A
Address- Cryptocurrency addresses are used to send or receive transactions on the network. An address usually presents itself as a string of alphanumeric characters.
ASIC- A short form for ‘Application Specific Integrated Circuit’. Often compared to GPUs, ASICs are specially made for mining and may offer significant power savings.
Altcoins- Alternative cryptocurrencies to Bitcoin. Examples: Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin etc.
ATH- A short form for “All-Time High”. Therefore it means the highest historical price of a specific coin.
Angel Investor – A wealthy individual who provides startup businesses with capital in exchange for debt or equity in the business.
Arbitrage – The generation of risk-free profits by trading between markets which have different prices for the same asset.
ASIC Miners – this is the hardware which houses the ASIC silicon chip. Connected to the internet.
Airdrop – A method of distributing cryptocurrency amongst a population, first attempted with Auroracoin in early 2014.
AML– Anti-Money Laundering laws are a series of regulations designed to prevent money being converted from criminal activity to what appear to be legitimate assets.
B
Bag Holder- A term to refer to a trader who bought in at a high and missed his opportunity to sell, leaving him with worthless coins.
Borrowing Rate- When you open a leveraged position, you will be borrowing coins at a pre-determined rate. This rate will be added to reflect your position’s overall profit and loss.
BUY|SELL Wall- A wall as seen in the depth chart of exchanges is an amalgamation of limit orders of the same price target.
BTFD- “Buy The Fucking Dip” – When people are running around and selling because of fear, this is the time to buy.
Bitcoin– Digital money which is based on cryptography, invented by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Blockchain– a distributed and peer to peer digital ledger.
Block Reward – this is the cryptocurrency reward that miners receive for successfully hashing a transaction block.
BTC – the symbol for bitcoin
Block Explorer- Block explorer is an online tool to view all transactions, past and current, on the blockchain. They provide useful information such as network hash rate and transaction growth.
Block Height- The number of blocks connected on the blockchain.
Bearish– A prediction that the price of a coin will decrease.
Bullish– A prediction that the price of a coin will increase.
Bear market– A market that is in a downtrend (prices are going down) The term relates to the direction that a bear attacks. (Bears attack by swiping downwards with their claws.)
Bit – A unit of information expressed as either a 0 or 1 in binary notation. Bit is also used regarding Bitcoin as a common unit used to designate a sub-unit of a bitcoin – 1,000,000 bits is equal to 1 bitcoin. This unit is more convenient for pricing tips, goods and services.
Bitcoin Protocol– The open source, a cryptographic protocol which operates on the Bitcoin network, setting the “rules” for how the network runs.
Bitcoin Network– The decentralised, peer-to-peer network which maintains the blockchain. This is what processes all Bitcoin transactions.
BIP- Bitcoin Improvement Proposals, a document providing information and features about Bitcoin.
BITCOIN ATM: cash point from bitcoin into fiat.
C
Coinbase– world’s most popular and reliable cryptocurrency web wallet.
Cold Storage– secure way of keeping cryptocurrencies off-exchange.
Cryptocurrency– generic term for digital and cryptography based money.
Central Ledger- A ledger maintained by a central agency.
Confirmation- The successful act of hashing a transaction and adding it to the blockchain.
Consensus- The consensus is achieved when all participants of the network agree on the validity of the transactions, ensuring that the ledgers are exact copies of each other.
Cryptography– The process of using codes and cyphers to encrypt and decrypt sensitive information, messages or data.
D
DAO– now de-listed, the distributed autonomous organisation set the record in May 2016 for the largest crowdfunding in history.
Dapp- A decentralised application (Dapp) is an application that is open source, operates autonomously, has its data stored on a blockchain, incentivised in the form of cryptographic tokens and operates on a protocol that shows proof of value.
DCA- Dollar Cost Averaging. Used to reduce the volatility of market portfolios by spreading out buys and sells over a more extended period.
Deflation – A decrease in the general price level of goods in an economy. Traditionally this has taken place when a currency’s demand collapses, however it is a natural property of bitcoin.
Demurrage– Certain currencies penalise users for hoarding, this is done via demurrage, where a fee is charged for holding unspent coins. This fee increases as time passes.
Desktop Wallet– A wallet that stores the private keys on your computer, which allow the spending and management of your bitcoins.
Deterministic Wallet– A wallet based on a system of deriving multiple keys from a single starting point known as a seed. This seed is all that is needed to restore a wallet if it is lost and can allow the creation of public addresses without the knowledge of the private key.
Difficulty– A measure of the amount of computing power required to solve the hash of a block. This is what increases to counteract increasing network hashrate in order to maintain a 10 minute confirmation time; re-adjusts every 2016 blocks.
Double Spending– The act of spending the same bitcoins twice. The blockchain plus bitcoin mining exist to confirm all transactions and to prevent such fraud.
Dust Transactions– Transactions so small that they are considered “spam” by the network. They are not relayed to stop people accidentally or deliberately clogging the blockchain.
DDoS– Abbreviation for Distributed Denial of Service. A DDoS is a cyber attack utilizing many different computers to tie up the resources of a website or web service. Some Bitcoin exchanges have come under DDoS attacks.
DOUBLE SPENDING- Spend the digital token more than once.
E
Exchange– where fiat money can be exchanged for bitcoin or altcoins.
EVM- The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is a Turing complete virtual machine that allows anyone to execute arbitrary EVM Byte Code. Every Ethereum node runs on the EVM to maintain consensus across the blockchain.
Escrow – The practice of having a third party act as an intermediary in a transaction. This third party holds the funds on and sends them off when the transaction is completed.
ETF – Acronym for “Exchange Traded Fund”. These are investment funds traded on stock markets that track the price index of an underlying asset.
Exchange – A central platform for exchanging different forms of cryptocurrencies and. Typically, bitcoin exchanges are used to exchange cryptocurrency for traditional monetary units.
EW- Elliot Wave. A pattern that the price movement of assets tends to make. Used in technical analysis.
F
Fill or Kill- A limit order that will not execute unless an opposite order exceeds this limit order’s amount
FUD- A short form of ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt’. Usually used in the form of “xxx spreading FUD again.
FOMO- A short form for ‘fear of missing out’. The feeling when you see a huge green dildo on a chart and you don’t own that coin, so you sell other shit to buy into it freaking out. As crypto trading is still very much driven by emotions rather than valuation, FOMO is a huge factor to consider when swing trading in crypto.
Faucet– a reward system on a website that dispenses bitcoin in the form of a Satoshi (a hundred millionth of a bitcoin)
Fiat– the name for bank-issued money, derived from the Latin ‘let it be’.
Flippening– the name given for the event where a cryptocurrency who surpasses bitcoin in market capitalisation (yet to happen at the time of writing).
Forging– the name giving to the process in proof of stake blockchains where there is no block reward. Forgers keep transaction fees instead.
Fork– what happens when a blockchain diverges into two potential paths forward.
FOMO- FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out, and it is a common sight in a rising market. As the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to rise, more and more newcomers enter the market. This feeling of FOMO can cause the demand to rise even higher.
FUD- FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, and it too is a common sight in the cryptocurrency market. There is always fear that newcomers will get into the market at the highs and that the price will plummet once they are invested. Uncertainty and doubt are also commonplace in volatile markets, and new investors should be prepared for this.
Faucet – A website which gives away free bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies to any IP address that connects to them.
G
Genesis Block– the first block to be mined in a blockchain.
Gas- The Ethereum network requires one to pay “gas” to send a transaction or otherwise execute a smart contract. Gas can be paid in ether (but it is calculated in GWEI, where a GWEI is 1/1000000000th of an Ether.
H
Halving– the rate at which the block reward creates new bitcoin, halving every four years.
Hard Fork– new blockchain software that is non-backwards compatible, causing a chain split.
Hard Wallet– a device which allows cold storage of coins, for increased security.
Hash– the name for an algorithm which takes an arbitrary sized data set and converts it to a fixed length and composition. Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm (converting to 256-bit data sets).
Hash Rate– the number of hashes a miner can perform in a period of time.
HODL– the word itself comes from a member in this community who tells on how a bad trader is he.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0 HOT WALLET- a wallet with an active connection to the internet.
I
Initial Coin Offerings– cryptocurrency often (but not always) built on Ethereum which raise money on the basis of an idea.
Inflation– An increase in the general price level of goods in an economy.
Inputs– This is a reference to an output of a previous transaction. Inputs to an address are added up, and this amount determines the amount a wallet can spend in outputs.
IPFS- InterPlanetary File System
IRREVERSIBLE-When your transaction confirmed, it becomes IRREVERSIBLE.
K
KYC– Acronym for “Know Your Customer”, used to describe a series of laws and regulations which require businesses to know the identity of their customers.
L
Lending Rate- Some exchanges have lending accounts. You may deposit your coins into these lending accounts to lend your coins for others to execute their leveraged trades. The lending rate fluctuates throughout the day based on the demand for shorting the coin.
Limit Order- An order placed at a future price that will execute when the price target is hit.
Long- A position that a trader takes. To take a long position on something is to believe its value will rise in the future.
Lightening Network– builds on networks like bitcoin and litecoin to allow off-chain settlements.
Laundry– Also known as a “mixing service”, they combine funds from various users and redistribute them, making tracing the bitcoins back to their original source very difficult by mixing their “taint”.
Leverage– Often used to describe trading with borrowed capital (margin) in order to increase the potential return of an investment. Trading with “borrowed” bitcoins/money.
Liquidity– The availability of an asset to be bought and sold easily, without affecting its market price.
Liquidity Swap– As a financial instrument on cryptocurrency exchanges, liquidity swaps are contracts where investors offer loans to others to trade with in exchange for a set return.
Liquidity– The market’s ability to buy and/or sell an asset combined with the extent to which pricing remains relatively stable and consistent between transactions.
Lambo- A status symbol goal post or meme. It is a reference to a Lamborghini that invokes this mashup of a lamb and Rambo. Somehow everyone’s cognitive dissonance kicks in, and there is this assumption that everyone who owns any amount of any tokens will somehow be driving a Lamborghini within the next 6 months. While it isn’t impossible, the only real bit of insanity here is trading in your coins for a physical object like a car
LIGHT NODE- (SPV) mode
MASF- Miner Activated Soft Fork.
M
Margin Trading- A term for ‘trading with leverage’. In this instance of trading, you borrow one side of the trading pair at an agreed loan rate and sell it for the other side of the trading pair. Depending on the direction you believe the market to move, you may place a long or a short bet on the trading pair of concern.
Market Cap- A stock’s market cap refers to the market value of the company’s outstanding shares.
In the cryptocurrency market, the market cap is used to illustrate a coin’s dominance in the entire cryptocurrency market.
Moon- Extreme bullish movement of a coin.
Market Capitalisation– the value of cryptocurrency as determined by price (x) circulating supply of coins.
Maximalist– another crypto slang term for a bitcoin believer who is sceptical of altcoins.
Mining– the process used to create coins or tokens and verify transactions on a proof of work blockchain
Multi-Signature- Multi-signature addresses provide an added layer of security by requiring more than one key to authorize a transaction.
Market Order– A buy or sell order which gets executed at whatever the market price is at the time.
Merged Mining– This allows a miner to work on multiple blockchains simultaneously, contributing to the hash rate (and thus security) of both currencies being mined. E.g. Namecoin has implemented merged mining with Bitcoin.
Micro-transaction– A financial transaction involving small to tiny sums of money. Traditionally amounts under a dollar have been impractical due to transaction fees, however, cryptocurrencies have potential to change this.
MBTC– A bitcoin metric of 1 thousandth of a bitcoin (0.001 BTC).
Minting– The process of rewarding users in proof of stake coins. New coins are minted as the reward for verifying transactions in a block.
Mixing Service– See “laundry”
Mobile Wallet– A wallet which runs a “mobile client”, allowing people to have bitcoin wallets on their phones and tablet computers and pay on the go.
Money Laundering– The act of trying to “clean” money earned from criminal activity by converting these profits to what appear to be legitimate assets.
Mt. Gox– A bitcoin exchange based in Japan that collapsed in February 2014 due to poor security practices and incompetent management. Managed by Mark Karpeles.
N
Namecoin– An altcoin which implemented a distributed DNS (domain name system) amongst other features. This distributed DNS helps people using the .bit domain to resist internet censorship. Can also be used to refer to the unit of currency NMC.
Network Effect– The increthe ase in value of a good or service that occurs when its use becomes more widespread.
NFC– Acronym for “Near Field Communication”, a low power, short range method of wireless communication. This can be used to build upon RFID systems and is what contactless smart cards (oyster cards) and payment systems (paypass) use. Most recently implemented in the Apple Pay app.
Node– A computer that connects to a cryptocurrency network and helps to verify the Blockchain’s accuracy.
Nonce– A random number used once when a miner attempts to hash a transaction block. The parameters of these numbers are set by the “difficulty”.
O
OCD– Obsessive Cryptocurrency Disorder. Suffered by those who can’t stop monitoring the value of their coins.
Oracles- Oracles work as a bridge between the real world and the blockchain by providing data to the smart contracts.
Off Blockchain Transactions– Exchanges of value which occur off the blockchain between trusted parties. These occur because they are quicker and do not bloat the blockchain.
Orphaned Block– A valid block which is discarded by the network after the blockchain has “forked” and then re-achieved consensus on a single blockchain again. This usually happens after two miners simultaneously solve a block, temporarily resulting in two valid blocks in the blockchain.
Open Source– The practice of sharing the source code for a piece of computer software, allowing it to be distributed and altered by anyone.
OTC exchange– Stands for “Over the Counter”. These exchanges are places where trading is done directly between the two parties involved in the transaction, allowing traders to escape some of the limitations set by trading on formalised exchanges.
Output– The part of the transaction which contains instructions for the sending of bitcoin.
P
Pump and Dump- The recurring cycle of an Altcoin getting a spike in price followed by a huge crash. Such movements are often attributed to low volume, hence the ‘pump’. Traders who pump, buying huge volumes, may wish to invoke FOMO from the uninformed investors and then dump, or sell, their coins at a higher price.
Paper Wallet– a form of cold storage. These are public and private keys held on a piece of paper. A good designer can make them look like branded bank notes.
Poloniex– popular cryptocurrency exchange.
Private Key– a secret number that allows bitcoins to be spent.
Proof of Work– this is difficult and costly to produce, but easy to verify by others. The mechanism used in the bitcoin blockchain.
Proof of Stake– a blockchain where there is no block reward or mining, as the creator is determined depending on stake (see forging). Less energy intensive than proof of work.
Public Key-usually represented as a bitcoin address, this is the information needed to receive bitcoin.
Peer to Peer- Peer to Peer (P2P) refers to the decentralized interactions between two parties or more in a highly-interconnected network. Participants of a P2P network deal directly with each other through a single mediation point.
Pre-mining– The mining of a cryptocurrency by its developers before it is released to the public. This can be done with good intentions, however it is also strongly associated with scamcoins.
Price Bubble– An economic cycle in which the price of a security or asset will surge unsustainably, and then crash as a selloff occurs. This is usually caused by speculation, and has been observable in bitcoin’s past prices. When done deliberately, this is known as a “Pump and Dump”
PSP– Payment Service Provider. PSPs act as bitcoin agents for merchants that accept online payments.
Q
Quantitative easing– A form of monetary policy where a Central Bank purchases government securities with cash which did not exist before, in order to increase the money supply and lower interest rates.
QR code– Acronym for “Quick Response” code, these are 2d barcodes which can have data encoded onto them.
R
Ripple– a pre-mined token used by banks for settlement, created and distributed by Ripple Labs.
ROI- A return on investment. What you would ideally like to happen.
RSI- The relative strength index (RSI) is a momentum indicator that compares the magnitude of recent gains and losses over a specified period to measure speed and change of price movements. It is smart to enter a coin when it has a low RSI.
S
Satoshi Nakamoto– the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin.
Scrypt– the hashing algorithm used by Litecoin.
Segregated Witness– is a proposed scaling solution for bitcoin involving a soft fork.
SHA-256– the algorithm used for bitcoin hash creation (bitcoin’s proof of work).
Silk Road– the first modern dark net market, achieved notoriety. Subsequently shut down by the FBI who then auctioned confiscated bitcoins.
Smart contracts– applications that run as programmed, without external influence.
Soft Fork– new software that is backwards compatible, so the blockchain doesn’t split.
Solidity– the programming language used by Ethereum.
Shorting- Cryptocurrency can be shorted in much the same way that stocks are. When a trader or investor goes short on a cryptocurrency, he or she hopes to profit from a price decrease. Shorting can be risky since a rising price could produce a huge loss.
Satoshi– The smallest unit of a bitcoin currently available (0.00000001BTC).
Satoshi Nakamoto– The mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Known to possess over a million bitcoins, his/her/their/its identity is still unknown.
Scamcoin- Coins created as get rich quick schemes by their developers. These coins usually have certain properties, such as being clones of an existing coin and being pre-mined.
Scrypt– An alternative Proof of Work scheme to SHA256. This mining algorithm is used by Litecoin, Dogecoin and many other cryptocurrencies. Originally touted as being “ASIC resistant” due to its heavier memory requirements, ASICs have now been released for mining Scrypt.
Seed- The private key used in a “deterministic wallet”
Self-executing contract– Also known as “smart contracts” these are protocols that facilitate or enforce the obligations of a contract without the need for human intervention.
Segwit (Segregated Witness)– an improvement to the core way Bitcoin handles transactions in order to make the Bitcoin network approve more transactions with each block.
Sidechain– These are theroetical, independent blockchains which are “two way pegged” to the Bitcoin blockchain. These can have their own unique features and can have bitcoins sent to and from them.
Signature- Is the mathematical operation that lets someone prove their sole ownership over their wallet, coin, data or on. An example is how a Bitcoin wallet may have a public address, but only a private key can verify with the whole network that a signature matches and a transaction is valid. These are only known to the owner and are basically mathematically impossible to uncover.
Silk Road– The online marketplace where drugs and other illicit items could be traded for Bitcoin. Accessible through “TOR”, Silk Road was shut down in October 2013 by the FBI.
Smart Contract– A two way smart contract is an unalterable agreement stored on the blockchain that has specific logic operations akin to a real world contract. Once signed, it can never be altered. A smart contract can be used to define certain computational benchmarks or barriers that have to be met in turn for money or data to be deposited or even be used to verify things such as land rights.
Speculator– An individual who speculates on the price of bitcoin or any other form of asset. Aiming to make profits by buying and selling at different prices.
SPV– Acronym for “Simplified Payment Verification”, this allows mobile clients to make payments without needing a copy of the entire blockchain.
Stale Block– A block that has already been solved and thus cannot offer miners any reward for further work on it.
T
Taint– A measure of correlation between two addresses, this is used in attempts to track a coin’s history.
TCP/IP– Acronyms stand for “Transmission Control Protocol”/“Internet Protocol” and is the connection protocol used by the internet.
Testnet– An alternative blockchain on which developers can test and experiment with changes to a cryptocurrency without the risk of damaging or interfering with the real blockchain.
Timestamp– A proof that a piece of data existed at a certain point in time. For Bitcoin this is the cryptographic proof of when transactions have taken place.
TOR– Stands for “The Onion Router” and is a free web browser designed to protect users anonymity and resist censorship. Allowing them to surf the web anonymously and access sites on the “deepweb”.
Total Coin Supply– For many cryptocurrencies, there is a limit on the total number of coins that will ever come into existence, bitcoin’s total supply is capped at 21 million coins.
Transaction Block– A group of transactions that are collected and hashed on the Bitcoin network by being added to the blockchain.
Transaction Fee– An amount of money users can choose to deduct from their transaction when sending money. This is optional and used to give miners incentive to quickly process their transaction, since they receive the fee as a reward for doing so.
Tokenization- If you just sent unencrypted data across the internet it would not be secure. So instead of doing that information is tokenized. It is encrypted and turned into a string of data. That string can then be sent and stored. Data sent between wallets and stored on the blockchain is tokenized. This is why the term cryptocurrency tokens are used.
TX- A transaction number. This allows you to track a transaction. If you are freaking out because your transaction is taking too long, you probably just have to wait longer. Try tracking the TX.
V
Volatility- Volatility is a measure of the price movement of an investment over time. The cryptocurrency markets are well known for their high levels of volatility.
Velocity of Money– The velocity of money is an indicator of how quickly money received is then spent again. For bitcoin, we use “bitcoin days destroyed” to measure its velocity, this can indicate whether people are hoarding or spending their bitcoins.
Venture Capitalist– Can refer to an individual or organisation that provide initial funding for start-up business ventures that cannot access public funding. This money is known as “seed funding”, and is usually exchanged for equity in the start-up.
Virgin Bitcoin– A bitcoin that has been received by a miner as a block reward, and thus has never been “spent” before.
W
Wallet– the software that allows the spending, receiving and storing of cryptocurrency.
Whitepaper– A report or guide made to understand an issue or help decision making. Satoshi Nakamoto released the whitepaper on Bitcoin, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” in late 2008.
Wire Transfer– An electronic method of transferring money from one party to another.
Weak Hands: When too many new investors (in a given coin) invest in a coin the coin can be said to be “in weak hands.” Long-term investors who have built a position in a coin they love tend to HODL when the going gets rough, new investors with weak hands tend to get “weak knees,” and panic sell in a correction.
Whales- Whales are cryptocurrency investors with many coins or dollars. These investors can help move markets, or they can help stop markets from moving. When you see a 250 BTC buy wall or sell wall, that is a Whale. When the price goes down quickly and it makes you sad, or it shoots up and liquidates your short position, you can curse your semi-mythic nemeses “whales.”
Z
Zero Confirmation transaction– A bitcoin transaction that has been relayed to nodes in the Bitcoin network but has not yet been incorporated into a block. Also known as “unconfirmed transactions”.
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Sources
https://www.smallcapasia.com/what-is-fud-hodl-or-fomo-in-cryptocurrency-lingo-find-out-more-here/ https://hodlthemoon.com/terminology
https://blockgeeks.com/guides/blockchain-glossary-from-a-z/https://blokt.com/cryptocurrency/terminology
http://blog.julioruiz.net/100terms-to-understand-cryptocurrency/
https://btcmanager.com/guide/glossary-of-terms/
https://cryptocurrencyfacts.com/a-quick-guide-to-cryptocurrency-terms/
https://medium.com/the-mission/21-terms-to-understand-cryptocurrency-8bee30aa8dfc
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1059082
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