Bitcoin Terms Beginning with D
Dandelion is a proposed transaction relay protocol which would upgrade Bitcoin’s current method for relaying transactions across the peer-to-peer network. The goal of Dandelion is to eliminate certain deanonymization attacks which are currently possible against the network.
Debasement is the deliberate reduction in the value of a money. For commodity money, debasement is usually achieved via a reduction in the gold or silver content of a coin. For digital or paper money, debasement can be achieved simply by creating more digital or paper money.
Debt is a financial obligation from one party to another. The debt obligation of a company is a major factor in the overall solvency of a company.
A decentralized exchange or DEX is meant to facilitate the exchange of bitcoin without forcing users to sacrifice privacy or custody to an exchange.
A decentralized ledger is a record of all transactions on a network. This ledger is maintained and updated by many independent nodes. Bitcoin uses a blockchain and Proof-of-Work to organize the network and maintain its decentralized ledger.
Deflation is a general decrease in the price of goods and services in an economy over time. This results in higher purchasing power for the relevant currency.
Delta is a ratio that compares the change in the price of an asset to the change in the price of its derivative. Delta is often used in hedging strategies and is also referred to as a hedge ratio.
A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is a type of digital attack on a system or individual which attempts to remove the victim from a network and make them unavailable to their peers. DoS attacks typically spam the victim and exhaust their resources.
A depth chart is the graph of all the pending orders for a particular asset. Depth charts help traders understand market activity.
The Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER) format is a defined standard which Bitcoin uses to encode ECDSA signatures. A typical Bitcoin signature is 71 bytes long, as a one byte sighash flag is appended to the DER signature.
A derivation path is a piece of data which tells a Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet how to derive a specific key within a tree of keys. Derivation paths are used as a Bitcoin standard and were introduced with HD wallets as a part of BIP 32.
A derivative is a contract that derives its value from the value of the underlying asset. Derivatives allow investors to gain price exposure to an asset without owning it directly.
Devaluation is the intentional downward adjustment of the value of a country's money. Governments that have a fixed or semi-fixed exchange rate use this monetary policy tool.
The difficulty is a measure of how hard it is to produce a Proof-of-Work, required to publish a block to the blockchain. Bitcoin's difficulty updates periodically so that Bitcoin blocks arrive every 10 minutes, probabilistically.
Discounting is the process of determining the present value of a payment received in the future; discounting is based on the time value of money, which asserts that money received now is preferable to money received later because of earnings potential.
A Discreet Log Contract (DLC) is a form of Bitcoin transaction which uses an oracle to execute a smart contract. Essentially, DLCs allow parties to place bets using the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Discrete Log Problem (DLP) describes the fact that there is currently no known method for calculating point division on an elliptic curve. This unique property gives elliptic curve cryptography and Bitcoin security.
Diversification is an investment strategy that aims to minimize the overall risk of a portfolio. This is achieved by allocating a portfolio to several different assets that are not highly correlated.
A dividend is a payout by a company to its shareholders. This payout is proportional to each shareholders stake in the company.
Currency must be divisible into different denominations to account for transactions of different values, without suffering any loss of the currency value.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a law first enacted in the United States in 2010. It proposed new rules for public companies following the 2008 financial crisis.
Dollar-cost averaging is an investment strategy where an investor purchases an asset over several trades which are spaced across time. The purchases are generally evenly spaced and deploy a constant amount of dollars.
A double spend occurs when someone is able to spend the same money twice, fooling one or both parties into believing they have been paid. Bitcoin solves the double spend problem through the use of a decentralized ledger and a timestamped blockchain.
Durability is a property of money, in which the currency can maintain its original state overtime and withstand repeated use. A durable currency must be able to survive potential damage.
If a piece of bitcoin, a UTXO, is small enough, it may cost more in fees to spend it than it is worth. What constitutes dust is determined by the size of the UTXO and the current fee market.
Occasionally, attackers will send tiny fractions of bitcoin (around 500 sats) to random wallets. This is done in order to breach the privacy of those users and drive up the fees they pay.