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Ok, every time they refer to "coins" in this article they really mean wallet addresses right? Is this a common way to refer to them now? It really took away fro

Ok, every time they refer to "coins" in this article they really mean wallet addresses right? Is this a common way to refer to them now? It really took away from the point of the article for me.

subway 9y ago
Yeah, this definitely left me with a questionable impression of the author's understanding of bitcoin.
- konschubert 9y ago
  I think his understanding of the technology is fine, he's just referring to transaction outputs as coins.
olalonde 9y ago
Technically, they're (or should be) referring to "txouts" or "outputs". An address with a large balance could still be unspendable if it is composed of many small outputs. A single address can be the recipient of multiple payments (outputs) and a transaction spends those outputs. Since each output must be referenced in a transaction, each output takes up some space and fees are calculated based on the size of the transaction in bytes, not its value in BTC. This diagram I made a few years ago might help visualise: https://github.com/olalonde/bitcoin-notes/blob/master/svg/transaction.svg https://github.com/olalonde/bitcoin-notes/blob/master/svg/tr...
- konschubert 9y ago
  So we're going to run into some sort of fragmentation problem? Ever-growing transaction size coupled with already-to-small block size. I knew the scaling problem was bad, but I didn't realize it gets worse as Bitcoin ages!
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    It doesn't really get worse over time. The amount of fragmentation is generally going to be proportional to the average transaction size. In general, expect transactions to have two outputs. The payment, and the extra. And since outputs become inputs, transactions will average about two inputs too. A few shavings might get orphaned here or there, but that doesn't have a huge effect on the operation of the rest of the coins.
    - konschubert 9y ago
      Ah, okay, I somehow thought that a transaction with multiple inputs creates at least the same number of outputs.
- tvmalsv 9y ago
  I'm not whom you responded to, but, thank you, I found that diagram very helpful.

Ok, every time they refer to "coins" in this article they really mean wallet addresses right? Is this a common way to refer to them now? It really took away from the point of the article for me.

subway 9y ago

Yeah, this definitely left me with a questionable impression of the author's understanding of bitcoin.

konschubert 9y ago
I think his understanding of the technology is fine, he's just referring to transaction outputs as coins.

olalonde 9y ago

Technically, they're (or should be) referring to "txouts" or "outputs". An address with a large balance could still be unspendable if it is composed of many small outputs. A single address can be the recipient of multiple payments (outputs) and a transaction spends those outputs. Since each output must be referenced in a transaction, each output takes up some space and fees are calculated based on the size of the transaction in bytes, not its value in BTC. This diagram I made a few years ago might help visualise: https://github.com/olalonde/bitcoin-notes/blob/master/svg/transaction.svg https://github.com/olalonde/bitcoin-notes/blob/master/svg/tr...

konschubert 9y ago
So we're going to run into some sort of fragmentation problem? Ever-growing transaction size coupled with already-to-small block size. I knew the scaling problem was bad, but I didn't realize it gets worse as Bitcoin ages!
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  It doesn't really get worse over time. The amount of fragmentation is generally going to be proportional to the average transaction size. In general, expect transactions to have two outputs. The payment, and the extra. And since outputs become inputs, transactions will average about two inputs too. A few shavings might get orphaned here or there, but that doesn't have a huge effect on the operation of the rest of the coins.
  - konschubert 9y ago
    Ah, okay, I somehow thought that a transaction with multiple inputs creates at least the same number of outputs.
tvmalsv 9y ago
I'm not whom you responded to, but, thank you, I found that diagram very helpful.