? Ready for a few hard-won tips I use myself when fees go nuts? Let’s talk about that next.

My verdict: what’s great, what to watch, and how to read it right

What this guide absolutely nails

I’m picky about “explainers,” and this one earns its keep. Michael Nielsen’s “How the Bitcoin protocol actually works” gives you the cleanest mental model I’ve seen for what Bitcoin does at the protocol level—no circus, just clarity.

• UTXO thinking that sticks. He turns “your balance” into what it really is: a set of spendable chunks. That single shift explains fees, change outputs, and why your wallet sometimes grabs multiple inputs.


• Signatures, not trust. The explanation of public/private keys makes it obvious why nobody needs to know you—only your signature—and why that scales to a global network.


• Blocks and proof-of-work without the buzzwords. He frames mining as ordering plus cost, not magic money printing. That framing holds up under the hardest questions I get from engineers and investors.


• The “why this design?” thread. Every component earns its place. You finish with intuition, not a pile of definitions.

When something is explained well, you stop memorizing and start seeing.

That’s what this guide does. It won’t turn you into a Script wizard, but it will make the rest of Bitcoin finally click.

What you should keep in mind in 2025

The protocol Nielsen describes is still the protocol you use. But the environment around it has leveled up. Read with these realities in mind:

• SegWit and Taproot are normal now. Most transactions are SegWit (think >80% share in recent industry datasets), which changes how size/fees are measured (vbytes/weight). Taproot outputs are common too, especially from newer wallets and inscription activity. The guide won’t mention them, but your explorer will.


• The fee market is spikier. Some weekends are quiet (1–5 sats/vB clears), then hype hits and you’ll see triple- or even quadruple-digit sats/vB. Around the 2024 halving, blocks with 30+ BTC in fees happened—real “fee-only” hours where fees beat the subsidy. Plan for volatility; learn RBF (Replace-By-Fee) and CPFP (Child-Pays-For-Parent) so you aren’t stuck.


• Mining is industrial, but the rules still rule. Hashrate is in the hundreds of exahash per second and big public miners/pools dominate. That sounds scary until you remember: nodes enforce the rules, not miners. Chain reorganizations deeper than a few blocks are still costly and highly visible.


• Wallet UX is miles better. Descriptors, PSBTs, coin control, automatic fee bumping, watch-only setups—stuff that once felt “expert-only” shows up in mainstream wallets. You’ll see new address formats (bc1… for SegWit/Taproot). Same protocol, smoother on-ramps.


• Privacy expectations are different. Chain analytics is a real industry. The ledger was always public; now it’s easier to analyze. The guide’s “pseudonymous” line still holds, but your habits matter more than ever.

None of that invalidates the article—if anything, it makes the foundation more valuable. You’ll need it to make sense of fee spikes, address types, and how miners actually behave.

How I suggest you read it

I like a three-pass method that turns theory into “I can do this today.”

• Pass 1 — Straight read: Go end to end without pausing. Don’t fact-check yourself mid-paragraph. Just absorb the shape of the system.


• Pass 2 — Sketch a real transaction: Grab a notepad and “send” 0.015 BTC to a friend. Pretend your wallet picks two inputs (0.010 + 0.006 BTC). Choose a fee rate (say 45 sats/vB) and create:
  
  
  
  • Output A: 0.015 BTC to their bc1… address
  
  
  • Change: ~0.001 BTC back to your bc1… address (after fees)
  
  
  
  Label which outputs are spendable next time and why the change goes back to you as a new UTXO.


• Pass 3 — Watch the mempool live: Send a small test transaction from your wallet. Open a block explorer and track:
  
  
  
  • vsize/weight: See how SegWit/Taproot reduces feerate needs.
  
  
  • Fee bands in the mempool: Where does your tx land? If it stalls, try RBF or CPFP and watch it jump priority.
  
  
  • Confirmations: Note how security grows with depth (1, 3, 6…).
  
  
  
  

Pro tip: Don’t chase the “next block” fee if you don’t need it. Pick the cheapest tier that still clears within your real deadline, then RBF only if needed. That single habit saves beginners the most sats.

If you want a clear anchor while you do this, keep Nielsen’s original open in another tab and match each step you’re seeing on-chain to the concept he explained.

Who it’s perfect for (and who may want more)

• Perfect for: Beginners and intermediate readers who want the protocol truth without drowning in edge cases. Investors who need to sanity-check narratives. Builders who prefer a correct mental model before touching an SDK.


• You may want more if: You’re looking for Script internals (OP codes, Miniscript), Taproot trees and policy, Lightning’s HTLCs, fee estimation algorithms, mempool policy nuances (RBF rules, standardness), or operational topics like multi-sig deployments and hardware wallet workflows.

I’ll leave you with this: if you had a one-minute checklist to read any block explorer like a pro and avoid overpaying fees, would you use it? Keep going—next up, I’ll hand you exactly that and a simple plan to put this understanding to work today.

Final take and what to do next

Some guides make Bitcoin feel mystical. This one makes it practical. It gives you the mental scaffolding to understand the system without turning it into a black box. That’s why I still point people to it today—it doesn’t chase trends; it explains the engine.

Quick recap

You’ve got the essentials lined up: keys and signatures prove you’re allowed to spend, UTXOs track what’s actually spendable, proof-of-work secures the ordering of transactions, and confirmations are your rising confidence meter.

“The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.”
— Bitcoin Whitepaper

Reality check: the risk of a successful double-spend drops fast with more confirmations. Analyses like Rosenfeld (2014) show the probability falls exponentially as blocks stack up.

A simple next step

Start small, see the moving parts, and let the concepts click through a real example.

• Open the original guide: How the Bitcoin protocol actually works.


• In another tab, open a live explorer: mempool.space.


• Pick a recent transaction and look at:
  
  
  
  • Inputs (multiple UTXOs often roll up into one spend)
  
  
  • Outputs (one to the recipient, one is usually your change)
  
  
  • Fee rate (sat/vB) and how fast it confirms
  
  
  
  


• Want hands-on without risking funds? Use Signet:
  
  
  
  • Grab some test coins from a faucet: signetfaucet.com
  
  
  • Use a wallet that supports Signet (e.g., Sparrow). Send a tiny amount to yourself and watch it in the explorer.
  
  
  
  


• Compare address types you’ll see: bc1 (SegWit), bc1p (Taproot), and older 1/3 formats. Notice how transaction size and fees can differ.

Tip: never screenshot or paste your seed phrase anywhere online. If a site or app asks for it, back out. That’s the number one way people get “hacked.”

Keep your signal in a noisy market

Bookmark Nielsen’s piece as your base layer. When prices or headlines get loud, come back to these fundamentals and sanity-check what you’re reading against them. It keeps you grounded and helps you make better calls.

When you’re ready for the next step, keep exploring smart, practical reads here: https://cryptolinks.com/news/. I’ll keep curating the good stuff so you can stay focused on what actually matters.