UTXO
UTXO — Unspent Transaction Output — is Bitcoin's accounting model: your "balance" is really a pile of unspent outputs from past transactions, and spending
UTXO — Unspent Transaction Output — is Bitcoin’s accounting model: your “balance” is really a pile of unspent outputs from past transactions, and spending means consuming some UTXOs and creating new ones (with change back to you). No accounts, just a graph of spendable chunks.
Why it matters
The UTXO model is why Bitcoin is simple to verify and hard to censor — every coin’s history is traceable, and validation is stateless math. It’s also why Bitcoin wallets manage “coin selection” behind the scenes, and why privacy tools like CoinJoin work by mixing UTXOs. Ethereum chose accounts instead; the trade-off shapes everything built on each.
Related terms
bitcoin · transaction ·
wallet