Technology and terms

Which technology and terms you actually need

You do not have to understand a blockchain to follow a case, but a handful of the technology and terms in this category keep coming back, and misreading them costs time. An address is not an account with a name on it. A wallet is a set of keys rather than a place where coins are stored. A transaction is final once confirmed, which is why nobody can reverse one for you. And a token is not a currency in its own right; it exists on a network that someone else maintains.

The reason these distinctions matter is that they decide what can be asked of whom. If keys sit with a provider, a request goes to that provider through a formal route. If keys sit with the holder, the same question has to be answered with a signature or a pattern of use. If a transfer crossed to another network, two records have to be matched instead of one. Every practical step in a file follows from a technical fact, which is why the technology and terms here are described in terms of consequences rather than mechanics.

We have deliberately left out anything that only matters to engineers. Consensus rules, block sizes and fee markets are fascinating and almost never relevant to the question you arrived with. What you will find instead is the shortest accurate explanation, followed by what the term means for evidence, for a bank or for a tax position.

If you only read one thing here, read the entries on addresses and on finality. Nearly every misunderstanding we are asked to sort out comes back to one of those two: someone assumed an address identifies a person, or assumed a confirmed transfer could still be recalled. Getting those two right changes what you expect from an investigation, and usually what you do first.