What are the Bitcoin Transaction types?

There are six standard Bitcoin transaction types at the time of writing. The developers behind Bitcoin have been continuously evolving the types of transactions to allow more functionality – the present list may change in the future. There are five standard transactions which are accepted by the standard client – although some miners will accept a non standard transaction for a price.

The most popular type of transaction is the TX_PUBKEY, or pay to public key transaction – with over 99% of total transaction volume as of 2014.

The % share of this is expected to change as the Bitcoin community introduces wallets and other ancillary services that use the functionality of different transaction types. 

The problem with more complex transaction times is that they occupy more space in the blockchain which leads to issues with the blocksize. A topic that has come to the fore in 2015 as developers and economists try to find a balance between immediacy of transaction confirmation and miners wanting to restrict supply of space.

For further examples on how a transaction is validated by a node check out our guide on each transaction type and the most common transaction type of Pay-to-Address.

This website is only provided for your general information and is not intended to be relied upon by you in making any investment decisions. You should always combine multiple sources of information and analysis before making an investment and seek independent expert financial advice.

Where we list or describe different products and services, we try to give you the information you need to help you compare them and choose the right product or service for you. We may also have tips and more information to help you compare providers.

Some providers pay us for advertisements or promotions on our website or in emails we may send you. Any commercial agreement we have in place with a provider does not affect how we describe them or their products and services. Sponsored companies are clearly labelled.