What is Wallet?
Software or hardware that manages keys, derives addresses, and constructs and signs transactions.
A wallet does not "contain" bitcoin. Coins exist as UTXOs on the chain; the wallet holds the keys that authorise spending them and tracks which outputs those keys control.
That distinction matters practically: restoring a seed phrase in different software recovers the same coins, because the coins were never in the app.
Losing the app does not lose the coins. Losing the seed phrase does.
Related terms
Seed phrase
Twelve or twenty-four words from which every key in a wallet is derived. Anyone with the words has the coins.
Keys & custodyHD wallet
A hierarchical deterministic wallet, where an unlimited tree of keys is derived from one seed.
How it worksUTXO
An unspent transaction output: a discrete chunk of bitcoin locked to a condition. Bitcoin has no account…
Keys & custodyHardware wallet
A dedicated device that stores private keys and signs transactions without exposing the keys to an…
This definition is part of the Bitcoin Logical glossary. For the fuller explanation, start with Learn, or see the live numbers on The Bitcoin Signal.