What is a ledger?

A ledger is a record of transactions, historically in the form of a large book for merchants to log their purchases and sales. Today ledgers are typically computer files that log all of a business’s transactions so accountants can calculate profits, losses and tax liabilities for a business.

In the context of Bitcoin, blockchain and DLT (decentralised ledger technology), a digital ledger is a public record of transactions that are recorded on the blockchain. Bitcoin’s ledger is publicly available to everyone to make transactions transparent and open. To add a new transaction means adding to a chain of the transactions that have come before, hence the name blockchain.