I've been studying #bitcoin for years and I still to this day cannot give you a simple answer as to what a "wallet" is.
I think this is a very shitty, imprecise term.
Discussion
Coin vault? UTXO vault?
It’s also been warped too. Like I have a buddy who was convinced that he lost his Bitcoin because his Trezor was physically broken. I asked if he still had his seed phrase and he said yes, but “it doesn’t help since it was all on his hardware wallet which is now broken”
I think the only reason Wallet has stuck is it’s easy for people to understand that’s where you store your bitcoin, in a wallet, intuitive and that way, but technically not very accurate
Cryogenic chamber
Many of the terms are bad..
Wallet is a major one. This term was equally horrendous when Oracle used it for managing private keys (not that keyrings are all that much better)
Wallet software is really better thought of as a transaction coordinator of unspent outputs to spend through selection and signing. But gads thats overly lengthy and confusing.
Hardware wallets are better thought of as hardware signing devices. These devices don't contain/hold Bitcoin, and are purpose built for parsing transactions, performing verification checks and signing only.
Miners and mining is another. These are hashing machines, producing something, not chipping away at natural resources. And they'll still be producing when the subsidy is gone.
Blockchain is even bad considering it gives vibes of 3d cubes. The block in blockchain is composition of data records into sequence and isnt revolutionary, nor is chaining blocks together by back references
wallets are translation portals to the Bitcoin realm
A "wallet" is a software application that provides a user interface for interacting with the Bitcoin network either with or without the ability to create, store and use private keys (aka sign).
A hardware wallet is hardware that can do the latter offline providing better security and privacy, but always needs a software wallet interface in order to be actively transacting/signing.
i hope this is correct
Lol I didn’t see your comment
nostr:note15kex8f76f567hmpece9es9mw7cdc7tuqhqevm4aeqkea97ht20zqthnqxv
You don't own bitcoin; you own digital keys that should be kept private in order to offer you a way to digitally sign validity to a transaction of fractions of the fixed number 21000000, which then can and need to be verified at least more than once aka acknowledged by the mother-software-interface of the totallity of the Bitcoin network showing all of past validated and verified transactions up until that very moment or something like that 😫
also 🤝
I’ll try: It’s a collection of all the BTC balances and transactions that your keys can unlock.
I have actually thought about this a lot and I have come up with nothing better than wallet that actually helps people understand what it’s used for. There are some that seem to work in some other way, but then still suck in others. But if I wanted to make someone understand that “this is where you go to see your balances and control your bitcoin,” I would still have trouble finding something better than “wallet,” even though there remain a lot of problems with that terminology.
That is a pretty good and simple definition, better than I could do.
I go back and forth with thinking "account" or just "keys" might be a better term.
But ultimately Bitcoin just so different than conventional stuff we need to just use new words I think
It’s a portal to access your digital keys from meat space
A door is probally more accurate but i think a wallet is just more understandable as a basic concept if bitcoin gets adopted more knowledge like this will probally be everyday but we still call it a wallet because convience
Software for managing UTXOs and cryptographic keys.