user15800: Simply: who are Alice and Bob, and why are they mentioned in every Bitcoin-related article I read about that talks about Bitcoin transactions?
What is the history or mystery of these two?

user5406: Alice and Bob are placeholder characters corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. They are used especially in computer science to describe use-cases or scenarios. The scheme is used because it's more convenient to say "Alice sends money to Bob" than to say "Party A sends money to Party B". As each name has a different initial, diagrams can fall back to single letter labeling.
It's a well-known meme:

via xkcd.com
The list usually goes something like this: Alice, Bob, Charlie, Dave, Erin, Frank,…
Other names are used to represent attacker types or other recurring roles:

Carole, the oracle
Eve, the eavesdropper
Mallory, the man-in-the-middle attacker with malicious intent
Sybil, the attacker with lots of identities
Trent, the trusted entity


user15695: Fictional characters. Cryptography (and other) books use names like that often.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob

15800: <p>Simply: who are Alice and Bob, and why are they mentioned in every Bitcoin-related article I read about that talks about Bitcoin transactions?</p>
<p>What is the history or mystery of these two?</p>
 5406: <p>Alice and Bob are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob" rel="nofollow noreferrer">placeholder characters</a> corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. They are used especially in computer science to describe use-cases or scenarios. The scheme is used because it's more convenient to say <em>&quot;Alice sends money to Bob&quot;</em> than to say <em>&quot;Party A sends money to Party B&quot;</em>. As each name has a different initial, diagrams can fall back to single letter labeling.</p>
<p>It's a well-known meme:</p>
<p><a href="https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/protocol.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/protocol.png" alt="Obligatory XKCD" /></a><br />
<sup>via <a href="https://xkcd.com/1323/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">xkcd.com</a></sup></p>
<p>The list usually goes something like this: <strong>A</strong>lice, <strong>B</strong>ob, <strong>C</strong>harlie, <strong>D</strong>ave, <strong>E</strong>rin, <strong>F</strong>rank,…</p>
<p>Other names are used to represent attacker types or other recurring roles:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>C</strong>arole, the oracle</li>
<li><strong>E</strong>ve, the eavesdropper</li>
<li><strong>M</strong>allory, the man-in-the-middle attacker with <strong>mal</strong>icious intent</li>
<li><strong>S</strong>ybil, the attacker with lots of identities</li>
<li><strong>T</strong>rent, the <strong>tr</strong>usted <strong>ent</strong>ity</li>
</ul>
 15695: <p>Fictional characters. Cryptography (and other) books use names like that often.</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob</a></p>
