Glossary

BIP 39 (Mnemonic Phrases)

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BIP 39 is the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal which introduced the standard of mnemonic phrases. Mnemonic phrases offer a standardized method for converting a seed into a series of 12-24 words. Thus, a mnemonic phrase is all that is needed to recover all private keys of a wallet.

While BIP 39’s standard has been adopted by almost all popular Bitcoin wallets, it was never implemented into Bitcoin Core, and does have a few engineering drawbacks. However, there are no known security weaknesses to mnemonic phrases, and they serve as a convenient way to backup Bitcoin wallets.

Related Terms
Seed
A seed is a piece of data which can be used to generate all of the public and private keys in a wallet. It is often represented as a Mnemonic Phrase.
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BIP 32 (Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets)
BIP 32 is the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal which introduced the standard of Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallets and extended keys to Bitcoin.
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Extended Public Key (Xpub)
An extended public key, or xpub, is a public key which can be used to derive child public keys as part of a hierarchical deterministic wallet.
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Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) Wallet
A Hierarchical Deterministic Wallet is the term used to describe a wallet which uses a seed to derive many public and private keys. These keys are generated in a deterministic way, and are used to send and receive bitcoin.
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