Custody is the question behind most institutional Bitcoin stories: who actually holds the keys, under what legal structure, and what happens if that party fails. When reporting on a fund, a treasury or an exchange, the custodian is usually the most load-bearing detail and the one least often stated plainly.
Custody
The arrangement by which someone holds the keys to bitcoin on another party's behalf.
Also called: custodian, qualified custodian
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Difficulty adjustment
The automatic recalibration, every 2,016 blocks, that keeps blocks arriving roughly ten minutes apart.
Fee rate
What a transaction pays for block space, quoted per unit of size rather than as a…
Full node
Software that independently verifies every rule of the Bitcoin protocol rather than trusting anyone else's word.
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