Bitcoin Forum

Back in the day nobody ever referred to cryptocurrency as crypto. When did this term become so popular?

In early 2008, crypto or bitcoin began to appear in the community with an idea from an expert who called himself Sathosi Nakamoto with the intention of changing the method of payment digitally and not with trust..
taken and I learned after a long time not seeing the development of crypto at this time which was already in a very high value from the Indonesian media.
https://zipmex.co.id/learn/sejarah-cryptocurrency-lika-liku-aset-riptto/

I guess after Bitcoin reached its first ATH in 2017, some mainstream Media started referring to ALTs like XRP and ETH by the abbreviation of crypto. I started hearing crypto from that time, though I may be wrong this is my opinion.   

Plus it is easy to write crypto than cryptocurrency and also it is easy to pronounce.

Word "crypto" got lot of meanings. The first comes on my mind if I hear the word crypto without telling it is about cryptocurrency, is cryptography. Which most of cryptocurrency now are based on cryptography, especially Bitcoin.
For me, word of crypto started when after the Bitcoin created where altcoins era started up until now, around 2010 for me.

Facebook helped make crypto like its a household name. Anyone holding a tiny bit of BTC somehow made them feel like they are living #cryptolife with that hashtag while posting its price. Now that they know its not just Bitcoin that exist, there are a lot more like ETH they are now calling all crypto.

Right, I agree with you. Back in the year, 2017 when bitcoin reached $20k, that's when the time the word crypto abbreviation became popular. And I guess people tend to create a shortened form of the word because it's much easier to read and write.

The history of cryptocurrency often means a place to look for profit in it where after it was most popular, so many say crypto began in 2017 where there was a massive increase, now crypto has become the only digital asset in the online world, even this year bitcoin reached the top of the latest records in crypto history so continues to develop in various circles that is crypto

Questioning this situation made me think too. I am a newbie to the cryptocurrency world, but this topic caught my attention. We are in a revolutionary economic change. It had to be given a name. It's called 'Crypto' for short because 'Cryptocurrency' is a bit long and hard. This is my only explanation  ;D

The bullish trend that has ever made bitcoin worth 20k a few years ago have been starting to make the word of crypto become very popular. So many press have created the news about bitcoin and people started to know about bitcoin.
From that time people have been starting to move into the crypto and last year the world was facing a disaster when there's covid pandemic and that pushes people to go to the crypto to get money for their life.

I have come to the conclusion that the term "crypto" came about because people wanted to use a more attractive name than "altcoins." The maxi in me will continue calling all "cryptos" altcoins! I will call coins I respect by their actual name, but as a group they're always altcoins.

I really don't know how it started, when I got into investing in  BTC I already read users referring altcoins as cryptocurrency and sometimes shortened to "crypto".

When history is inserted to this topic, a group cypherpunks may  come up as they were the first group of people afaik who were talking with Hal Finney and Satoshi. The group are pretty much into cryptography.

There is a common use of abbreviations in almost all languages. The word crypto is one of those options, but it should be noted that the meaning has evolved over time and with the expansion of its use. Prior to the launch of the first cryptocurrency, the word crypto was essentially a symbol for cryptography. Later, after the emergence of Bitcoin, i.e. the use of cryptography to create a payment system as we know it today, the word Crypto became primarily a symbol for cryptocurrencies, i.e. currencies based on the principle of cryptography.

I do personally refer to cryptocurrency as it is, not crypto. Kind of irritated when I hear others refer to crypto as cryptocurrenices, but that is the way how the word got into the mainstream people, even in the terminology way the word is incorrect, people are getting used to the word crypto definitively.

If we try to take a look at Google Trends[1], we can see that the keyword crypto getting its attention in 2017. And if you see the related queries, people added up crypto as their search keyword when they searching up for something. That's may explain people write crypto because it shorter.

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2017-01-01%202018-12-31&q=crypto

IMO, I think the word crypto was first used in the early days of Bitcoin development, maybe in 2009-2010, approx, But it's not that popular yet, and the time elapsed it was also recognized after the Mt GOX hacking incident in 2014 and become more popular when it was reached the first All-time high in 2017 because it was shown in different media outlet globally. 

Hmm i don't know. I first "entered" the world of cryptocurrencies in the end of 2017 when i joined this forum and back in the day the term "crypto" was already used in a lot of cases and i personally also started using the word crypto right away, so i would not really agree that this term is new and only used since a few months or so. It is definitely around for a few years now and was probably also used way before 2017. I mean it kinda makes sense as "cryptocurrencies" is a pretty long and complicated word so to use a abbreviation for it saves a lot of time and also makes from a marketing point of view in my opinion.

After 2017, this is the year when the crypto industry first became known to the masses, who began to actively contribute money to this industry. In general, 2017 can be called the year of mass adopting cryptocurrencies, it was from this year that cryptocurrency began to be talked about even on the central TV channels of a number of countries. The word "crypto" has established itself as a colloquial term for the entire industry. I often hear something like that in conversations:

- What do you do?
- Crypto.

Altcoins isn't a bad word anyway and they didn't came up with a word like that for no reason but before they went there, it all started first with the word alternative coins. Any coins next to btc is alternative to btc or altcoins for short.

Calling all cryptos an altcoin/s can be wrong IMO, because bitcoin is included there and btc is the main coin (not an alternative) but I have no issue when you only say "coins" because a coin can either be an altcoin or a bitcoin. I agree with pakhit. It was in 2017 where the first massive ATH came in. This then makes cryptocurrency became popular. Being lazy is normal to humans. This makes them shortcut things especially when writing.