Original Bitcoin Laboratory · a compass, not a verdict

Is it a Bitcoin?

No single definition of “Bitcoin” is universal — the word points at seven different kinds of thing (a design, a client, a network, a ledger, a unit, a lineage…). So this doesn't hand back a yes/no. You state a few artifact‑grounded facts about your object; it maps them onto each sense and reasons out where your object qualifies, and where the answer is convention, not fact. Grounded only in the whitepaper and the v0.1.0 source.

Your object

or load an example

Why five questions, not one. “BTC vs BSV” is a disagreement about the network/ledger sense; a regulation's “Bitcoin” is usually the asset on an unspecified network. Splitting the senses turns “you're wrong about what Bitcoin is” into the tractable “we mean the same root, a different branch.”

What's fact, what's convention. Fact (needs no convention): the design (the whitepaper predicate) and the origin artifacts — the hash‑verified v0.1.0 source and genesis 000000000019d668…. Convention: which live network deserves the bare word, which codebase defines “the” unit, and therefore the bitcoin↔satoshi ratio itself. This tool never smuggles the second in as the first.

grounded: whitepaper + v0.1.0 [S]you supply the facts; it maps the sensesnot money · no chain privileged