A-Z GLOSSARY OF CRYPTOCURRENCY TERMS (CRYPTOCURRENCY DICTIONARY)
Ex Address: 34ZXX88VTAenQW37MsL5hxyoWSyQpTFF6U
Term (address) used in a sentence:
John: Tessy, what’s your address so I can send you some bitcoin to take care of the bills?
Tessy: It’s 56 Freeman Street, Ikoyi, Lagos
John: Hey Tessy! not your home address, I mean your bitcoin address! You remember I created a bitcoin wallet for you some time ago. Please make sure the address is correct otherwise, your coins will be lost.
Tessy: Oh yea, now I remember. It’s 34ZXX88VTAenQW37MsL5hxyoWSyQpTFF6U
An Artificial Intelligence (As machines advance in intelligence) are capable of learning from their environments and completing more complex tasks.
Term (Airdrop) used in a sentence
I’d not have bought that cryptocurrency, it’s just worthless. I’d have rather gone for the airdrop instead of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
This is a mathematic instructions coded into and implemented by computer software in order to produce a desired outcome.
ATH stands for “all-time high”, as in “all-time price high.” In the context of cryptocurrencies, it refers to the highest price milestone that any given coin or token has ever achieved.
All Time High is the highest price a given cryptocurrency has seen so far. Not the ideal place to buy an asset because in couple of minutes, hours, days or months the coin/token might see a dip/bear run.
A common fear in trading crypto is that FOMO will lead one to irrationally buy an asset at or near its ATH.
ATL is an acronym for all-time low, the lowest price that an asset has ever had. Traders often fear that emotional forces like FUD will lead them to sell off an asset at or near its ATL.
This is said to be a cryptocurrency alternative (sometimes called an “alt”) to Bitcoin including Litecoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, XRP (commonly referred to as Ripple), and many more. It is a cryptocurrency or a category of cryptocurrencies that are an alternative to bitcoin.
Many altcoins project themselves are better alternatives to bitcoin in various ways (e.g. more efficient, less expensive, etc.). “Altcoin” is a term primarily used by Bitcoin maximalists, proponents of Bitcoin who think that it is superior to all other cryptocurrencies. They use this term to denote any and all cryptocurrencies that are not BTC.
Alt Season: The part of the overarching cryptocurrency market cycle where many altcoins “moon” (go up quickly in price) against the dollar and Bitcoin at once (for example, late December 2017 – early January 2018).
ANN is short for announcement and most commonly refer to announcements of a new ICO or a new product or service on the forum Bitcointalk.
Term used in a sentence: Did you see the ANN for that Russian ICO? Filled with typos and everything. I’m staying away from that.
Arbitrage means taking advantage of a difference in price of the same commodity or instrument on two different exchanges. For instance, if a cryptocurrency is being sold for USD 10.00 at Exchange A, and being bought for USD 10.50 at Exchange B, the arbitrage opportunity would be to buy the cryptocurrency at Exchange A and then immediately sell it at Exchange B. The arbitrage profits would then be USD 0.50.
Hence, it said to be the taking advantage of a difference in price of the same commodity on two different exchanges. Often mentioned when it comes to comparing ETH prices on Korean exchanges against US exchanges.
Term (arbitrage) used in a sentence:
John: Tessy, I’d love to invest some money in crypto. Which coin or token do you recommend?
Tessy: Ubex got lots of prospects, maybe you consider it.
John: But am a bit confused on which exchange to buy from ‘cos UBEX price on Hotbit is quite different from that of Bilaxy. But you can utilize the arbitrage price.
The acronym for Application Specific Integrated Circuit, which is a chip meant to do one thing. In Bitcoin’s case – they are used to process hashing problems to mine Bitcoins. Ask Price
The ask price for a given asset is the minimum price for which someone is willing to sell that asset. You can think of this as the “demand” side of “supply and demand.”
Ask Price is the price a seller is willing to accept for a cryptocurrency. Along with the price, the ask quote will generally also stipulate the number of units of such cryptocurrency willing to be sold at that price. When somebody matches the Ask Price, an order is made.
Term (ask price) used in a sentence
Your trading strategies are really weird my friend. Your ask price is completely unreasonable; nobody will buy it at that price.
Refer to All Time High (ATH).
Term (ATH) used in a sentence:
When Bitcoin was at its ATH, I was seriously checking out Lambos online. Found a really nice one in Germany that I was minutes from buying before people got gripped by FUD and it started losing its price.
This is a chart pattern that looks like the hair of a famous cartoon character.
This is Komodo’s Decentralized Exchange which connects all of its independent blockchains and allows atomic swaps.
Meaning: A Bear is someone who thinks the market value will go down. A bear market is a prolonged period of falling prices. A bear market is when the price trend is stagnant or downward.
Term (Bear) used in a sentence:
– Bitcoin is going to hell! I promise you. A few weeks from now, it won’t even be worth a dollar.
– You’re such a bear, John…
Meaning: When the market is bearish, market participants are expecting that the price will decrease/crash.
Term (bearish) used in a sentence:
– Do you think that now could be the right time to invest in cryptocurrencies?
– Not sure. The market is a bit bearish at the moment. I would probably wait a little bit longer.
– Don’t you think it’s better to buy when price is bearish as that is when the Whales get into the game rather than when FOMO is created and people are jumping in which can also be altered by a FUD at anytime.
Term used in a sentence: The prices of Dogecoin have been going down abnormally fast lately. Do you think it could be a bear trap?
A bear trend is a long-term decline in the overall cryptocurrency market. “Long-term” usually means at least a few months (e.g., the bear trend beginning in mid-January of this year), and is represented by indicators like a negatively sloped MA.
The bid-ask spread is the difference between the bid price and ask price for a given asset. This spread is the profit that market makers earn by buying and selling the asset on behalf of investors. As an asset’s liquidity increases, this spread decreases correspondingly.
The term used in a sentence: I don’t want to hustle with bid prices far from the ask price. When I want something, I buy it at the current market rate. Who knows, it might become even more expensive in the blink of an eye.
Bitcoin:
A Bitcoin address is said to be set of alpha-numeric used to send and receive Bitcoin transactions. The address is made up of sequence of letters (both upper and lower case) and numbers, but can also be represented as a QR Code.
A new version of the Bitcoin Protocol devloped using the Javascript programming language.
The first blockchain-based peer-to-peer protocol that allows its users to store and transfer wealth.
The first blockchain-based network that allows its users to store and transfer wealth.
A Bitcoin wallet that gives its users an aesthetically pleasing interface while still employing the core Bitcoin protocol.
Bitcoin ATM
like a regular ATM, Bitcoin ATMs provide people with Bitcoins after depositing regular currencies.
Term used in a sentence:
– What is a block, John?
– It is a record of all or some of the most recent transactions in a certain cryptocurrency. Any further questions?
Term used in a sentence:
– How should I secure financing for my new cryptocurrency project, John?
– Just speak fast and say blockchain as often as you can and the Venture Capital firms will shower you with money.
A condition that affect cryptocurrencies when the data stored reaches very large sizes due to increasing numbers of users and transactions. When blockchain bloat gets severe, transaction speed suffers.
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.
Refers to the number of blocks connected in the blockchain. For example, Height 0 would be the very first block, which is also called the genesis block. |
A blockchain scaling solution in which every user account has its own blockchain. Block lattices reduce blockchain bloat by storing transaction data separately from a cryptocurrency’s main blockchain.
Term used in a sentence: I only use my super expensive mining rig for mining cryptocurrencies that have block rewards that are high enough. It’s just a waste of my time otherwise.
The amount of data that can be stored in one block of a given blockchain. For example, the Block Size limit of Bitcoin is 1MB. Larger block size allows for more transactions per block. Thus, it’s not that transactions are “faster” or “slower”. It’s that transactions may be seemingly faster because the network is handling more transactions at a time.
Block time
The time it takes to mine a new block.
Bollinger Band (in short: BBands) means a margin around the price of a crypto that helps indicate when a coin is overbought or oversold. The Bollinger Bands, developed by legendary technical trader John Bollinger. The term has nothing to do with the classic champagne. More information available at: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bollingerbands.asp
Term used in a sentence: Looking at the Bollinger Bands, I’m quite sure that Monero is being overbought. My recommendation would be to apply caution.
Bollinger Bands — named after their developer, trader John Bollinger — are the lines two standard deviations above and below an asset’s simple moving average. They’re commonly used as indicators in technical analysis:
Bounty
Meaning: Bounty is a sum of money offered as a reward for completing a specific task. The reward is normally given to the first person to satisfactorily complete the relevant task. There are several different types of bounties. One usual type is the “bug bounty” given to a person finding a bug on a company’s website or in a company’s product etc.
Term used in a sentence: I found a bug on that new ICO’s website. It’s too bad that they don’t have any bug bounties.
Bots
Almost all exchanges let users program or use a pre-programmed software that can interact with crypto platforms via an API. One type of software, a type that can execute trades on exchanges, is called a “trading bot” (often referred to as simply a “bot”). It may seem like cheating, and in certain hands, it can sure feel like it, but bots are important in many ways too. They can help implement strategies like trailing stop losses for you, and they can help “make markets” (all those little buys and sells that prevent wide spreads in a given market are generally “market maker” / “accumulation” bots). Like people, bots aren’t good or bad, they are neutral and depend on the ethics of the user.
BPI
– the Bitcoin Price Index, showing the price of Bitcoin against a number of other crypto and fiat currencies.
Meaning: Brain Wallet refers to the concept of memorizing a passphrase. Such passphrase will be used to generate all your private keys and addresses. It should be noted that if you forget your passphrase then your cryptocurrencies are lost forever.
Term used in a sentence:
– How do you secure your cryptocurrencies? Are you using a hardware wallet?
– Nah man I’m using my brain wallet.
– John, you’ve been smoking so much weed that I really don’t think your brain wallet is that secure…
Meaning: Bull is the opposite of Bear. Bulls think the market value will go up. A bull market is a prolonged period of rising prices.
Term used in a sentence: I met a guy last night who said that Bitcoin would be worth USD 1 million in 1 year. What a bull…
Bullish
An expectation that price is going to increase.
Term used in a sentence:
– Have you seen the price changes on DASH today, John?
– Yes, most other cryptocurrencies are up today too. But I don’t think it will stop there. I’m bullish right now.
BTC
The shorthand name for Bitcoin, and also the unit for 1 Bitcoin.
BTFD
Acronym for “Buy The Fu*king Dip”
BTFD
Buy The Fucking Dip (an indication to buy a coin when it has dumped so hard)
Bull/Bullish
This is where the price of a cryptocurrency has a positive price movement.
Bullish
A bull market is when the price trend is upward. Those terms are used in different ways, but as a general rule: bull means “up,”and bear means “down.” A bull charges forward, a bear mauls your face, eats your picnic basket, and then hibernates in a cave for months.
A typical example of a bull trap is when a cryptocurrency looks like it is about to break through a certain resistance level but subsequently fails to do so.
Term used in a sentence: Well, my suicide thoughts started back in December 2017. I mortgaged my house and spent all my savings on Bitcoin. I thought it would never stop increasing in value! Turns out it was just a bull trap. My wife left me after that as well. She took the kids too.
A bull trend is a long-term, upward trend in the overall cryptocurrency market. How different people specifically define it varies, but it’s typically on the order of months or years rather than days or weeks, and it’s associated with indicators like a positively sloped moving average (MA).
Burned | If a coin in any particular cryptocurrency has been made unspendable, it is said to be burned. |
Buy Low, Sell High / Buy High, Sell Low
To not lose money, you should aim to Buy Low, Sell High. Try not to Buy High, Sell Low. Remember to set stop losses and when all else fails, HODL.
If you are going to average into a coin, can’t do better than buying the dip (especially in a bull market, in a stagnant market, or at what you think might be the end of a bear market). This means buying when the price goes down. For building a long-term position, it works much better than buying when the price goes up. It also helps the market as you are part of the force stopping the dip instead of part of the force causing the run-up.
Buy the F$%king Dip | A less-than-savory phrase used when you’re (enthusiastically) telling someone a currency has dipped to a low value and should be bought. |
A buy wall is basically the opposite of a sell wall: a large number of buy orders, typically placed on the order book all at once. It looks like this:
Buy Wall | When a large limit order has been placed to buy when a cryptocurrency reaches a certain value, then that is a buy wall. This can prevent a cryptocurrency from falling below that value, as demand will likely outstrip supply when the order is executed. |
Candlesticks are a graphical representation of an asset’s trading history. They’re often used in technical analysis because the shapes of candles are thought to be useful indicators of where an asset’s price might be heading next. Different candlestick charts use candlesticks to represent different amounts of time. For instance, on a 1-hour candlestick chart, each candlestick represents a trading period of 1 hour, whereas the candlesticks on a 15-minute chart represent trading periods of 15 minutes.
The anatomy of a bullish and bearish candle. Source: Wikimedia
The color of a candle indicates whether the asset closed at a higher or lower price than its open price for the period of time that the candle represents: A “bullish” green candle indicates that the asset closed higher than it opened, and vice versa for “bearish” red candles. The top and bottom of a candle’s true body indicate the open and close prices of the asset. The top of a bullish candle is the price at which it closed the period, and its bottom is the price at which it opened the period; vice versa for bearish candles. A candle’s shadows — the lines protruding from the top and bottom of its true body — indicate the maximum and minimum price of the asset during the candle’s period.
Meaning: A Candle or a Candlestick is a form of price chart, showing the highest price, the lowest price and the opening and closing prices of a cryptocurrency during a certain period (normally a day). If the price is higher at the end of a trading day than the opening price such day, the candle will be green (or white) and if it is lower, the candle will be red (or black).
Term used in a sentence: I’m SO happy that I went short on Bitcoin last week, have you seen the candlesticks this week? Red as blood, all week.
Chain Linking | ||
Each cryptocurrency has its own blockchain – the digital ledger that stores all transaction records. Chain linking is the process that occurs if you transfer one cryptocurrency to another. This requires the transaction to be lodged in two separate blockchains, so they must link together to achieve the goal. | ||
An approximation of the number of coins or tokens that are circulating in the public market. See also: total supply and maximum supply.
Meaning: Client refers to the software application used to send and receive cryptocurrency transactions.
Term used in a sentence: I use the Bitcoin Core Client for my Bitcoin-transactions.
cold storage
The process of moving crypto-currency ‘offline’, as a way of safekeeping your crypto-currency from hacking. There are a variety of ways to do this, but some methods most commonly used:
—Printing out the QR code of a software wallet and storing it somewhere safe, such as a safety deposit box.
—Moving the files of a software wallet onto a USB drive and storing it somewhere safe.
—Using a hardware wallet.
Term used in a sentence:
– John, how can I avoid getting hack?
– It’s called getting “hacked”, grandma. And don’t worry, I’ve put all your Tittiecoins in cold storage.
– I use the Bitcoin Core Client for my Bitcoin-transactions.
Confirmations refers to the depth of the block containing your transaction in the blockchain. When a block is published it has a depth of 0 as it is the top block. As more blocks are published the previous blocks get deeper in the chain.
—Hashing a Bitcoin transaction successfully and its being added into the Blockchain.
—Cipher The name given to the algorithm that encrypts and decrypts information.
—Circulating Supply The total number of coins in a cryptocurrency that are in the publicly tradable space is considered the circulating supply. Some coins can be locked, reserved or burned, therefore unavailable to public trading.
—Confirmed When a transaction has been confirmed, it means it has been approved by the network and permanently appended to the blockchain.
Term used in a sentence: Are you sure the transaction was executed? Yeah, totally, it’s been subject to more than 100 confirmations now.
After hitting a high, a coin will likely enter a period of correction where it steadies out at a given price before rising again (ideally it rises again from there, sometimes a correction simply spurs on a long “bear market”). In cryptocurrency coins often hit all-time highs and then enter correction periods. In these correction periods we may see “corrections” of 10% or even “crashes” of 20% or more.
Confluence is the presence of multiple indicators or analytical methods all indicating the same upcoming movement in an asset’s price. This is a way of mitigating trading risk by waiting for multiple signals all forecasting the same thing, rather than just trading on the basis of a single indicator.
A cryptocurrency that relies solely on its own technology to function.
Coinbase
A popular website and app used to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
2. When a transaction is made, all nodes on the network verify that it is valid on the blockchain, and if so, they have a consensus. | ||
Consensus Process | Refers to those nodes that are responsible for maintaining the blockchain ledger so that a consensus can be reached when a transaction is made. | |
Consortium blockchain | A privately owned and operated, yet publicly transparent, blockchain. | |
Contagion refers to a disturbance that spreads from one market to another and has the potential to disrupt trading strategies that focus too heavily on market correlations.
For example, one might try to profit by watching a pair of tightly correlated cryptocurrencies, waiting for one of them to have a disproportionately low price, and then buying that disproportionately cheap cryptocurrency, with the expectation that its price will rise and restore the correlation between the pair. But if this is a case of contagion, the entire crypto market might be heading for a dip, meaning that one will have lost money by taking a long position on the disproportionately cheap cryptocurrency.
Crypto
A general term that refers to everything cryptocurrency.
Also known as tokens, cryptocurrencies are representations of digital assets.
Ex: Bitcoin and altcoin.
Phrased:
Bob: “Hey Sandy, I’ve been trading Cryptocurrency on the side, making some good money.”
Sandy: “What in tarnation is a Crypto Currency Bob? you mean like forex?”
Bob: “No Sandy. like Bitcoin and altcoins.”
In simple terms, a cryptocurrency can be called a token, where each token is simply 1 unit of value of that cryptocurrency. The ownership of cryptocurrency tokens is recorded on a digital ledger (generally a blockchain).
NOTE: Sometimes the term token is used to specifically refer to tokens that are created on distributed platforms like Ethereum. ERC-2o tokens exist on the Ethereum network alongside the native token, Ether. Despite the term token sometimes being used to refer to ERC-20 tokens (and other tokens of this sort), all cryptocurrencies are technically tokens in that they are “value tokens” and in that transaction can be represented by a string of encrypted data called a “token.”
Cryptography
The process of encrypting and decrypting information.
Cryptographic Hash Function
A method of encoding inputs to create unique outputs, especially for creating digital fingerprints.
– produce a fixed-size and unique hash value from variable-size transaction input. The SHA-256 computational algorithm is an example of a cryptographic hash.
Decentralized Application
–A computer program that utilizes a blockchain for data storage, runs autonomously, is not controlled or operated from a single entity, is open source and has its use incentivized by the reward of fees or tokens.
This process happens on a node and involves converting an input – such as a transaction – into a fixed, encrypted alphanumeric string that registers its place in the blockchain. This conversion is controlled by a hashing algorithm, which is different for each cryptocurrency.
The art/science of encoding and decoding. It is at the core of cryptocurrency to an even greater extent than the concept of currency is.
Software that allows you to create cryptocurrency transactions and see balances associated with cryptocurrency addresses. Or more specifically, in wallets where you control your private keys, software that lets you access balances associated with your private and public keys and create a transaction using your private keys (see “keys” below for an explanation). NOTE: Some wallet types, like custodial wallets on exchanges, don’t have you managing your private keys direction and just show an address where a balance is stored. These too can be described as wallets.
Meaning: DAG is an acronym for Directed Acyclic Graph.
Term used in a sentence:
– Dad, how does Wikipedia define DAG?
– Well, son, Wikipedia defines DAG as “a finite directed graph with no directed cycles. That is, it consists of finitely many vertices and edges, with each edge directed from one vertex to another, such that there is no way to start at any vertex v and follow a consistently-directed sequence of edges that eventually loops back to v again. Equivalently, a DAG is a directed graph that has a topological ordering, a sequence of the vertices such that every edge is directed from earlier to later in the sequence.”
– Dad, how does Wikipedia define DAG?
– Well, son, Wikipedia defines DAG as “a finite directed graph with no directed cycles. That is, it consists of finitely many vertices and edges, with each edge directed from one vertex to another, such that there is no way to start at any vertex v and follow a consistently-directed sequence of edges that eventually loops back to v again. Equivalently, a DAG is a directed graph that has a topological ordering, a sequence of the vertices such that every edge is directed from earlier to later in the sequence.”
DAO
Term used in a sentence: I wonder if there’s a place for board of directors in the future, or if all Forbes 500-companies will just be run as DAOs.
Meaning: Dapp means Decentralized Application, which is an application that uses an Ethereum smart contract as it’s back-end code.
Term used in a sentence: Ethereum’s white paper says that there is three different Dapps: (i) money managing dapps, (ii) dapps involving money but also something else, and (iii) “other” Dapps. This essentially means that there could be thousands of Dapps.
DApp: A decentralized application, often stored on a blockchain (with its backend code stored on a blockchain at least). It’s not hosted on a private server; it is hosted on many distributed servers. For example, Cryptokitties (a blockchain-based game that exists on the Ethereum platform where you collect digital cats).
An aspect of the Darkcoin crpytocurrency that allows users to make anonymous transactions.
Distributed Denial of Service. A means by which a malicious individual shuts down another individual’s internet connection by overloading it with requests.
A type of cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin software but has anonymity features that makes it impossible to trace transactions to an individual and other capabilities. It was created by Evan Duffield in 2014 and was previously known as XCoin (XCO) and Darkcoin. For more information, visit the official website for DASH.
Day trading is like swing trading but with a higher trade frequency. As the name suggests, day traders trade multiple times per day, typically trying to routinely profit from small fluctuations in a market.
DCA
Dollar cost averaging. Instead of going all in at once, one might want to dollar cost average into a volatile asset like a cryptocurrency to buy the average price over time to create a long position. There are a number of forms of “averaging,” dollar cost averaging is one of the more popular.
“A distributed denial of service attack uses large numbers of computers under an attacker’s control to drain the resource of a central target.”
Phrased:
Sandy: “Bob! I can’t get my coins off coinbase and the value is plummeting!”
Bob: “That’s because some one is DDoS’ing it Sandy, always remember to store your coins in a safe secure wallet.”
Distributed Denial of Service Attack. A means by which a malicious individual shuts down another individual’s internet connection by overloading it with requests.
Decentralized Autonomous Organization | Refers to organizations that are run by an application (computer program) rather than direct human input. Control of this application is granted to everyone rather than a single central entity. |
Decentralised Autonomous Organizations can be thought of as corporations that run without any human intervention and surrender all forms of control to an incorruptible set of business rules.
Parts of the Internet that are not accessible through ordinary means, like search engines.
The limiting or decreasing of a cryptocurrency’s supply, which usually drives its price up.
Deflation When the demand for a particular cryptocurrency decreases, bringing down the price of its economy.
A consensus mechanism that uses professional nodes to broadcast a version of the blockchain. If two thirds or more of the nodes agree, that block is written onto the chain.
DPoS. A consensus mechanism that has a blockchain’s nodes vote on the correct version of the blockchain.
A tax on cryptocurrency holdings that encourages spending coins because they are constantly being destroyed.
Software that allows its users the ability to store cryptocurrency on their personal computer.
Meaning: Most exchanges charge deposit fees when you deposit fiat currency on the exchange. This fee is sometimes a fixed fee (triggered every time you make a deposit), and sometimes a percentage of the total deposit value. Deposit fees can be particularly high when you deposit via credit card (for the exchanges accepting credit card deposits at all).
Term used in a sentence: Can you believe it? The exchange charged a deposit fee amounting to 11.5% for my credit card deposit! Thieves!!!
Depth refers to the ability of a market for a specific asset to sustain large orders of that asset without the asset’s price moving significantly. The more open limit orders there are on both sides of an exchange’s order book for an asset, the more depth that book has. Depth is also closely tied to liquidity: The more depth an order book for an asset has, the more liquidity the order book provides to that asset.
An example of a BTC depth chart on SFOX.
Depth charts graphically represent the depth of order books, showing the volume of open orders at various price points and illuminating phenomena like buy walls and sell walls.
Decentralized
Disitributed amongst its users rather than controlled by one group or within one certain area.
A group of businesses and organizations working together to build a globally-accepted identity verification system. The DIF uses blockchain technology to create a system that doesn’t require a centralized authority for purposes of identification.
Decentralized
A state where there is no central control, power or function, or in reference to infrastructure, no central point of failure. See Vitalik Buterin’s definition of decentralization.
Decentralized applications (dApps)
A type of software program that runs on a decentralized P2P network rather than on a single computer. Although similar, it differs from smart contracts as it can have any number of participants on all sides of the market and it does not have to be financial. Ethereum is a popular development platform for creating dApps. For more information, see Vitalik Buterin’s terminology guide.
Decentralized Application | A computer program that utilizes a blockchain for data storage, runs autonomously, is not controlled or operated from a single entity, is open source and has its use incentivized by the reward of fees or tokens. |
Decentralized Autonomous Organization | Refers to organizations that are run by an application (computer program) rather than direct human input. Control of this application is granted to everyone rather than a single central entity. |
Decryption | Turning encrypted cipher text back into plain text. |
Deflation | When the demand for a particular cryptocurrency decreases, bringing down the price of its economy. |
Depth Chart | This graph plots the requests to buy (known as bids) and the requests to sell (known as asks) on a chart. Because you can put a limit order on your buy or sell transaction, the depth chart shows the crossover point at which the market is most likely to accept a transaction in a timely fashion. It also shows if there are any significant buy walls or sell walls in play. |
Deterministic Wallet | This type of wallet is created by producing multiple keys from a seed. If you lose this wallet, your wallet key can be recovered from the seed. Plus, when you make transactions, instead of producing new keys each time, you use variations from the seed, which makes it more transferable and easier to store. |
Term used in a sentence: I’m using a deterministic wallet, so I have only had to backup the wallet once. How about you? How do you protect your “future Lambo”-money?
DApp | Shorthand for “decentralized application” |
DEX
A Decentralized EXchange (a peer-to-peer exchange with no middleman). Many DEX exchanges exist on the Ethereum platform as Dapps. One example is EtherDelta.
Meaning: Most exchanges charge deposit fees when you deposit fiat currency on the exchange. This fee is sometimes a fixed fee (triggered every time you make a deposit), and sometimes a percentage of the total deposit value. Deposit fees can be particularly high when you deposit via credit card (for the exchanges accepting credit card deposits at all).
Term used in a sentence: Can you believe it? The exchange charged a deposit fee amounting to 11.5% for my credit card deposit! Thieves!!!
Meaning: Deterministic Wallet is a wallet that you need to backup only once. It creates all your bitcoin addresses and private keys, from a random number called a “seed”. Your wallet can be recovered from the seed, if the wallet file is accidentally deleted.
Term used in a sentence: I’m using a deterministic wallet, so I have only had to backup the wallet once. How about you? How do you protect your “future Lambo”-money?
Decentralized exchange. A platform (which isn’t controlled by any single authority) that allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
An over/under guessing game that uses random number generators to output results, allowing individuals to bet using cryptocurrencies.
-When someone refers to difficulty in the cryptocurrency space, they are referring to the cost of mining in that moment in time. The more transactions that are trying to be confirmed at any single moment in time, divided by the total power of the nodes on the network at that time, defines the difficulty. The higher the difficulty, the greater the transaction fee – this is a fluid measurement that moves over time.
Not every cryptocurrency is meant to be a currency. If it is a digital store of value, it can be called a digital asset (both Cryptokitties and Ether are digital assets, but only Ether is a cryptocurrency token). Digital assets can be fungible or non-fungible. Cryptokitties are represented by non-fungible tokens (meaning unique tokens that can’t be replaced and still retain value; sort of like hand crafted one-off artworks) unlike Ether which is fungible tokens (all Ethers are equally valuable, there is no specific unique Ether that is worth more or less than other Ethers; like how dollars work).
Software applications that are stored mostly on cloud computing platforms and that run on multiple systems simultaneously. The systems run on the same network and communicate with each other in an effort to complete a specific task or command. They are a type of software program designed to exist on the Internet in a way that is not controlled by any single entity.
An organization that operates to earn profits for its shareholders (coinholders) by creating value for the free market.
Distributed Ledger
A list of transactions that exists on every computer that elects to run blockchain software.
Distributed ledgers are ledgers in which data is stored across a network of decentralized nodes. A distributed ledger does not have to have its own currency and may be permissioned and private.
Distributed Ledger A ledger that is stored in multiple locations so that any entries can be accessed and checked by multiple parties. In cryptocurrency, this refers to the blockchain being held on multiple nodes on the network, all of which are checked simultaneously.
Generally speaking, diversification is a method of managing the overall level of risk in your portfolio by investing in a range of assets that aren’t perfectly correlated with each other, securing better profits (on average), and minimizing the risk of losses. It can be hard to diversify within the crypto sector at this early stage of its existence, but there are a few rules of thumb that are good to follow:
A cryptocurrency that uses the “Doge” meme with a cult-like following.
A cryptocurrency featuring a Shiba Inu dog from the famous “Doge” internet meme. This is one of the top altcoins
Dollar-cost averaging is the strategy of buying a particular dollar amount of an asset on a regular schedule, e.g., X amount every hour or X amount every day. The idea behind this strategy, which plays well with HODLing, is to gradually take on a position in an asset like Bitcoin in a way that resists the short-term swings of the market.
Double Spending
Term used in a sentence:
– I finally did it!
– You did what, John?
– I managed to double-spend a few of my Bitcoins!
– That’s hurtful to the community, John. You should be ashamed.
Delegated Proof of Stake. A consensus mechanism that has a blockchain’s nodes vote on the correct version of the blockchain.
dPoW
Delayed Proof of Work, the consensus mechanism used by Komodo. dPoW allows one blockchain to take advantage of the security and hashing power of a second blockchain (Bitcoin, in Komodo’s case).
The act of selling cryptocurrency.
Dump | The term used to describe selling all (or a lot) of your cryptocurrency. |
#DUMP = To Sell off a coin
Dumping | When a lot of people dump at once, causing a sharp downward movement in a cryptocurrency’s price. |
#DUMPING = Downward price movement
Dust Transactions
“A transaction for an extremely small amount of bitcoins, which offers little financial value, but takes up space in the blockchain.”
Phrased:
Sandy: “Bob Bitcoin is too expensive to buy!”
Bob: “you don’t have to buy a whole bitcoin sandy, just buy a few Satoshis worth.”
Dust Transaction | Sometimes people will look to slow the network by deliberately flooding it with minor transactions that are incredibly small. These minuscule amounts are referred to as a dust transaction. |
Do Your Own Research. Listening to the person on the internet is step 1, step 2 is doing your own research and making your own investment choices. A Reddit thread is not your fiduciary. For example, I have no specific certification that qualifies me to write a list of crypto acronyms. If you did your DD (Due Diligence), you would know that.
“Do Your Own Research.” Cryptocurrencies are highly speculative and a potential buyer should be prepared to lose their entire investment. It’s essential to do your own research before committing resources to any investment vehicle, especially one as volatile as cryptos.
DYOR Acronym for “do your own research”.
#DYOR = Do Your Own Research
EEA
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. A coalition of startups and corporations trying to figure out the best way to use this dang thing.
EMA
Exponential Moving Average. A line based on price action over time that helps traders to spot trends.
Encryption Converting plain text into unintelligible text with the use of a cipher.
An extremely secure messaging functionality offered by QRL.
ERC Stands for “Ethereum request for comments” and is a summation of proposed improvements to the Ethereum system.
ERC-20 The standard to which each Ethereum token complies. It defines the way that each token behaves so that transactions are predictable. Other cryptocurrencies also use the ERC-20 standard, piggybacking on the Ethereum network in the process.
A token issued on the Ethereum platform.
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06:13 minutes
ERC-20 – A type of token standard for Ethereum which ensures the tokens perform in a predictable way. This allows the tokens to be easily exchangeable and able to work immediately with decentralized applications that also use the ERC-20 standard. Most tokens released through ICOsare compliant with the ERC-20 standard.
Escrow
A third party used to facilitate transactions and increase security.
“The act of holding funds or assets in a third-party account to protect them during an asynchronous transaction.”
Escrow When an intermediary is used to hold funds during a transaction, those funds are being held in escrow. This is usually a third party between the entity sending and the one receiving.
Exchange Traded Fund. A group of assets that can be bought or sold as a single asset.
Ether (ETH)
A type of cryptocurrency that is used for operating the Ethereum platform and is used to pay for transaction fees and computational tasks. In the platform, transaction fees are measured based on the gas limit and gas price and ultimately paid for in Ether. For more information, see the Ethereum Foundation’s official definition.
Ether (ETH)
The native tokens of the Ethereum platform. Required in order to send transactions or execute smart contracts.
Ethereum Classic (ETC)
A type of cryptocurrency that is a continuation of the original Ethereum blockchain following the DAO attack in June 2016. Ethereum is essentially a hard fork of the blockchain that was formed to refund the money that was siphoned during the attack (around $50 million). Ethereum Classic assumes no hard fork occurred and is supported by those who believe in complete immutability of the blockchain. For more information, visit the website for Ethereum Classic.
EW
Elliot Wave. A pattern that the price movement of assets tends to make. Used in technical analysis.
A website where you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Step 1 when trading crypto is to choose the right exchange. To find the right exchange for you, use our Exchange Finder.
A resource for exchanging currencies. Bitcoin exchanges are used to convert fiat currencies into Bitcoin and vice versa, or to exchange Bitcoin with other cryptocurrencies.
An exchange is a marketplace where people are able to buy and sell assets. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), for example, is a place where people are able to buy and sell stocks. There are a number of cryptocurrency exchanges set up today and that number is increasing all the time. Some of the major exchanges include:
All cryptocurrency exchanges are not created equal. Different exchanges let you buy and sell different cryptocurrencies; different exchanges set different prices for their listed cryptocurrencies; and different exchanges have different volumes of trades happening on them, which changes how easy it is to buy or sell cryptocurrency efficiently.
Term used in a sentence: The biggest compilation of cryptocurrency exchanges in the world can actually be found at https://www.cryptowisser.com/, it’s even bigger than the list of exchanges at https://coinmarketcap.com/.
Is an acronym for Fundamental Analysis. When doing a Fundamental Analysis, you not only analyse the price changes and Resistance and Support of a certain cryptocurrency, you look at the a wide variety of factors relevant to the cryptocurrency. These factors include, but is not limited to, demand for the cryptocurrency, supply of the cryptocurrency, the technology behind the cryptocurrency, upcoming upgrades of the technology behind the cryptocurrency, news surrounding the cryptocurrency etc.
Term used in a sentence: You do your Technical Analysis (TA), that’s just nonsense if you ask me. I only look at the Fundamental Analysis, that’s how you really understand what you’re buying and selling.
FA Acronym for “fundamental analysis”.
#FA = Fundamental Analysis
2-factor authentication (2FA) is a second method of verification, beyond your password, to make your trades and other transactions secure. There are multiple methods of 2FA, including pieces of hardware (see U2F, below) and software like Google Authenticator.
Never enable text messages or phone calls as a method of 2FA. This is one of the worst possible security practices because hackers are very skilled at calling your phone company, convincing them that they’re you, and then using text-message or phone-call 2FA to access your accounts.
Fast Money
A CNBC show on which cryptocurrencies are frequently discussed.
FUD
Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. The emotional (rather than logical) belief that cryptocurrency prices will fall.
Term used in a sentence: I don’t have a single cryptocurrency unit, but I’m trying to find a few faucets now where I can get my first. It’s not much, but it’s a start!
“Any form of physical paper currency. Regulated and Centralized.”
Phrased:
Bob: “Sandy, I hope your trading your fiat for bitcoin.”
Sandy: “If I drove a Fiat, I would hang myself Bob.”
Bob: “touché Sandy, touché! but I was referring to Fiat Currency not the car.
-“regular” currencies such as Dollars or Pounds that are given value based on people giving them a value.
Term used in a sentence:
– Man have you seen the price of Ethereum Classic? You gotta buy it now!
– Can’t. I don’t want to sell any of my other cryptos and I’m out of fiat currency.
Fiat money
Refers to currencies that have minimal or no intrinsic value themselves (i.e. they are not backed by commodities like gold or silver) but are defined as legal tender by the government, such as paper bills and coins.
Fibonacci
Fibonacci brought modern mathematics to the west in many ways. He also popularized a set of ratios that are commonly used in trading to find support and resistance levels (Fibonacci retracement levels); they pair nicely with EW.
Finney Szabo
More somewhat common denominations of ether. The full denomination chart: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/253/the-ether-denominations-are-called-finney-szabo-and-wei-what-who-are-these-na
Meaning: The Flippening has nothing to do with iCloud leaks of celebrity photos but refer to a potential future event wherein Ethereum’s market cap surpasses Bitcoin’s market cap, making Ethereum the most ‘valuable’ cryptocurrency. Here’s a link where you can follow the current status of the Flippening.
Term used in a sentence:
– So, have you done any in-depth studies of the Flippening?
– Oh, yes. Very much so…
– What’s your view on Ethereum’s race past Bitcoin, then?
– What’s Ethereum?
Flipping
A type of investment strategy (popular in real estate investing) where you buy something with the goal of reselling for a profit later, usually in a short period of time. In the context of ICOs, flipping refers to the strategy of investing in tokens before they are listed on the exchanges and reselling them for a profit when they are trading in the secondary market.
Fork
A situation where a blockchain splits into two separate chains. Forks generally happen in the crypto-world when new ‘governance rules’ are built into the blockchain’s code. Some more information available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain#Hard_forks
FOMO
The Fear Of Missing Out. The emotional response that makes people impulse buy tokens at their all-time high. Try to not react to FOMO.
Meaning: FOMO means Fear Of Missing Out. In the cryptocurrency markets, the expression is most often used to describe the feeling that you need to get on the train when the price of something starts to skyrocket.
Term used in a sentence:
– Why did you invest in Bitcoin in late December 2017, John?
Meaning: Fork means a situation where a blockchain splits into two separate
Term used in a sentence: Bitcoin Cash is a fork of Bitcoin.
Fork (Cryptocurrency Forks)
Like a “save as” for software. When an update is made to the software, a new version and old version are created. Soft forks are meant to be updates to the existing software (generally a blockchain or software that interacts with the blockchain in cryptocurrency). Hard forks are meant to create two identical versions of the software which can both change after the hard fork occurs. Anyone who owns tokens on one blockchain owns tokens on the new one in most cases when a fork occurs. There are other types of forks, but that is the gist. Bitcoin forks have names like Lightning, Segwit, Bitcoin Cash, etc. I can’t get into every funky name here, but they are all either soft forks are hard forks meant to upgrade the chain or create a new one.
Fork (Hard)
A change in a cryptocurrency’s software that makes it incompatible with the original version. For example, any block size increase in the Bitcoin protocol constitutes a hard fork.
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4:41 minutes
Fork (Soft)
A change in a cryptocurrency’s software that does not make it incompatible with the original version.
Founders’ Reward
A percentage of block reward that is paid to the founders of a cryptocurrency rather than to its miners. Zcash is a cryptocurrency with a Founders’ Reward.
#FUD = Fear Uncertainty & Doubt
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (“FUD”) is modern slang for the “opposite” of FOMO: irrationally worrying that a particular investment or sector might collapse. In the cryptocurrency space, otherwise inexplicable sell-offs have been attributed to FUD.
FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. The emotion that people try to invoke in others when they want to bring the price of a coin down or drum up headlines. It can be smart to react to FUD, as one can’t stop widespread FUD from spurring on a correction, especially after a coin just hit an All Time High. FUD is what causes economic depressions. It is what makes bubbles burst. FUD can be warranted or not.
Meaning: FUD means Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. FUD is essentially negativity without cause that is spread intentionally by someone that wants the price of a cryptocurrency to drop.
Term used in a sentence:
– Hey man did you hear that there’s a vulnerability in Bitcoin’s blockchain and that it will lead to hacks and that this means that Bitcoin is virtually useless?
– Stop spreading FUD, John.
Meaning: FUDster means someone who is spreading FUD.
Term used in a sentence:
– Hey man did you hear that there’s a vulnerability in Bitcoin’s blockchain and that it will lead to hacks and that this means that Bitcoin is virtually useless?
– Stop being a FUDster, John.
Fundamental analysis (FA) is a trading strategy that emphasizes trading based on the intrinsic value of the asset. Traders consider a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data in an attempt to determine this intrinsic value. Especially in these early days of crypto, a lot of fundamental analysis amounts to trying to determine which cryptocurrencies have compelling long-term value propositions rather than being mere get-rich-quick schemes.
Gas
Meaning: Gas Price means the amount of ether to be spent for each gas unit on a transaction. The initiator of a transaction chooses and pays the gas price of the transaction. Transactions with higher gas prices are prioritized by the network.
Term used in a sentence: What was the gas price for that transaction? Not much just a few hundred Gweis.
blockchain The classification of technology that Ethereum falls into. Blockchains are distributed ledgers, secured by cryptography. They are essentially public databases that everyone can access and read, but the data can only be updated by the data owners. Instead of the data residing on a single centralized server, the data is copied across thousands and thousands of computers worldwide. More detailed information available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain
Meaning: The Genesis Block is the first block of the blockchain of Bitcoin ever released. It was released by Satoshi Nakamoto on 4 January 2009.
Term used in a sentence:
– I was there when the Genesis Block was released.
– What do you mean, John?
– I know Satoshi Nakamoto.
– You’re a compulsive liar, John.
– I can bench-press 1100 pounds.
– Shut up, John.
Gigahashes/sec
The amount of hashes possible every second, measured in billions of hashes.
Meaning: Git is a distributed revision control and source code management system focusing on speed. It enables software developers to work together as a team remotely from anywhere in the world. Git is a free software. For more information, see Git.
Term used in a sentence:
– Can you explain what Git means, John?
– No, the Git-system is a little too difficult for me to explain.
Meaning: GitHub is a web-based hosting service for projects that use the Git revision control system. Access GitHub here.
An open-source database for developers to create and share computer coding with a large community.
Term used in a sentence: There are a lot of talented developers hanging out on GitHub.
GOING LONG
Going long on a cryptocurrency means that you’re buying it with the expectation of selling it at a higher price (without hedging). It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be holding your position for a long time, though: Day traders “go long” when they buy a stock and sell it for a higher price an hour later.
Term used in a sentence:
– Do you think I should be going long in The Billion Coin?
– The Billion Coin is a scam, John. Wake up. Smell the coffee.
Going short on a cryptocurrency is a way of profiting by betting that its price will go down. There are two standard ways to short an asset:
Term used in a sentence:
– I’m going short in ZCash!
– Nobody cares about you or your investments, John.
Gorilla trades are one of our trade algorithms designed for executing large trades without inadvertently moving the market. This method of trade finds the best way to execute a large order by only showing smaller pieces of it on the order book, preventing it from getting buried deep in the order book. It’s best used when there are medium levels of activity in the market.
Meaning: Goxxed comes from the infamous MtGox, which was a bitcoin exchange that many claim was plagued with technical problems. The term goxxed refers to being impeded by technical issues.
Term used in a sentence: I wanted to subscribe for tokens in that new ICO. But I couldn’t get past the KYC-bot in the Telegram-channel. I was goxxed.
Meaning: GPU is an acronym for Graphics Processing Unit. It can be used to play games or mine cryptocurrencies.
Term used in a sentence:
– What did you do with all the stolen goods from that robbery, John?
– I bought a hardcore GPU. I’m leaving the criminal life now, I’m going to start mining and become rich in cryptocurrencies instead.
Meaning: Gwei is a denomination of Ether (the Ethereum currency). Gas prices are most often measured in Gwei. 1 Ether = 1 billion (1,000,000,000) Gwei. (109)
Term used in a sentence: I’m so broke right now. No fiat money and not even a single Gwei in my crypto wallet. Only a few Weis.
Halving
The process of intermittently decreasing the block reward given to cryptocurrency miners by 50%.
#HODL = Hold/Hold a position
Meaning: Hard Fork occurs when there are a sufficient number of clients on the network that disagree on the rules about how blocks are created and recorded in the blockchain. It leads to a split in the chain, one set of clients follow one branch and another set follows the other. To fix hard forks, some action must be taken by the holders of the relevant cryptocurrency.
Term used in a sentence: Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin.
“An alteration to the block structure of bitcoin that changes the difficulty rules.”
Ex: See segwit, btc unlimited
A type of fork that renders previously invalid transactions valid, and vice versa. This type of fork requires all nodes and users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software.
Hash Rate Measurement of performance that reveals how many hashes per second your computer is capable of producing. Each hash is an attempt to find a block by creating a unique block candidate and testing it against the network.
A programming language used to develop several cryptocurrencies (including Cardano and Nanocoin).
Hardware wallet
Term used in a sentence: I’m just too lazy and sloppy to have a web wallet. Paper wallets are not for me and I can’t really keep track of anything, so brain wallet is out of the question. The only solution for me is to have a hardware wallet in my key ring.
Meaning: Hash Rate is a unit of mining performance expressed as follows:
1 h/s = 1 hash per second
1 Kh/s = Kilohash per second. 1,000 h/s
1 Mh/s = Megahash per second. 1,000 Kh/s (1,000,000 h/s)
1 Gh/s = Gigahash per second. 1,000 Mh/s (1,000,000,000 h/s)
1 Th/s = Terahash per seond. 1,000 Gh/s (1,000,000,000,000 h/s)
Term used in a sentence: I bought a Zotac GTX 1080 Mini the other day. A bit disappointed over the hash rate. I thought that graphics card would help me achieve an even higher hash rate.
Hedging is an action you take to mitigate the risk of a trade. For example, if Bitcoin’s candlestick chart is suggesting that the market is very indecisive, and you think the price is about to go up, you might buy some more BTC while simultaneously shorting a correlated asset (e.g., ETH). Neglecting to hedge is one of the easiest ways to overexpose yourself to risk — especially if you’re day trading.
A high-net-worth individual (HNWI), broadly speaking, is a person who trades large enough amounts of an asset that the trades can move the market for that asset.
HNWIs can be formally defined in a number of ways, but a common method of identifying them is seeing whether they qualify as an accredited investor: a person or entity who, according to the SEC under Regulation D, has a reduced need for the protection of regulatory disclosure filings due to this person or entity’s financial sophistication.
If you’re a person, you qualify as an accredited investor if you meet one or more of these conditions:
An entity is an accredited investor if it consists of people who are accredited investors, or if it’s a private business development organization or company with assets in excess of $5 million.
HODL
—Long ago, someone on a bitcoin forum got drunk and made a post with this typo in the place of ‘hold’. A meme was born. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0
Acronym for “hold on for dear life”
Term used in a sentence: My cryptocurrency investment strategy is this: HODL, just HODL
Stands for Hold On for Dear Life And Complain a Little, and describes the process of HODLing while also complaining about e.g. volatility.
Term used in a sentence:
– I mean, I’m HODLing, but the volatility man! It drives me crazy to see these drops every other day.
– Quit HODLACLing, John.
Hot storage is any kind of cryptocurrency wallet that is connected to the internet — for example, a web wallet or mobile wallet. They are typically thought to be the least safe wallets because they are susceptible to hacks, though they’re also usually easier to recover than cold-storage wallets if you forget your password — provided that the company providing the wallet also provides a password reset option.
Term used in a sentence: I don’t care about security. I have all my cryptos in a Hot Wallet.
A hybrid PoS/PoW allows for both Proof of Stake and Proof of Work as consensus distribution algorithms on the network. In this method, a balance between miners and voters (holders) may be achieved, creating a system of community-based governance by both insiders (holders) and outsiders (miners).
Term used in a sentence: I used to be broke, going from pay check to paycheck, but then I borrowed 100,000 USD and invested it in XTRABYTES’ ICO. Now I own a small castle and two yachts.
IoT8/
Internet of Things. The system that will digitally connect physical objects, making them identifiable and trackable online.
Ex. Bancor ICO, Civic ICO, DCORP ICO
Phrased:
Sandy: “Bob, Why is my BNT token worth less than what I bought it for in ICO?!”
Bob: “Sandy, you bought that hype, never buy that hype.”
The term used to refer to blockchains to describe the way in which blocks cannot be changed after they are recorded.
A request for communication from one node to another node.
The process of increasing a cryptocurrency’s supply, which usually drives its price down.
IOTA (MIOTA)
Refers to the cryptocurrency and the name of an open source distributed ledger founded in 2015 that does not use blockchain (it uses a new distributed ledger called the Tangle). It offers features such as zero fees, scalability, fast and secure transactions, and so on. It is focused on the Internet of Things. For more information, visit the official website and the FAQs page for IOTA.
Initial Public Offering. An event in which a company “goes public,” selling early shares of their business in exchange for funds.
Internet Protocol Address. A series of numbers and periods used to identify computers communicating through a network.
Invisible Internet Project. A network layer that facilitates anonymous, censorship-resistant communication between users.
Internal Revenue Service. A US tax collection agency that demands information from cryptocurrency exchanges for various reasons.
J
We don’t know any cryptocurrency terms starting with “J”. But we hate incompleteness. Please let us know if you know any cryptocurrency term starting with “J”!
JavaScript
A popular programming language.
Jihan Wu
CEO of Bitmain, the largest distributor of cryptocurrency mining machines.
JOMO Acronym for “joy of missing out”.
Jumblr
A feature of Komodo that offers its users private payments. Jumblr works by exchanging the cryptocurrency being used for payment and mixing it among other cryptos prior to the making an anonymous transaction.
K
Software that records every button press of an individual’s keyboard. Often used to hack into accounts by recording passwords.
Kimoto Gravity Well
An algorithm used to adjust mining difficulty so that all miners are given a fair chance at earning block rewards.
Term used in a sentence: I hate KYC-procedures. I never look good when taking a selfie holding my passport next to my face.
L
– Two of the most popular hardware wallet models.
Liberty Reserve
Meaning: Limit Order means an order placed by traders to buy or sell a cryptocurrency when the price meets a certain amount. They can be thought of as ‘for-sale’ signs. These orders are what are bought and sold against when traders place market orders.
Term used in a sentence: You should always place limit orders. That way you know you won’t be screwed by high-frequency trading bots.
Limit order / limit buy / limit sell
– A type of cryptocurrency that was created by former Google employee Charlie Lee in 2011. It offers features such as Segregated Witness and the Lightning Network which allows for faster processing at lower cost. For more information, visit the Litecoin website.
A limit order is an agreement that you make with an exchange to execute a trade only at a certain price point or better. If that price point ends up never being reached, your order may never be executed. Limit orders also allow you to set a time limit on the order, after which the trade won’t be executed at all.
The measure of how quickly an asset can be exchanged for usable currency.
Term used in a sentence: There is no liquidity at all in that crypto. It’s like one trade a day and that causes price swings with 35-40%.
A type of exchange used to make it easier for individuals to exchange assets for usable currency.
Locktime
If a transaction request comes with a rule delaying when it can be processed to a certain time or certain block on the blockchain, that is referred to as the locktime.
Long When you intend to take a large amount of cryptocurrency and stockpile it with the anticipation that it will grow in value, you are going long (or taking a long position).
Litecoin
A cryptocurrency forked from Bitcoin known primarily for its decreased block time, which (theoretically) allows for faster transactions.
– another top altcoin. See our guide to Litecoin.
Lightning Network
A peer-to-peer system for cryptocurrency micropayments that is focused on low latency, instant payments. They’re typically low cost, scalable and can work across chains, and transactions can be public or private.
A bet that a cryptocurrency’s price will rise.
#LONG = Margin bull position
Meaning: MACD stands for Moving Average Convergence Divergence, which is a trend indicator that shows the relationship between two moving averages of prices. More info: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/macd.asp
Term used in a sentence:
– Dad, do you know any difficult trading concepts to explain?
– Sure, son, MACD – the Moving Average Convergence Divergence – is very difficult to explain.
—–The version of a protocol that uses real money. A cryptocurrency is generally considered to be “live” after the first Mainnet block (the genesis block) is mined.
Term used in a sentence: After running the Testnet for a few months, the company XYZ has now launched the Mainnet and sending/receiving real tokens is finally possible.
Meaning: The Manipulator is a real or an imagined agent who controls the market value with his vast reserves of fiat currency and cryptocurrency.
Term used in a sentence: God damn it! This must be the Manipulator again. I hate that guy.
Market capitalization (market cap)
The market value of a company, market or sector at a point in time commonly used to rank relative size. In equities, it refers to the total market value of a company’s outstanding shares. In cryptocurrency investing, it refers to either price multiplied by the circulating supply (i.e. free float market cap) or price multiplied by the total supply (i.e. fully diluted market cap).
Contrary to some increasingly common colloquial uses of the term, a “market maker” is not someone who is rich enough to move the entire market with their trades. Rather, a market maker is an entity who provides liquidity to an exchange by placing limit orders on its order book so that trades can be made at a range of prices. Many exchanges provide rebates to makers for this added liquidity.
Market Order As opposed to a limit order, a market order does not wait until a certain price to buy or sell; it trades wherever the price is at the time the transaction order is made.
Maximum supply
An approximation of the maximum number of coins or tokens that will ever exist for a cryptocurrency or crypto asset. See also: circulating supply and total supply.
MCAP Acronym for “market capitalization”.
Term used in a sentence: I’m not that worried about high-frequency trading bots. I just want the cryptocurrencies that I’m looking for, immediately when I want them. That’s why I always make market orders.
A node (device running the full software of a cryptocurrency) that fulfills more purposes than regular nodes – such as increasing privacy, providing instant transactions, and participating in governance.
mBTC
John McAfee (the creator of McAfee antivirus) is a cybersecurity mogul who is known for promoting cryptocurrency and speculating about altcoins.
Merged Mining
The process of allowing two different cryptocurrencies using the same consensus algorithm to be mined simultaneously.
Term used in a sentence: I made a leveraged trade yesterday and it isn’t looking too good at all. I just hope I don’t get that margin call if you know what I mean.
Meaning: The Manipulator is a real or an imagined agent who controls the market value with his vast reserves of fiat currency and cryptocurrency.
Term used in a sentence: God damn it! This must be the Manipulator again. I hate that guy.
Maker/Taker
Maker fees are fees associated with limit orders. Taker fees are fees associated with market orders. This only applies to exchanges that use a Maker/Taker model and is only relevant when one fee type is lower than the other. GDAX is an example of an exchange where this matters. On GDAX maker orders have no fees, but taker orders do
Meaning: Margin Call is a “call” made by a lender, broker or exchange to the person who has made the margin trade. The call is made when the margin falls below the minimum required to cover the credit risk of the lender, the broker or exchange. At such point, the position is automatically closed and the margin is lost. You don’t want to get this “call” if you’re a trader…
Term used in a sentence: I made a leveraged trade yesterday and it isn’t looking too good at all. I just hope I don’t get that margin call if you know what I mean.
Term used in a sentence: You must have nerves of steel to do the kind of margin trading I do, Bitcoin long with 100x leverage. Go big or go home!
Meaning: Market Capitalisation (for short: Market Cap) is total value of a cryptocurrency. It is calculated by multiplying the total supply of coins by the current price of one such coin.
Term used in a sentence: The market capitalisation of Bitcoin was 116.5 billion in November 2017. That means that Bitcoin was then the world’s 59th biggest economy (bigger than e.g. Kuwait).
Market order / market buy / market sell
A simple purchase or sale on an exchange at the current price. Market buys purchase the cheapest ETH available on the order book, and market sells fill the most expensive buy order on the books.
Term used in a sentence: I’m not that worried about high-frequency trading bots. I just want the cryptocurrencies that I’m looking for, immediately when I want them. That’s why I always make market orders.
Masternode
Masternodes are nodes that have voting rights. Masternodes generally get a cut of mining rewards and require locking up a large amount of a given crypto while running the node.
Meaning: MEW stands for MyEtherWallet, one of the most popular free online open-source wallets.
Term used in a sentence:
– Do you know where to store Ethereum and ERC20-tokens?
– There are loads of alternatives, but I use MEW.
A fee paid to voluntary participants for using their computing power to verify transactions. When a miner mines a block they get a block reward as well as all the transaction fees in it.
Mining
—The term, somewhat confusingly, given to the process of verifying transactions on a blockchain. In the process of solving the encryption challenges, the person donating the computer power is granted new fractions of the cryptocurrency.
Term used in a sentence: How do you get rich mining? Well, you can start with getting a proper mining rig and focus on miningpromising cryptocurrencies with high block rewards.
A mathematical problem that is solved by participants of a blockchain to verify transactions in exchange for block rewards.
“This number determines how difficult it is to hash a new block. It is related to the maximum allowed number in a given numerical portion of a transaction block’s hash. The lower the number, the more difficult it is to produce a hash value that fits it.”
Meaning: Mining Rig means a computer specially designed for processing proof-of-work blockchains. They often consist of multiple high-end graphic processors (GPUs) to maximize their processing power.
Term used in a sentence: You should see my new mining rig. It’s really powerful. Hope my mom doesn’t notice that our electricity bill is 132 times higher each month since I got it though
The process by which users on a PoS blockchain verify transactions and receive new coins for their participation.
Software that allows individuals to store their cryptocurrencies on handheld devices.
A cryptocurrency that is very popular on the Darknet because it is considered to be more anonymous than Bitcoin and similar coins.
A type of cryptocurrency created in 2014 that is focused on privacy and scalability, and runs on platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Transactions on Monero are designed to be untraceable to any particular user or real world identity. For more information, please visit the Monero website.
Money Services Business A legal term used to represent an entity that transfers or converts money.
A method of intentionally obscuring the source of illegally-obtained funds.
Moon
Sometimes, though, there’s also a bit of derisiveness behind the use of the term “moon”: It can be used to refer to people who are undereducated about the crypto space and are merely buying up coins with the expectation of making a quick, huge profit. This kind of subtle mockery is typically what’s happening when people post “when moon?” on crypto traders’ discussion forums.
#MOON = Continuous upward movement of price.
Term used in a sentence:
– I promise you, man! PIVX Coin is mooning! You have to get it know.
– You have said that about every coin you have read the whitepaper for, John. And you have been wrong every time.
Meaning: Multi-sig is a system that requires multiple cryptographic authentication keys.
Term used in a sentence: I used to have insomnia, but since I fixed multi-sig security on all of my crypto stuff I’m sleeping like a baby every night
MSB
Acronym for “money services business”.
Mt. Gox
When a blockchain features several levels for scalability and encryption purposes, it can be said to be “Multi-Layered.”
Meaning: Multi-sig is a system that requires multiple cryptographic authentication keys.
Term used in a sentence: I used to have insomnia, but since I fixed multi-sig security on all of my crypto stuff I’m sleeping like a baby every night.
If a miner moves from one cryptocurrency blockchain to another depending on the profitability provided by the network at that moment in time, they are
engaging in multipool mining.
A feature that requires several keys to authorize a single transaction, especially for dividing responsibility among separate parties.
A popular online wallet that supports Ether and most ERC20 tokens.
N
Term used in a sentence:
– I’m contributing to the crypto community, dad. Our family computer is also a node.
– I don’t want this family’s computer to be a gnome, John.
– A node!
– A what?
– Nevermind.
NEM (XEM)
Refers to the cryptocurrency and the name of a platform for management of a variety of assets, including currencies, supply chains, ownership records, etc. It offers additional features to blockchain technology such as multi-signature accounts, encrypted messaging, etc. For more information, please visit their official website.
Refers to the cryptocurrency and the name of a China’s first open source blockchain that was founded in 2014 by Da Hongfei. It is similar to Ethereum in its ability to execute smart contracts or dApps but has some technical differences such as coding language compatibility. For more information, visit their official website.
Digital agreements between users on NEO’s platform that are carried out automatically when their terms are met.
A network that requires special software (like TOR) to access. Websites on the Darknet are much more difficult to shut down than normal websites. The Darknet was one of the first communities to use cryptocurrencies for transactions.
A network refers to all the nodes committed to helping the operation of a blockchain at any given moment in time.
The quality by which cryptocurrencies become more useful as more people use them.
Near-Field Communication. Enables devices located close to each other to transmit data without the need for internet connection.
O
OCO
Acronym for “one cancels the other order”.
One Cancels the Other Order When two orders for cryptocurrency are placed simultaneously with a rule in place whereby if one is accepted, the other is cancelled.
Off Blockchain Transactions
Transfer of value that takes place outside of a blockchain for reduced fees and quicker transaction time.
Operations Security. Refers to how well assets are protected.
Oracles
The smart contracts stored on a blockchain are stuck within the network. They can only be reached by the external world through a program called an oracle. The oracle sends the data to and from the smart contract and the outside world as required. Oracles are most commonly found on the Ethereum network.
Meaning: Orphaned Blocks is the term for certain blocks following a Soft Fork or Hard Fork, or when miners produce blocks at exactly the same time. Whenever a Soft Fork or Hard Fork occurs, the blockchain is split into two paths. One of these chains will eventually be considered the valid one, and the other will be the invalid chain. Blocks that are in an invalid chain are called Orphaned Blocks.
Term used in a sentence: When two miners produce blocks at exactly the same time, one of those blocks will not be part of the main chain. They will be so called orphaned blocks.
#OTC
Over The Counter
Meaning: OTC is an acronym for Over The Counter. This is off-exchange trading that is done directly between two parties.
Term used in a sentence: I want to know who I’m trading with. That’s why I only trade OTC with people I trust.
Over The Counter Exchange, also known as Off-Exchange Trading. Trades that occur bSetween two parties rather than using a centralized exchange.
Outgoing Connection
The initiator of communication on a cryptocurrency network.
Over-the-counter (‘OTC’) trades are how many high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors make their especially large trades: they use a broker who directly connects them with an entity willing to buy or sell the asset in question at a particular price. This is intended to avoid losing money by executing a trade so large that it moves the market — but the peculiar information asymmetries involved in such a trade make it easy to make a mistake that ends up offsetting the potential advantages of OTC trading.
Output
If a large number of purchases have been made on a cryptocurrency, its price will increase for an extended period of time. At this juncture, it is considered overbought and a period of selling is expected.
If a cryptocurrency has spent significant time being sold without an upward movement, it is considered oversold. In this condition, there would be concerns about whether it will bounce back.
p
Term used in a sentence:
– Hello?
– Hello, is this John?
– Yes, speaking.
– I’m from the fire department and I’m sorry to say this, John, but your entire house has burned down. Everything in there is gone.
– OH NO I HAD MY PAPER WALLET IN THE HOUSE!!!
A cryptocurrency’s main blockchain which connects its sidechains or subchains.
If you are running a full node, a “peer” is some else also running a full node.
A cryptocurrency that uses both PoW and PoS in its consensus mechanism to offer increased security.
P2P Acronym for “peer to peer”.
A social attack in which a malicious individual masquerades as a trustworthy person in an attempt to fool the victim into giving up personal information (like passwords).
Panic Selling
Selling in a panic at a low because the price is going down and one fears it might go lower.
Pool is a group of miners that all work together in order to improve their chances of solving a block.
Term used in a sentence: Ever since I joined that mining pool, the compensation I receive for mining has started to improve.
Ponzi Scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors. The term comes from the infamous Charles Ponzi and his arbitrage affairs with international reply coupons during the 1920s.
Term used in a sentence: I’m pretty sure that this ICO is a Ponzi Scheme, but it doesn’t really matter to me. If you’re one of the first people entering the scheme and you exit in time, you can still reap the benefits of it.
POS stands for Proof of Stake (not Piece of Shit…) and is the proposed future consensus algorithm to be used by Ethereum. Instead of mining in its current form, people that own ETH will be able to ‘lock up’ their ether for a short amount of time in order to ‘vote’ and generate network consensus. The plan is that these stakeholders will be rewarded with ETH by doing so. Another famous POS blockchain is LISK.
A proof-of-stake system (Pos). It is where mining is done by those who hold coins. The result is a bit like getting paid interest for holding coins.
Proof-of-stake (not piece of shit). The proposed future consensus algorithm to be used by Ethereum. Instead of mining in its current form, people that own ETH will be able to ‘lock up’ their ether for a short amount of time in order to ‘vote’ and generate network consensus. The plan is that these stakeholders will be rewarded with ETH by doing so.
Term used in a sentence: How are new transactions validated in the DASH-crypto? They are validated through POS.
Term used in a sentence: How are new transactions validated in the Super Bitcoin-cryptocurrency? They are validated through POW.
Premining is the procedure of mining certain altcoins before they are released to the public. This generates coins for the developers, who hope to profit from them in the future.
Term used in a sentence: The premining in this ICO is absolutely insane. Seems like a fraud to me. Watch out.
Pump and Dump means an altcoin getting a lot of attention, resulting in a fast price increase, which is then followed by a crash.
The recurring cycle of an altcoin getting a ton of attention, leading to a fast price increase, and then of course followed by a huge crash.
People get together on telegram groups and then pump coins to the moon. Sometimes what looks like natural growth in crypto is a “PND.” If you don’t have a why, don’t buy. Try not to get FOMO and buy into the giant green candle. Pump and Dumpers who spoof to gather coins and then Pump and Dump a coin help in that they help raise prices of coins over time. Otherwise, they are just a symptom of free markets and cause a lot of the instability you see in crypto. They are a less grey area and more toward being black hat. Most exchanges ban pump and dumps and other manipulation tactics as a rule of thumb, but let’s be honest, the track record of actually stopping these is not great.
Term used in a sentence:
– What happened? I thought that crypto was going to the moon but now the price is even lower than what I bought it for?
– It was a classic Pump and Dump, John. Get over it.
A public address is the cryptographic hash of a public key. They act as email addresses that can be published anywhere, unlike private keys.
R
Raiden Network
An upcoming protocol change to Ethereum that will enable high-speed transfers across the network. It is similar in some aspects to Bitcoin’s planned Lightning Network. The name, I assume, comes from the Mortal Kombat character named Raiden that can shoot lightning. More reading available at: https://themerkle.com/what-is-the-raiden-network/
A type of technical analysis whereby you determine the momentum of price change over time. It looks at recent changes in price exponentially, with the most recent changes given more weight than older ones. This produces an overall trend of movement for a cryptocurrency that can determine if the market is overbought (a reading higher than 70) or oversold (a reading lower than 30).
REP – Augur
REKT = When you have a bad loss
Resistance is the opposite of support, and is a trading term denoting a price level that a certain cryptocurrency rarely or never will exceed. If Bitcoin’s resistance would be USD 20,000, the price of Bitcoin could go up to USD 20,000 (maybe even several times), but not exceed USD 20,000.
Once an asset does break through a resistance level, that level often turns into a support level.
Term used in a sentence:
– What do you think about the Bitcoin, will it surpass USD 25,000 this year?
– Don’t know man, there is definitely resistance at the USD 20,000 level. But if Bitcoin manages to break that resistance, who knows where it will stop.
Reward – when mining for new Bitcoins, the miner may claim new coins in a new block as a reward for helping to add new Bitcoins into circulation.
A plan that sets goals and deadlines for a project’s future development.
Often referred to as Bitcoin Jesus, he was the first major Bitcoin and cryptocurrency investor.
Meaning: ROI stands for Return On Investment and is the percentage of how much money has been made compared to an initial investment (i.e., 100% ROI means someone has doubled their money).
A return on investment. What you would ideally like to happen.
The ROI, typically expressed as a percent, is a measure of the efficiency of an investment. It’s usually calculated as follows:
For example, if you bought 1 BTC for $6,000 USD and sold it a month later for $6,600 USD, your ROI (ignoring fees, for simplicity’s sake) would be $600 USD / $6,000 USD = 10% in 1 month.
Term used in a sentence:
– I doubled my money during 2017. ROI x 2. How about that?
– That’s nice John. I invested all of my money in XTRABYTES. ROI during 2017 was 3879.99 – …
Acronym for “Relative Strength Index”.
Term used in a sentence: Looking at Ripple’s RSI, I see clear purchase signals right now. I’m definitely going in hard.
Reverse Indicator = Someone who is always wrong predicting price movements.
Ring Signature–A ring signature is a type of encryption process that retains anonymity for the user. The concept gives the network of nodes the power to approve a transaction on a blockchain without identifying which of the nodes requested the transaction. As a result, it cannot be traced.
A platform that connects banks, payment providers, and digital asset exchanges to provide frictionless transactions.
Ripple (XRP) – Refers to the cryptocurrency and the name of an open source payment platform where the cryptocurrency (Ripple or XRP) can be transferred. The vision for the platform is to enable real-time global payments anywhere around the world. The Ripple payment protocol was built by OpenCoin which was founded in 2012. For more information, visit Ripple’s official website.
Risk on, risk off (RoRo) trading is a style of trading according to which you modulate your risk appetite in response to the perceived level of risk in the overall market or economy: When the general cryptocurrency market seems especially risky, you make (relatively) less risky investments (e.g., holding Bitcoin); when the general cryptocurrency market seems less risky, you make (relatively) riskier investments (e.g., trading other tokens).
S
SATS
A fraudulent endeavor. In the cryptocurrency world, this often refers to the practice of fooling investors in some way.
Term used in a sentence:
– So, have you seen any Scamcoins in the market lately, John?
– Yeah I lost all of my pension savings in a Scamcoin last month.
Segregated Witness (SegWit)
The process where the block size limit on a blockchain is increased by removing digital signature data and moving it to the end of a transaction to free up capacity. Transactions are essentially split (or ‘segregated’), into two segments: the original data segment and the signature (or ‘witness’) segment.
The Securities and Exchange Commision. A regulatory US agency responsible for the investigation and shut down of several cryptocurrency-related projects.
Financial instruments of ownership, similar to shares in a company. If a crypto token derives its value from an external, tradable asset, it is classified as a security token and becomes subject to federal securities regulations. The security token classification creates the potential for a company to issue tokens that represent shares of company stock.
The processes of separating digital signature data from transaction data. This lets more transactions fit onto one block in the blockchain, improving transaction speeds.
Segregated Witnesses. A protocol implemented by Bitcoin to increase transaction speed. SegWit allows more transactions to be written into a single block on a blockchain.
Smart Contract. An agreement between two parties that carries itself out once its terms are met.
Term used in a sentence: You see these Sell Walls and Buy Walls? My interpretation of this order depth chart is that the price will increase due to higher buy pressure.
If a miner finds or creates a new block in the blockchain and then doesn’t share that information with the network, he or she is partaking in selfish mining. This is because other miners are now burning their computational power on an old block, allowing the selfish miner to get a head start on the new block.
Term used in a sentence:
– Can you please use SHA-256 in a sentence, John?
– No, I’m too lazy.
A popular exchange service created by Eric Voorhees that allows individuals to trade most altcoins anonymously for a small fee.
Term used in a sentence:
– Through sharding, the different nodes in a network can work more efficiently.
– Did you just say sharting?
– No, John, sharding.
sharding
A scaling solution for blockchains. Typically, every node in a blockchain network houses a complete copy of the blockchain. Sharding is a method that allows nodes to have partial copies of the complete blockchain in order to increase overall network performance and consensus speeds.
Sharding is a way of splitting up the full blockchain history so each full node doesn’t need the whole copy of it. It’s considered a scaling solution for blockchains because as they grow larger, it begins to slow the network performance if every node is required to carry the full blockchain.
A platform that function alongside of an existing blockchain protocol, allowing transactions to occur off of the main blockchain. Sidechains can be customized to allow features like faster transaction time and increased anonymity.
Meaning: Sig (or Signature) is a cryptographic authentication key.
Term used in a sentence: I’ll be with you in a minute I just need to verify a transaction with my sig.
An indication of support for a feature, often sent out by miners to inform the general public of their opinion.
Shilling / pumping
Term used in a sentence: I’m pretty sure that cryptocurrency is getting shilled. It can’t possibly be as good as promised.
Shit Coin
Selling a cryptocurrency in hopes of buying it at a lower price at a later time to gain profit.
Phrased:
Bob: “Sandy, I just shorted bitcoin at 2700$ yesterday, gonna make all kinds of money when it drops back to 2000$”
Sandy: “Bob you fool, have you checked the price today? it shot up to 10,000$ last night, I’m Rich!”
#SHORT = Margin bear position
Short Also known as short selling, this is a concept whereby traders sell an asset they don’t have. The hope is that they can then buy the asset at a lower price than which they sold it to complete the deal. Thereby they earn a margin in the interim.
A feature of the ARK cryptocurrency which allows separate blockchains to connect with each other and communicate.
An individual who believes that the blocks in Bitcoin should be kept small so that anyone can run a full node.
Price-stable cryptocurrencies that achieve stability through pegging their value to another asset, like the US dollar.
Watch Video
4:17 minutes
Term used in a sentence:
– What’s so smart about smart contracts?
– Well, for one, they execute themselves.
– I had a cousin who accidentally executed himself. He wasn’t that smart.
Sniper trades are one of our trade algorithms, a hidden order optimized for speed. This algorithm is ideal for getting the best possible price on a large order quickly, as you would want to do when the markets are especially volatile and you’re worried about prices dropping drastically.
A sell wall for BTC at ~$6000 USD on SFOX.
The standard explanation for sell walls is that a group of rich individuals is manipulating the market to drive down an asset’s price before it takes on a large position in it. Here’s how that explanation goes:
A group of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) all want to buy a particular cryptocurrency, but they don’t want to move the market with a large order because that will end up making them pay a premium for their trade. Therefore, each member of the group buys only a small fraction of the position they ultimately want to take (e.g., 100,000 of the cryptocurrency rather than 500,000), and then they all simultaneously flood the market with underpriced sell orders.
Because the market is flooded with so much selling volume, the buying pressure can’t eat through the wall quickly enough — and anyone who wants to liquidate their own positions in this cryptocurrency will now have to sell at a price lower than that of the sell wall. This drives down the cryptocurrency’s price further, to a point at which the group of HNWIs feels comfortable buying the quantity they initially wanted. Once they’ve done so, they remove the sell wall — and the price of the cryptocurrency rises accordingly.
Slippage refers to the difference between the price at which a trader expects a trade to execute and the price at which it actually executes. There are a number of reasons why slippage would occur — for instance, if a trader places a market order when the market is especially volatile, or when a trader places a trade large enough to move the market.
Imagine a situation in which the top-of-the-order-book price of Bitcoin is $8100 USD and you’re hoping to buy 100 BTC. Chances are good that there won’t be enough volume near the top of the order book to actually let you buy that much BTC at $8100 USD per coin: instead: you’ll end up needing to go deep into the order book to fill your order, meaning you’ll end up paying more than you expected — maybe up as high as $8200 or $8300. Worse, if you telegraph your large order to other traders and bots on the exchange, they might recognize the buying pressure and drive up the price of BTC even more as you’re trying to buy it. These are two classic examples of slippage in action.
Term used in a sentence: Don’t worry about that soft fork. It doesn’t require any action on our part.
Software Wallet means a storage for cryptocurrency that exists solely as software files on a computer. Software wallets can be generated for free from a variety of sources. Compare and review all cryptocurrency wallets in our Cryptocurrency Wallet Listto find the best wallet for you.
Storage for crypto-currency that exists purely as software files on a computer. Software wallets can be generated for free from a variety of sources. MyEtherWallet (MEW) is one of the popular. (more on MEW below)
Term used in a sentence: There are many differences between a software wallet and a hardware wallet. One such difference is that a software wallet doesn’t exist in physical form.
Term used in a sentence: Don’t worry about that soft fork. It doesn’t require any action on our part.
Due to differences among the members of the development team, they have now decided to do a software fork and thereafter work independently from each other.
Meaning: Sockpuppet is an online identity used for the purposes of deception.
Term used in a sentence: I’m pretty sure that the account 1337CryptoHero is a sockpuppet.
Term used in a sentence: Can you write in Solidity? No I only speak English and emojis.
Spread is the amount by which the Ask Price exceeds the Bid Price. This is essentially the difference in price between the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay for a cryptocurrency and the lowest price for which a seller is willing to sell it.
Term used in a sentence: By giving makers a discount on the trading fees, the exchange promotes liquidity and tightens the bid ask spread.
Speculator
An individual who predicts future prices of assets and makes bets based on their predictions.
SPV Client stands for Simplified Payment Verification Client. It is a lightweight client that downloads only part of the relevant blockchain.
Term used in a sentence: What’s that you have there on your computer, John? It’s an SPV Client.
Simplified Payment Verification. Allows wallets to function by letting them connect to local nodes that have full copies of the blockchain rather than requiring download of the full blockchain (like Bitcoin Core).
Any cryptocurrency pegged to a stable asset for the purpose of reducing price volatility.
Term used in a sentence: After being a successful cryptocurrency trader for more than a year, I decided to park my cryptos into a stable coin. I was worried about possible price decreases at that point, and rightly so.
A block that has been worked on by a miner but is not included in the blockchain because another miner successfully completes another block first.
An individual that volunteers to lock some of their coins or tokens up to verify transactions on a blockchain in exchange for staking rewards.
when a Bitcoin clock is successfully hashed, the act of hashing it becomes ‘stale’, which means that no other miner may attempt to hash it.
The act of locking up one’s coins or tokens to help verify transactions for cryptocurrencies with Proof of Stake consensus mechanisms. Stakers earn staking rewards for providing this service.
Stop Loss-order (or Stop Order) is an order designed to limit an investor’s loss on a security position. Setting a stop loss order for 10% below the price you paid will limit your loss to 10%. This strategy allows investors to determine their loss limit in advance.
Term used in a sentence:
– Man! I lost everything. All of my savings. My college fund. It’s all gone!
– I set a 5% stop loss-order, so I just lost 5%. I must have forgotten to tell you to do the same. Sry.
Support is the opposite of resistance and is a trading term referring to a certain price that a cryptocurrency historically does not fall below. If Bitcoin’s support would be USD 5,000, it would mean that the price of Bitcoin rarely or never falls below such level.
Term used in a sentence:
– I’m HODLing Bitcoin, I really am, but I don’t know how much longer I can take it? I’m afraid I might lose everything!
– No you won’t, there’s solid support at the USD 5,000 level so the price of Bitcoin won’t go lower than that.
A blockchain that runs separately from a cryptocurrency’s main blockchain, using the native currency to carry out transactions. Subchains help scalability by reducing the amount of data stored on a cryptocurrency’s main blockchain, often called the “parent chain.”
A computer that is far more powerful than an ordianry computer due to its superior performance.
Supply Chains
All processes involved in delivering products and services from their providers to their customers.
A support is typically discussed in terms of technical analysis: It’s a price level at which the buying pressure on an asset is historically greater than the selling pressure, meaning the asset encounters “support” when its price attempts to dip lower than that level. A basic method when attempting to secure profit, especially in a volatile market like crypto, is to buy into a cryptoasset when it’s around a level of support and the trader expects that the support will hold.
Once an asset does break through a support level, that level often turns into a resistance level.
A feature of PIVX that allows users to complete transactions instantly without needing to wait for confirmations.
Swing trading is the strategy of buying an asset at a low price and selling it at a high price at a relatively high frequency — typically once a day or once every few days. The high volatility of many cryptocurrencies has led many traders to focus on this kind of strategy, though that high volatility can also make the strategy costly if you time your trades poorly.
#SWING = Zig zag price movement (Upwards and downwards)
Scamcoin is an altcoin created for the sole purpose of conning people out of their money.
Term used in a sentence:
– So, have you seen any Scamcoins in the market lately, John?
– Yeah I lost all of my pension savings in a Scamcoin last month.
Forks occur at specific block heights. The block height you have to be in a coin by to qualify for a fork is called a snapshot block. It is the block at which a snapshot of the ledger will be taken to determine the balances of the ledger of the fork.
Sockpuppet is an online identity used for the purposes of deception.
Term used in a sentence: I’m pretty sure that the account 1337CryptoHero is a sockpuppet.
When a person or people with a lot of money and coins buy and sell to themselves in a set range to create the illusion of volume.
Term used in a sentence: I used to do my TA and make trading decisions based on that. It never really played out in my favour.
A take-profit order is the “other half” of a stop-loss order: whereas a stop-loss order is put in place to limit one’s losses, a take-profit order is put in place to secure one’s profits. When this kind of limit order is put in place with an exchange, you will automatically sell the asset in question, immediately, if its value reaches a certain price.
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. A set of protocols that allow multiple computers to communicate.
Search
Term | Description |
51% Attack | If more than half the computer power on a network is run by a single person or a single group of people, then a 51% attack is in operation. This means this entity has full control of the network and can negatively affect a cryptocurrency by halting mining, stopping or changing transactions, and reusing coins. |
Term used in a sentence: I would never buy that cryptocurrency, it’s worthless. But hey, I got the units through an airdrop so no harm in that I guess.
Term used in a sentence: Man, Bitcoin is yesterday’s news. I’m all into altcoins now. It’s with the altcoins you can make the really big bucks.
Term used in a sentence: Did you see the ANN for that Russian ICO? Filled with typos and everything. I’m staying away from that.
Term used in a sentence: Have you heard that the updates of centralized exchange X’s market price for cryptocurrencies that they sell themselves is lagging behind? Sometimes up to a minute. I’m definitely going to try some arbitrage trading there.
Term used in a sentence: Your trading technique is really weird my friend. Your ask price is completely unreasonable, nobody will buy it at that price.
Term used in a sentence: When Bitcoin was at its ATH, I was seriously checking out Lambos online. Found a really nice one in Germany that I was minutes from buying. Now, one month later, I’m looking at skateboards instead…
Term used in a sentence: Look at John, he refuses to accept that the crypto he invested in never will recover. He’s such a bagholder.
Meaning: Testnet is a blockchain in a testing phase where you are not able to transfer cryptocurrencies to different recipients. This is different from a Mainnet, which is a blockchain in operation where you can make such transfers.
Term used in a sentence: The team behind the cryptocurrency has now launched its Testnet and in a few weeks or so, they say they’ll be ready for launch of the Mainnet.
Every coin has a trading symbol or ticker symbol. For Ripple, it is XRP, for Bitcoin BTC, for Litecoin LTC, for Ether (ETH), etc. People often refer to coins by their ticker symbol and not their name.
The Flippening
A potential future event wherein Ethereum’s market cap surpasses Bitcoin’s market cap, making Ethereum the most ‘valuable’ crypto-currency. This site shows the progress of the Flippening in real-time: http://www.flippening.watch/
This is gentlemen
“This is it, gentlemen”. Used to point out positive things that are currently happening. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=This%20is%20gentlemen
Tokens
Term used in a sentence:
– I never know which token I should invest in and which token I should stay away from.
– Nobody does.
Meaning: Trading Fee is the fee you pay when executing an order on a cryptocurrency exchange. This fee is normally a percentage of the order value. Industry average for centralized exchanges is arguably around 0.25% for both “takers” and “makers”. Exchanges sometimes charge “makers” lower fees, thus providing discounts on the trading fees for the makers. This is for the purpose of providing liquidity to the exchange and incentivize makers to tighten the spread in the order book. In our Cryptocurrency Exchange List, you can easily see which exchanges charges which trading fees, and choose the best one for you.
Term used in a sentence: The industry average of trading fees across the globe is arguably around 0.25%. Interestingly enough, the average trading fees are higher in South America than in the rest of the world.
Meaning: Tokenomics is the distribution and creation of certain tokens, and how they are put in place in the relevant token ecosystem. Factors such as: (i) how many tokens that can be mined, (ii) how many tokens that have been pre-mined, and (iii) how many tokens that are allocated through pre-sale and public sale, are important factors in a company’s tokenomics.
Term used in a sentence: I thought their technology looked promising but when looking at the tokenomics as presented in their White Paper, I’m not sure if I want to invest.
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.
To send a transaction a fee must be paid (with most cryptos). This fee is a reward for miners. In Ethereum it is called “Gas,” it might have a unique name for a given cryptocurrency.
Term used in a sentence:
– This is black eagle, the assassination of your mother-in-law is done. Have you sent me the Bitcoins, John?
– Yes, the TX was successfully carried out last night.
We don’t know any cryptocurrency terms starting with “U”. But we hate incompleteness. Please let us know if you know any cryptocurrency term starting with “U”!
uBTC – the unit for a microbitcoin (0.000001 BTC).
When a transaction is proposed, it is unconfirmed until the network has examined the blockchain to ensure that there are no other transactions pending involving that same coin. In the unconfirmed state, the transaction has not been appended to the blockchain.
User-Issued Assets, Tokens that can be created on the BitShares network.
A universal 2-factor (U2F) is a sort of specialized, encrypted USB drive that you insert into your computer as a method of 2-factor authentication. At the moment, YubiKey is one of the leading U2Fs available.
This refers to the amount of cryptocurrency sent to an entity but not sent on elsewhere. These amounts are considered unspent and are the data stored in the blockchain.
Software that changes an environment irreversibly after its release. For example, once Bitcoin’s code was launched and distributed amongst many machines, it virtually could not be stopped.
Unspent transaction output. For example, if an individual receives 1 BTC and holds it, they possess a UTXO.
Acronym for “unspent transaction output”.
Value at risk (VaR) is a statistical method of measuring a portfolio’s risk: It’s the maximum amount of value that one could expect to lose over a given time horizon. For example, if your crypto portfolio has a “95% 2-week VaR of $100,000 USD,” that means that there is 95% confidence, statistically speaking, that your portfolio will not lose more than $100,000 USD of value over the next two weeks.
An individual that invests in an emerging project with the hopes of earning a large return on their investment when the project succeeds.
A measure used to describe the rate at which currency is exchanged from transaction to transaction.
Phrased:
Sandy: “Bob, I just bought ethereum for 370$ on GDAX, and now it’s worth 10$”
A highly respected programmer responsible for writing Ethereum’s white paper and co-creating Ethereum’s technology.
Coins which haven’t ever been spent. Virgin coins were mined and left alone.
When it comes to managing your cryptocurrency holdings, it’s important to understand who actually has your holdings. If you have your holdings in a wallet — whether that’s a hardware wallet, a software wallet, or a paper wallet — you control your private key and actually have custody over those holdings. On the other hand, when you buy and hold cryptocurrencies on most exchanges, they store those holdings in wallets of their own. That’s why some people worry about centralized cryptocurrency exchanges: if they’re hacked, their investors’ money could vanish overnight.
The filename which stores public and private keys for a full node.
Term used in a sentence: I’m so broke right now. I’m even broker than the guy in the reference example for the glossary term Gwei! Not even a single wei in my crypto wallet.
Term used in a sentence:
– My biggest dream in the world is to become a whale.
– Well, your weight is almost 600 pounds so you’re not far from it, John.
Ex: Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin Whitepaper
Phrased:
Bob: “Sandy did you see the whitepaper for Bitconnect?”
Sandy: It doesn’t look like they have a whitepaper Bob.”
Bob: “Sandy you turd! Bitconnect is a scam. Always make sure to read the whitepaper before you invest in a cryptocurrency.”
Term used in a sentence: I read the White Paper and it was complete and utter bullshit. I can’t believe that people fell for this. Every person in the project team in the White Paper was made up and there wasn’t even a road map!
Meaning: Withdrawal fees are fees charged by cryptocurrency exchanges when you take out cryptocurrencies (or fiat currencies) from your account at the relevant exchange. Withdrawal fees charged for cryptocurrency withdrawals are normally a fixed fee per withdrawal. There are however certain exchanges that charge a withdrawal fee that is a percentage of the total withdrawn amount. This can add up to quite substantial amounts when you make bigger withdrawals. Check out our the Best Cryptocurrency Exchange List in the world (our own!) to see which exchanges charge which withdrawal fees.
Term used in a sentence: I traded at an exchange with really small trading fees, so I thought I was safe. But when I wanted to take home my profit, they hit me with their ridiculously excessive withdrawal fees. I thought I was going to start to cry.
An electronic transaction in which value is sent from one party to another.
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 (and thus they have “strong hands”), new investors with weak hands tend to get “weak knees,” and “panic sell” in a correction.
Wei
The smallest denomination of ether. 1 Ether = 1000000000000000000 Wei (1018)
We don’t know any cryptocurrency terms starting with “X”. But we hate incompleteness. Please let us know if you know any cryptocurrency term starting with “X”!
Ticker for Bitcoin used on Kraken and some other exchanges. Same as BTC.
An amount of value that must be paid to transfer value on a blockchain.
eXtensive Business Reporting Language. A language for defining and exchanging financial data that makes extracting useful data from a large body of data easier.
The native currency of Monero.
YABC means “Yet Another Bitcoin Company” and is a term indicating that there is really nothing special with this specific company and that it is just trying to surf the Bitcoin-wave.
A formula that uses data to make predictions about how financially secure businesses are.
Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge. Zk-SNARKs is a technology which allows cryptocurrencies to shield transaction information from uninvolved parties.
Payment that has been broadcast but is still pending inclusion on a blockchain.
During a Bitcoin transaction, the seller may choose to send the product before the transaction has received confirmations. This is generally a show of good faith but also runs the risk of using the Bitcoins twice.
A cryptocurrency that uses the Bitcoin protocol but offers increased anonymity in transactions.
Term used in a sentence:
Meaning: Zhoutonged is term coming from a man named Zhou Tong, who is the creator of Bitcoinica. Bitcoinica is a margin tradingplatform that no longer exists. Being Zhoutonged simply means loosing all your money.
Term used in a sentence:
– Weren’t you buying a house with Bitcoin in St Tropez last year?
– You haven’t heard? Yeah I was, but then I got Zhoutonged.
0-9
Meaning: 51% Attack is a situation where one single attacker has more than 50% of the total network processing power. In such case, the attacker could perform a double spend, amongst other things. Bitcoin (and most other cryptocurrencies) is designed with the belief that a single attacker will never have more than 50% of the total network processing power.
Term used in a sentence: Nobody will ever have more than 50% of the total network processing power when it comes to Bitcoin, so I’m not that worried about a 51% attack
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