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UTXO – Unspent Transaction Output

An unspent transaction output (UTXO) is a chunk of bitcoin that was received in a previous transaction but has not yet been spent. An UTXO can serve as an input of a new Bitcoin transaction. Only an owner of the private key corresponding to the bitcoin address, which controls the UTXO, can spend the UTXO in a new transaction. For that reason, the complete collection of all UTXOs at any given time, known as the UTXO set, fully represents the current global state of bitcoin ownership.

Related Intelligence

This term is explored in depth in SBI-002.

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