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Glossary

BIP 39 (Mnemonic Phrases)

1 min read

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.
Learn more.
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.
Learn more.
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.
Learn more.
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.
Learn more.
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