Bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places, and the smallest unit is named after its pseudonymous creator. One bitcoin is one hundred million satoshis. Wallets increasingly price small amounts in sats because "0.00012 BTC" is harder to read than "12,000 sats", and because the unit will matter more as the price per coin rises.
Satoshi
The smallest unit of bitcoin: one hundred millionth of a single coin.
Also called: sats, satoshis
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Self-custody
Holding the keys to your own bitcoin, rather than trusting a company to hold them for…
Spot ETF
An exchange-traded fund that holds bitcoin itself, giving investors exposure through an ordinary brokerage account.
UTXO
An unspent transaction output: a discrete chunk of bitcoin that a future transaction can consume.
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