First published 28 October 2020. Trading had been open since October 2019. Expanded in October 2026 for the chain that replaced the old one, and for the later upgrades, so STX is not described as bitcoin. Stacks is a blockchain that posts its history to Bitcoin and does not change Bitcoin’s rules. STX is its fee coin. What is Bitcoin, in plain language? is the chain underneath. A balance of STX is not a balance of bitcoin.
The project began as Blockstack. Muneeb Ali announced the listings and, later, the new chain. A 2019 sale was filed as an SEC-qualified offering. A filing is not a description of what the token is in a later year. Trading on an exchange opened in late October 2019. That was the old network. Stacks 2.0 opened on 14 January 2021, at Bitcoin block 666,050. Exchanges paused deposits and withdrawals across the upgrade. STX on the far side of that pause is the coin this page is about. The ticker did not change. The chain did.
Miners spend bitcoin. Stackers lock STX
Miners compete by spending bitcoin. People who lock STX, which the network calls stacking, can receive a share of that bitcoin. The minimum, the cycle, and the rate are parameters. A pool that stacks for you holds the position. An exchange balance is an IOU, not a wallet. The lock is not a savings account. Staking is a lock and a queue, not a savings account. This page will not describe the miner’s bid, and it will not describe how to join a pool.
A late-2024 upgrade, instantiated at Bitcoin block 840,360, changed the block clock. Stacks blocks were no longer one per Bitcoin block. The project’s claim is that reversing a confirmed Stacks transaction is meant to be as hard as reversing Bitcoin. That is a claim about reorgs. It is not a receipt that a payment you accepted is final, and it did not turn STX into bitcoin.
In December 2024 the project opened deposits for sBTC, a token on Stacks that aims at one bitcoin. The opening cap was 1,000 BTC, and the opening signer set was 15. A withdrawal back to bitcoin was described as a later phase of that system. sBTC is not bitcoin. A signer set is not the Bitcoin network. A bridge is extra software, not a tunnel.
A Stacks address starts with SP. A Bitcoin address will not receive STX, and an SP address will not receive bitcoin. The wrong network is still the wrong city. Contracts are written in a language called Clarity. This page will not walk through one. Nothing here is an instruction to stack, to mint sBTC, or to buy STX.
