Altcoin - Digital currencies offered as an alternative to Bitcoin. Litecoin, Feathercoin, Dogecoin, and PPCoin are all alcoins
Andreessen Horowitz - A venture capital firm that has invested just under $50 million (as of January 2014) in Bitcoin related start-ups including Coinbase.
Bitcoin - A digital currency (or crypto-currency) launched in 2009 that is not backed or controlled by any central bank or government. Bitcoins are generated by a computer algorithm and can be traded anonymously among online users. It is currently the most valuable digital currency. See Bitcoin 101 for more information.
Bitcoin address (or public key) - A string of alphanumeric characters or scannable QR code used to receive and send transactions on the bitcoin network. The public key is hashed with another private key (also an alphanumeric string) to sign a digital communication. A different address is used for each Bitcoin transaction.
Bitcoin Foundation - A trade group that promotes Bitcoin. According to the Bitcoin Foundation website (http://bitcoinfoundation.org/), "Bitcoin Foundation standardizes, protects and promotes the use of Bitcoin cryptographic money for the benefit of users worldwide."
Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT) - A private, open-ended, trust that invests exclusively in Bitcoins. According to the website http://www.bitcointrust.co/, "It enables investors to gain exposure to the price movement of bitcoin without the challenges of buying, storing, and safekeeping bitcoins." It was created in 2013. Net assets in January 2014 totaled just shy of $60 million.
Bitcoin Mining- The process of doing difficult mathematical calculations for the Bitcoin network that confirm transactions and increase security in exchange for transaction fees and newly created bitcoins.
Bitpay- a leading Bitcoin payment service provider founded in 2011 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia
Block - a record in the block chain that contains and confirms transactions. New blocks are appended to the block chain through mining.
Block chain - a chronological public record of Bitcoin transactions
Blockchain.info - a popular Bitcoin wallet service
Coinbase - A company launched in 2012 that offers electronic wallet service for Bitcoin. It offers payment processing services for merchants as well as acting as an intermediary for purchasing Bitcoins from exchanges. Coinbase is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Among other clients, it currently processes Bitcoin payments for Overstock.com, the largest online retailer to accept Bitcoin (as of January 2014)
Dogecoin - A digital currency that features the Shiba Inu from the "Doge" Internet meme on its logo.
Dust transaction - A transaction for an extremely small number of bitcoins
Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) - The lightweight cryptographic algorithm used to sign transactions in the Bitcoin protocol
Faucet- Giving away free altcoins at launch in order to elevate interest in the currency
Genesis block - the very first block in the block chain
Hash- A sequence of letters and numbers created by a mathematical formula that represents the information in a Bitcoin block. The calculation of a hash uses data such as characters in the Bitcoin block as well as the hash for the previous block. Each hash is unique, and changing just one character in a Bitcoin block will change the hash. In addition to transaction data, a random piece of data called a nonce must also be used. Hashes are created by miners who are rewarded 25 Bitcoins for every successfully created hash. Hashes are usually written as hexadecimal.
Litecoin (LTC) - A digital currency first mined in 2011 that is currently the 2nd most valuable digital currency by market capitalization. It was intended by its developers to be an improvement on Bitcoin.
The Mastercoin Foundation - a non-profit organization of developers who, according to http://www.mastercoinfoundation.org/, "are committed to the development of a sophisticated and powerful layer on top of the bitcoin protocol which can greatly expand Bitcoin capabilities."
Mt.Gox - A Bitcoin exchange based in Tokyo, Japan
Namecoin - A digital currency which also acts as an alternative, decentralized DNS which has the potential to make internet censorship more difficult
Peercoin (also known as PPCoin or Peer-to-Peer Coin) - a digital currency created by the software developer Sunny King in August 2012
Private key- a secret piece of data that allows you to spend bitcoins from a wallet through a signature. Private keys are either stored on a computer (in a software wallet) or on remote servers (in a web wallet). Private keys should not be revealed as this may allow others to spend your bitcoins before you do.
Quarkcoin - A digital currency that claims to be faster, more secure, and easier to mine than other digital currencies.
Satoshi Nakamoto - The pseudonym of the developer (or group of developers?) that started Bitcoin. No one knows the real identity and Satoshi Nakamoto has since disappeared.
References:
http://bitcoin.org/en/
http://www.coindesk.com/
http://www.wikipedia.org/
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