What Does a Transaction Looks Like Day 9

Day 9

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Chapter 2

What does a transaction look like?

If Alice sends some bitcoins to Bob, that

transaction will have three pieces of

information:

An input. This is a record of which

bitcoin address was used to send the

bitcoins to Alice in the first place (she

received them from her friend, Eve).

An amount. This is the amount of

bitcoins that Alice is sending to Bob.

An output. This is Bob's bitcoin

address.

How is it sent

To send bitcoins, you need two things: a

bitcoin address and a private key. A

bitcoin address is generated randomly,

and is simply a sequence of letters and

numbers. The private key is another

sequence of letters and numbers, but

unlike your bitcoin address, this is kept

secret.

Think of your bitcoin address as a safe

deposit box with a glass front. Everyone

knows what is in it, but only the private

key can unlock it to take things out or put

things in.

When Alice wants to send bitcoins to

Bob, she uses her private key to sign a

message with the input (the source

transaction(s) of the coins), amount, and

output (Bob’s address).

She then sends them from her bitcoin

wallet out to the wider bitcoin network.

From there, bitcoin miners verify the

transaction, putting it into a transaction

block and eventually solving it.

Next Topic

Why must I sometimes wait for my

transaction to clear?