CBP Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield CBP facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. Under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), which type of business dealing in Bitcoin is typically classified as a Money Services Business (MSB)? → A Bitcoin exchange that accepts fiat currency
2. When a user restores a Bitcoin wallet using a 12-word mnemonic seed phrase, what is being recovered? → The master private key, from which all other keys and addresses are derived.
3. What is the expected number of leading zeros in a Bitcoin block hash at high difficulty? → A variable number determined by the current target
4. What does the acronym 'PPLNS' stand for in mining pool payout schemes? → Pay Per Last N Shares
5. Which global standard-setting body issues recommendations on virtual asset regulation that many countries adopt? → Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
6. Approximately how many bitcoin will ever be created in total? → 21 million
7. Which legal doctrine allows U.S. courts to assert jurisdiction over overseas Bitcoin businesses that serve U.S. customers? → Effects doctrine (or 'minimum contacts' standard)
8. What does it mean for a Bitcoin transaction to be 'in the mempool'? → The transaction has been broadcast to the network but not yet included in a block
9. Which of the following is a key difference between a hot wallet and a cold wallet? → Hot wallets are internet-connected, while cold wallets are offline
10. What is a UTXO in Bitcoin? → Unspent Transaction Output
11. In Bitcoin's Script language, what does OP_CHECKSIG verify? → That a given signature is valid for the provided public key and transaction hash
12. What is the role of Bitcoin Core in the Bitcoin ecosystem? → The reference implementation of the Bitcoin protocol maintained by open-source developers
13. What is the purpose of a BIP-39 passphrase (sometimes called the '25th word')? → To add an additional layer of security that creates a completely different wallet
14. What does SegWit (Segregated Witness) separate from Bitcoin transactions? → The witness data (signatures) from the transaction data
15. What security property does a m-of-n multisignature wallet provide? → It requires m signatures from n possible keyholders to authorize a transaction
16. What role do private keys play in Bitcoin transactions? → To sign transactions and prove ownership of Bitcoin
17. What is the risk of generating Bitcoin private keys using a weak random number generator? → Keys become predictable and funds can be stolen
18. Which of the following represents the first confirmation of a Bitcoin transaction? → When the transaction is included in a valid block that is added to the blockchain.
19. What use case does the Lightning Network enable that is impractical on-chain? → Micropayments of fractions of a cent
20. What is 'hash rate' a measure of in Bitcoin mining? → The number of SHA-256 hash computations a miner performs per second
21. What does 'flag day' activation mean in the context of Bitcoin forks? → A pre-specified block height or date after which nodes enforce new rules unconditionally
22. Why is Bitcoin address reuse harmful to privacy? → It links multiple transactions to the same entity, enabling transaction graph analysis
23. Which of the following best describes an orphan block in Bitcoin? → A valid block whose parent block is not yet known to the receiving node
24. What does 'settlement finality' mean in Bitcoin commerce? → The point at which a transaction is considered irreversible and fully settled
25. What information is stored in the coinbase transaction of a Bitcoin block? → The block reward plus fees, and an arbitrary data field (up to 100 bytes)
26. What happens to the Bitcoin block subsidy approximately every 210,000 blocks? → It is cut in half
27. What is a 'finney attack' in Bitcoin? → A pre-mined block used to double-spend against a merchant before broadcast
28. A wallet exported as a WIF (Wallet Import Format) string starting with '5' indicates what? → An uncompressed private key on mainnet
29. What is required to open a Lightning Network payment channel? → An on-chain Bitcoin transaction to fund the channel
30. Bitcoin Cash implemented which mechanism to adjust mining difficulty more rapidly after its fork from Bitcoin? → An Emergency Difficulty Adjustment (EDA) to cope with fluctuating hash rate