A

Adam Back: Adam Back is a world-renowned British cryptographer, cypherpunk and crypto industry figure from the United Kingdom, now runs a company called Blockstream. Adam also famously created Hashcash (a proof of work system) back in 1997, it is now used in the Proof of Work algorithm in bitcoin mining.

Air Gap: If data cannot be accessed, then it cannot be infected or corrupted - this is the concept of an air gap.

Airdrop: An airdrop is a marketing gimmick that usually involves sending free coins to your wallet addresses in order to promote of a new crypto currency.

Algo-Trading (Algorithmic Trading): Algo-trading is an automated trading system where buy and sell orders are placed according to the rules of a computer program or algorithm.

Altcoins: Alternative cryptocurrencies to Bitcoin. Examples: Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin Dogecoin, etc. - also known as ‘Shitcoins’.

Amazon S3: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is a scalable, high-speed, and inexpensive web-based cloud storage service to store and retrieve data anytime and anywhere.

AML: An acronym for Anti-Money Laundering.

AMLD5: The European Union’s 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMDL5) is an update to the union’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) framework.

Apeing: Apeing is when a cryptocurrency trader buys a token shortly after the token project launch without conducting thorough research.

API: API stands for Application Programming Interface. It is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. APIs specify how software components should interact, such as what data to use and what actions should be taken.

Ashdraked: Being Ashdraked is a more detailed version of being Zhoutonged. It is when you lose all of your invested capital, but you do so specifically by shorting Bitcoin. The expression “Ashdraked” comes from a story of a Romanian cryptocurrency investor who insisted upon shorting BTC, as he had done so successfully in the past. When the price of BTC rose from USD 300 to USD 500, the Romanian investor lost all of his money.

ASIC machine: An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is a type of circuit that has been designed for a single specific purpose. An ASIC miner is a hardware device with the sole purpose of mining digital currency. ASIC miners are often made to mine a specific digital currency.

ASIC resistant: This refers to blockchains that have been designed to give no benefits when using ASIC’s over consumer hardware. e.g. Ethereum (ETH) & Monero (XMR) are both designed to be ASIC resistant.

Astroturfing: The practice of disguising marketing campaigns or otherwise sponsored messaging as the unprompted views of genuine community members.

ATH: An acronym for the ‘All Time High’ price of a cryptocurrency.

ATL: An acronym for the ‘All Time Low’ price of a cryptocurrency.

Atomic Swap: A way of letting people directly and cost-effectively exchange one type of cryptocurrency for another, at current rates, without needing to buy or sell.

Austrian School Of Economics: A set of economic philosophies originating in the late-19th and early-20th centuries in Vienna. Leaders from this school include Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. In contrast to classical economics, it argues that prices are determined by subjective factors.

Automated Market Maker (AMM): An automated market maker (AMM) is a system that provides liquidity to the exchange it operates in through automated trading

B

Bag: Crypto slang for a large quantity of a specific cryptocurrency. Alternatively used to refer to the contents of an individual's crypto portfolio.

Bag Holder: A bagholder is a person who at the end of the day, maybe from a pump and dump, was left ‘holding the bag,’ which means they wanted to sell at a higher price, but the market moved too fast.

Bakers: Baking is the process that Tezos uses in order to append new blocks of transactions to its blockchain.

Bank for International Settlements (BIS): The BIS is an international financial institution that promotes global monetary stability.

Banking Secrecy Act (BSA): The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) was implemented in the United States in 1970 to prevent criminals from concealing or laundering their illegal gains.

Basic Attention Token: The Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a blockchain-based system for tracking media consumers' time and attention on websites using the Brave web browser.

Beacon Chain: A blockchain that coordinates shard chains, manages staking and the registry of validators in a PoS cryptocurrency, such as Ethereum 2.0.

Bear: Someone who believes that prices in a given market will decline over an extended period. Such a person might be referred to as “bearish.”

Bearish: Characterized by or associated with falling crypto prices.

BEP-20: BEP-20 is a Binance Smart Chain token standard created with the intention of extending ERC-20.

BIP: (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal): A significant proposal to change Bitcoin at the protocol level. BIPs are reviewed by Bitcoin’s developer community as a next step in determining whether they will be integrated into the codebase. Relatively small improvements like bug fixes are not submitted as BIPs, but more directly as proposed changes to Bitcoin’s code.

Bitcoin: When the B is capitalized, it represents the technology, the protocol, and the software.

bitcoin: When the b is lower case, it is describing the unit of currency.

Bitcoiner: A person who is bullish on Bitcoin.

bitcoin dust: Bitcoin dust is a very small amounts of bitcoin leftover (or unspent) in a transaction that is lower in value then the fee to transfer it to another bitcoin address.

bitcoin dust attack: A bitcoin dust attack (or dusting) is when someone sends you a very small amount of bitcoin (e.g. 0.00000546 bitcoin or less) to try to unmask your identity.

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP): The standard format for documents proposing changes to Bitcoin. (BIP)

Bitcoin Maximalists: Bitcoin maximalists believe that Bitcoin, which is the world's most popular cryptocurrency, is the only digital asset that will be needed in the future. Maximalists believe that all other digital currencies are inferior to Bitcoin. [Also called Maxis or Bitcoin dominance maximalism]

Bitcointalk: Bitcointalk is the most popular online forum dedicated to Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

BitPay: BitPay is a Bitcoin payment service provider.

Block: A collection of Bitcoin transactions that have occurred during a period of time (typically about 10 minutes). If the blockchain is thought of as a ledger book, a block is like one page from the book.

Block Explorer: An application enabling a user to view details of blocks on a given blockchain. Also known as a blockchain browser.

Block Header: The metadata included in a Bitcoin block that serves as a summary of that block, including its height, hash, timestamp, Merkle root, difficulty and nonce, as well a the previous block’s hash.

Block Height: Every blockchain is made up of a series of blocks, organized sequentially. Each block stores information about transactions that were conducted on the blockchain during a given time period. Blocks are added to the end of the blockchain at given intervals. The block height, therefore, is a measure of the number of blocks that have been created on the blockchain prior to the block in question.

Block Reward: A block reward refers to the number of bitcoins you get if you successfully mine a block of the currency. The amount of the reward halves after the creation of every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years. The block reward started at 50 bitcoin.

Block Time: Block time refers to the approximate time it takes for a blockchain-based system to produce a new block. (For bitcoin this is about 10 minutes)

Blockchain: The authoritative record of every Bitcoin transaction that has ever occurred. This is the name of the distributed database.

Blockchain Trilemma: The blockchain trilemma is the set of three issues that plague blockchains: decentralization, security and scalability.

Blocksize War: This war was fought August 2015 and November 2017. It was about the amount of data allowed in each Bitcoin block. In 2009 created a 1 MByte block and many wanted to change it. Bitcoin Cash was a fork of bitcoin created in August 2017 resulting from the fallout.

Bots: Automated software that can carry out tasks such as cryptocurrency trades.

Brian Armstrong: Brian Armstrong is the founder of Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States.

BringBackMyCrypto: The world #1 crypto currency password recovery company (apparently) 🙂

BTFD: An acronym for “Buy The F**king Dip”

Bubble: When an asset is traded at a price exceeding that asset's intrinsic value.

Bullish: Characterized by or associated with rising crypto prices.

Burn/Burned: Cryptocurrency tokens or coins are considered “burned” when they have been purposely and permanently removed from circulation.

BTC: An abbreviation for the bitcoin currency.

Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT): Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is the property of a computer system that allows it to reach consensus regardless of the failure of some of its components.

Byzantine Generals’ Problem: A situation where communication that requires consensus on a single strategy from all members within a group or party cannot be trusted or verified.

C

Candlesticks: A candlestick chart is a graphing technique used to show changes in price over time. Each candle provides four points of information opening price, closing price, high, and low. Also known as “candles” for short.

Casascius Coin: A physical unit of Bitcoin that comes in the form of brass, silver or gold-plated coins.

Censorship Resistance: Censorship resistance refers to the idea that no party can prevent anyone from participating in a given platform or network.

Chargeback: The reversal of a bank payment or money transfer after it was authorized. Sometimes used to commit fraud. There are no chargebacks associated with the Bitcoin network.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME): The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is one of the largest exchanges dealing in the trading of futures and options in the United States.

Cipher: The name given to an algorithm that encrypts and decrypts information.

Ciphertext: Ciphertext is a result of encryption that has been performed on plaintext through the usage of an algorithm

Circulating Supply: This is the total number of coins that are in the public tradable space and is considered the Circulating Supply. Some coins can be locked, reserved or burned, therefore unavailable to public trading.

Cloud Mining: Cryptocurrency mining with remote processing power rented from companies.

Cold Storage: The storage of bitcoin private keysd that is totally disconnected from the internet. Typical cold storage includes USB drives and paper wallets.

Coinbase: The first transaction in each Bitcoin block, which distributes the subsidy earned when a miner successfully validates it as well as the cumulative fees for all transactions included in the block. The coinbase transaction effectively creates new bitcoin.

CoinJoin: A method for combining multiple Bitcoin payments from multiple senders into one transaction to obscure which spender paid which recipients, thus adding a layer of privacy to bitcoin transactions.

Coin Mixer: Coin mixers allow users to mix up transactions between different cryptocurrency addresses, so they become untraceable and cannot be followed back to the initial sender or receiver of the assets.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC): The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an independent federal regulatory agency responsible for regulation the U.S. derivatives market.

Confirmation: A bitcoin transaction is considered unconfirmed until it has been included in a block on the blockchain. Once a transaction is written included on the blockchain it has one confirmation. As each additional block gets added so another confirmation is added. Coinbase (the exchange) currently requires 3 confirmations to consider a bitcoin transaction final. For larger sums of money some people prefer 6 transactions.

Consensus: Since cryptocurrencies don’t have a central authority determining which transactions are valid and which are not and in which order they took place, the network of nodes, relying purely on software and algorithms, needs to reach an agreement regarding those factors. Such an agreement is called network consensus.

Consortium Blockchain: A privately owned and operated blockchain where a consortium shares information not readily available to the public, while relying on the immutable and transparent properties of the blockchain.

Cosinger: Another person that has partial control over your Bitcoin wallet, assuming you set it up this way.

Craig Wright: Craig Wright is an Australian computer scientist that has publicly claimed to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.

Cryptography: This is a branch of mathematics that is associated with the process of converting ordinary plain text into unintelligible text and vice-versa.

Cryptojacking: The use of another party’s computer to mine cryptocurrency without their consent.

Cypherpunk: The cypherpunk movement promotes the use of cryptography and other privacy-focused technologies to advance social and political progress.

D

DAG: DAG stands for Directed Acyclic Graph, and it is an ever-important element within the structure of Ethereum mining. DAG is a dataset over 1GB in size that is used by all Ethash coins to find solutions along the blockchain.

dApp: Shorthand for “decentralized application”

DAO: Acronym for “Decentralized Autonomous Organisation”. A DAO is founded upon and governed by a set of computer-defined rules and blockchain-based smart contracts.

DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging): An investment strategy using a fixed amount of dollars (or any other currency) to buy an asset at regular intervals. For bitcoin investing, this means buying BTC with a fixed amount of fiat currency at regular intervals, regardless of what the price is at any given interval.

Dead Cat Bounce: A temporary recovery in prices after a prolonged decrease.

Dead Coin: A cryptocurrency that is no longer in existence.

DeFi: DeFi is short for “decentralized finance,” it is umbrella term for a variety of financial applications in cryptocurrency or blockchain geared toward disrupting financial intermediaries.

Decentralized: Decentralization refers to the property of a system in which nodes or actors work in concert in a distributed fashion to achieve a common goal.

Decryption: The process of transforming encrypted data back into a format that is readable by a user or machine.

Derivative: A financial instrument deriving its value from the value of an underlying asset.

DEX (Decentralized Exchange): A cryptocurrency exchange where people can trade cryptocurrencies without a central company (exchange). These are usually run by a smart contract and can ensure that nobody besides yourself holds the private keys to the funds being traded. e.g. Bisq, Pancake Swap, Sushi Swap, Uni Swap.

Diamond Hands: Diamond Hands is a popular term on social media platforms. It refers to people who hold their coins even if their portfolio drops in value by more than 20%.

Difficulty: Difficulty in the cryptocurrency space refers 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.

Digital Commodity: A commodity that exists digitally, as opposed to in “meatspace.”

Digital Currency: A currency that exists only in digital form, as opposed to traditional physical currencies.

Digital Identity: Information used by a person or entity to identify themselves to a computer or network.

Digital Signature: A method for proving the authenticity of a digital communication.

Dip: A dip is when markets experience a short or protracted downturn.

Distributed Consensus: Collective agreement reached among nodes in a network.

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 simultaneousl

Dolphin: Someone with a moderate holding of cryptocurrency.

Dorian Nakamoto: Dorian Nakamoto is a Japanese-American physicist who some believe to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

Double Spend: This is when a malicious actor tries to send their bitcoins to 2 or more different recipients at the same time, this is double spending. Bitcoin mining and the blockchain are used to create a consensus on the network about which of the two transactions will confirm and be considered valid, thus avoiding a double spend.

Dump: A sudden sell-off of digital assets.

Dumping: A collective market sell-off that occurs when large quantities of a particular cryptocurrency are sold in a short period of time.

Dust Transactions: Miniscule amounts of Bitcoin in a wallet — with a value that would be outweighed by the cost of a transaction fee.

Dusting Attack: An attack that aims to uncover the identity of a wallet’s owner, information that can subsequently be used in phishing scams.

DYOR: Short for “Do Your Own Research”, and is defined as the process of doing research before making an investment in a cryptocurrency.

E

ELI5: Short for “explain like I’m five” — a plea for simplicity when crypto concepts are being explained.

Ethereum: Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. After Bitcoin, it is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. It was created in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin

ERC-20: This is 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.

ERC-721: A token standard for non-fungible Ethereum tokens.

Escrow: When an intermediary is used to hold the 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.

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA): A group of organizations and companies working together to further develop the Ethereum network.

Escrow: A method where assets or cash are held by a third party while a buyer and a seller complete a deal.

Ether: The form of payment used in the operation of the distribution application platform, Ethereum.

Ethereum Ice Age: The mechanism increases the difficulty exponentially over time, eventually leading to what is referred to as the “Ice Age.” This is when the blockchain becomes so difficult to mine that it freezes and stops producing blocks.

Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP): Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) describe standards for the Ethereum platform, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards. [Similar to BIP for Bitcoin]

EVM: An acronym for Ethereum Virtual Machine

Exchange: A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange, is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies.

Exchange Traded Fund (ETF): A security that tracks a basket of assets such as stocks, bonds, and cryptocurrencies but can be traded like a single stock.

Exit scam: An exit scam in the world of cryptocurrencies refers to when promoters of a cryptocurrency disappear with investors' money during or after an initial coin offering (ICO).

F

Faucet: A website that will pay you in cryptocurrencies for playing games or doing certain tasks. [They usually payout in small amounts i.e. Satoshis]

FIAT: Fiat money is a currency established as money, often by government regulation. Fiat money does not have intrinsic value and does not have use value. It has value only because a government maintains its value, or because parties engaging in exchange agree on its value. e.g. Dollars Euros and Pounds are all examples of FIAT currencies.

Fiat On-Ramp: A fiat-on ramp is a way to get cryptocurrency from fiat, or regular money. e.g. Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and other cryptocurrency exchanges are all examples of FIAT On-Ramps.

Fiat-Pegged Cryptocurrency: A coin, token or asset issued on a blockchain that is linked to a government or bank-issued currency.

Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN): The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a federal regulatory bureau of the United States Treasury.

Fish: Someone who has a small crypto investment.

Flash Loans: Flash loans are a type of uncollateralized lending used in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Flippening: This is the hypothetical moment of when Ethereum (ETH) overtakes Bitcoin (BTC) as the biggest cryptocurrency.

Flipping: An investment strategy where you buy something with the goal of reselling for a profit later, usually in a short period of time.

FOMO: Fear of missing out.

Fork: A cryptocurrency fork is an update to the software governing the distributed network that makes existing rules either valid or invalid, this results in spin-off versions of Bitcoin. A hard fork is when the nodes that form the foundation of the blockchain are changed in a manner in which they are no longer able to communicate with old unchanged nodes. A soft fork is a fork that still allows the nodes of the new cryptocurrency to communicate with the nodes of the old one, and vice versa. That means that, while updates are made, there is no need to create an entirely new blockchain.

FUD: An acronym that stands for “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.” It is a strategy to influence perception of certain cryptocurrencies or the cryptocurrency market in general by spreading negative, misleading or false information.

FUDster: Someone that is spreading FUD.

Full node: Some Nodes download a blockchain’s entire history in order to enforce its rules completely. As they fully enforce the rules, they are considered a Full Node.

Fungible: It means something can be replaced by another identical item i.e. mutually interchangeable. e.g. one dollar is the same as all other dollars.

Futures: A futures contract is a standardized legal agreement to buy or sell a particular commodity or asset at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future.

G

Gains: Gains refer to an increase in value or profit.

Gas: Gas is measurement given to an operation in the Ethereum network that relates to the computational power required to complete it.

Gavin Wood: Gavin Wood is the co-founder of Parity Technologies, and one of the founders of Ethereum.

Genesis block: The first block in a blockchain. The genesis block for bitcoin was laid down on 3rd Jan 2009. Also known as block 0.

Geotagged NFT: Geotagged non-fungible tokens (NFT) feature 3D versions of the street art alongside the corresponding geo-location. They allow art aficionados to own both the virtual and physical artwork without the need to remove the actual infrastructure it was originally painted on.

Geth: Geth, short for Go Ethereum, is a command-line interface that allows developers to run full Ethereum nodes, mine the cryptocurrency and execute smart contracts.

GitHub: GitHub is one of the most popular code hosting platforms, allowing developers to collaborate on various projects.

Gold Standard: The system, which was abandoned in the gepression of the 1930s, by which the value of a currency was defined in terms of gold, for which the currency could be exchanged.

Governance: In the world of cryptocurrencies, governance is defined as the people or organizations that have decision-making powers regarding the project.

Governance Token: A governance token is a token that can be used to vote on decisions that influence an ecosystem.

Graphical Processing Unit (GPU): More commonly known as a graphics card, it is a computer chip that creates 3D images on computers, but has turned out to be efficient for mining cryptocurrencies.

Group Mining: As opposed to solo mining, group mining is when multiple people mine together.

GWEI: Gwei is a denomination of the cryptocurrency ether (ETH), which is used on the Ethereum network. Ethereum is a blockchain platform, like Bitcoin, where users transact with each other to buy and sell goods and services without a middle man or interference from a third party. Gwei is also known as nanoether (or nano) and is the ninth power of the fractional ETH. 

H

Hal Finney: Hal Finney was a cryptographer and programmer who pioneered Bitcoin’s development and worked with Satoshi Nakamoto. Sadly Hal Finney died in Phoenix, Arizona, on August 28, 2014, as a result of complications of ALS and was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. He was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction when Satoshi Nakamoto sent him ten coins as a test, the amount at the time was worth next to nothing.

Halving: A bitcoin halving event is when the reward for mining bitcoin transactions is cut in half. This event also cuts in half bitcoin's inflation rate and the rate at which new bitcoins enter circulation. Halvinh happens roughly ever 4 years or more accurately every 210,000 blocks.

Hard Cap: A hard cap is the absolute maximum supply of a digital asset. e.g. The hard cap for bitoin is 21,000,000 bitcoin.

Hardware Wallet: A hardware wallet is a wallet for cryptocurrencies that usually resemble a USB stick. Both Trezor and Ledger are examples of hardware wallets.

Hash Rate: The hash rate is the measuring unit of the processing power of the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network must make intensive mathematical operations for security purposes. When the network reached a hash rate of 10 Th/s, it meant it could make 10 trillion calculations per second.

HD Wallet: An HD Wallet, or Hierarchical Deterministic wallet, is a new-age digital wallet that automatically generates a hierarchical tree-like structure of private/public addresses (or keys) At creation HD wallets also create a 12 or 24 word seed phrase that can be used to recreate the wallet.

HODL: “Hodl” is meant to encourage people to not impulsively sell when a cryptocurrency drops dramatically or rises to become highly profitable to sell. “HODL” also acts as an acronym for “Hold on for dear life.” You will often see the term in various cryptocurrency forums and social media circles. The term originated in 2013 with a spelling mistake for HOLD on the bitcointalk forum.

Hosted Wallet: A wallet managed by a third-party service.

Hot Storage: The online storage of private keys allowing for quicker access to cryptocurrencies. It is never advisable to store large amounts of cryptocurrency on hot storage.

Hot Wallet: A cryptocurrency wallet that is connected to the internet for hot storage of cryptoassets, as opposed to an offline, cold wallet with cold storage.

Howey Test: The Howey Test refers to the U.S. Supreme Court case for determining whether a transaction qualifies as an "investment contract," and therefore would be considered a security and subject to disclosure and registration requirements under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Hyperbitcoinization: The inflection point at which bitcoin becomes the world’s preferred medium of exchange.

I

ICO: An event in which a company (usually a start-up) tried to raise capital by selling a new cryptocurrency, which investors may purchase in the hope that the value of the cryptocurrency will increase, or to later exchange for services offered by that company. Be aware there are many scam ICO’s i.e. ones without road maps, no white papers or one that disproportionately favor the development team.

Initial Dex Offering: An initial dex offering (IDX) is an alternative to an initial coin offering (ICO).

Initial Exchange Offering: A type of crowdfunding where crypto start-ups generate capital by listing through an exchange.

Initial Public Offering (IPO): An initial public offering (IPO) is the process of a company offering shares for purchase on the stock market for the first time.

Initial Token Offering (ITO): ITOs are similar to initial coin offerings — but have more of a focus on offering tokens with intrinsic utility in the form of software or usage in an ecosystem.

Insider Trading: Insider trading happens when someone purchases or sells stocks while possessing private, material information about that stock.

Instamine: When a large portion of a coin’s total supply is distributed to investors shortly after launch.

Insurance Fund: An exchange insurance fund is used to cover any unexpected losses from leveraged trading. This fund is used to prevent traders from bankruptcy in the event of liquidations.

InterPlanetary File System (IPFS): The InterPlatery File System is a peer-to-peer, distributed system for storing and accessing files, as well as websites and applications, which relies on content addressing rather than location.

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE): The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is an American company founded in 2000 to purchase and operate global exchanges and clearing houses.

Interest Rates: A time-dependent charge or return made in proportion to the amount of money deposited, borrowed or lent.

Intermediary/Middleman: A person or entity that acts as the go-between different parties to bring about agreements or carry out directives.

Internet of Things: Internet of Things (IoT) is a global interconnected network of devices, sensors and software that can collect and exchange data with each other in real-time over the Internet.

Intrinsic Value: The intrinsic value of an asset depicts the asset’s actual worth based on a complex financial calculation rather than its current price.

Invest: Investing is when you put money in a financial scheme with the intent of making a gain.

J

JOMO: The opposite state of FOMO stands for “Joy of Missing Out.”

Java: Java is a general-purpose, class-based as well as object-oriented programming language.

K

Keylogger: A keylogger or keystroke logging software is a spying tool often used by hackers to record keystrokes made by users.

Kimchi Premium: Kimchi premium is a phenomenon occurring in South Korean crypto exchanges, making valuations appear higher than on other international exchanges.

KYC: Know Your Customer.

L

Lambo: Slang for the type of car that many crypto enthusiasts aspire to buy when their digital assets “moon” - or rise in value substantially.

Layer 0: Layer 0 is a network framework running beneath the blockchain. It is made up of protocols, connections, hardware, miners, and everything else that forms the foundation of the blockchain ecosystem.

Layer 2: Layer 2 is the name given to a scaling solution that enables high throughput of transactions whilst fully inheriting the security of the underlying blockchain that it is built on. 

Layer-1 Blockchain: A layer-1 blockchain is a set of solutions that improve the base protocol itself

Ledger Nano: The Ledger Nano is a hardware wallet for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many other altcoins. Like other hardware wallets, it stores the user’s private keys in a secure hardware device, keeping them away from criminals while still giving the user easy access to their cryptocurrencies. What makes the Ledger Nano so useful is the combination of high security and ease of use. Users can quickly make payments with their digital currency but at the same time know that their coins are safely stored.

Lightning network: A peer-to-peer system for cryptocurrency micropayments that is focused on low latency, instant payments. They are sometimes called second layer solutions.

Limit Order: A limit order is a type of order to purchase or sell a security at a specified price or a better one. 

Limit Order/Limit Buy/Limit Sell: Tools that enable traders to automatically buy or sell cryptocurrencies on a trading platform when a certain price target is reached.

Liquidity: The liquidity of a cryptocurrency is defined by how easily it can be bought and sold without impacting the overall market price.

Liquidity Pool: Liquidity pools are crypto assets that are kept to facilitate the trading of trading pairs on decentralized exchanges.

Liquidity Provider: Liquidity providers are decentralized exchange users who fund a liquidity pool with tokens they own.

M

Man-in-the-Middle Attack (MITM): A man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) attack is a general term for a cyberattack where a perpetrator positions himself in a conversation between two parties either to secretly eavesdrop.

Margin Call: When an investor’s account value falls below the margin maintenance amount.

Margin Trading: A practice where a trader uses borrowed funds from a broker to trade a cryptocurrency.

Market: An area or arena, online or offline, in which commercial dealings are conducted.

Market Capitalization/Market Cap/MCAP: Total capitalization of a cryptocurrency’s price. It is one of the ways to rank the relative size of a cryptocurrency.

Market Maker, Market Taker: The maker places an order (to buy or sell at a quoted price), while a taker accepts that placed order (to execute the buy or sell at the quoted price)

Market Order/Market Buy/Market Sell: A purchase or sale of a cryptocurrency on an exchange at the current best available price.

Market Signal: Through signalling, market participants are essentially creating a volatile market which can help to point out the opportunities to the investors.

Masternodes: Masternodes are a server maintained by its owner, somewhat like full nodes, but with additional functionalities such as anonymizing transactions, clearing transactions, and participating in governance and voting. It was initially popularized by Dash to reward owners of these servers for maintaining a service for the blockchain.

Max Supply: The best approximation of the maximum amount of coins that will ever exist in the lifetime of the cryptocurrency.

MCAP: Short for market capitalization

Miner: A group of computers that add new transactions to blocks and verify blocks created by other miners. Miners collect transaction fees and are rewarded with new bitcoins for their services. Mining is a zero sum game and the winner takes all.

Multi-Sig: Multi-signature (or multisig for short) refers to requiring multiple keys to authorize a Bitcoin transaction, rather than a single signature from one key. It has a number of applications.

Mempool: A mempool (a contraction of memory and pool) is a cryptocurrency node's mechanism for storing information on unconfirmed transactions. It acts as a sort of waiting room for transactions that have not yet been included in a block.

Merkle Tree: A tree structure in cryptography, in which every leaf node is labelled with the hash of a data block and every non-leaf node is labelled with the cryptographic hash of the labels of its child nodes. Hash trees allow efficient and secure verification of the contents of blockchains, as each change propagates upwards so verification can be done by simply looking at the top hash.

MetaMask: An online digital wallet that allows users to manage, transfer and receive Ethereum, operating as an extension to a regular browser.

Metaverse: A metaverse is a digital universe that contains all the aspects of the real world, such as real-time interactions and economies. It offers a unique experience to end-users.

M of N: The number of cosigners that must provide signatures (M) out of the total number of cosigners (N) in order for a multi-signature bitcoin transaction to take place. A common M of N value is "2 of 3" meaning two of the three cosigners' signatures are required.

MicroBitcoin (uBTC): One millionth of a bitcoin or 0.000001 of a bitcoin. Often confused as a fork of Bitcoin.

Micropayment: A micropayment is essentially a small transaction that is carried out online and can be as small as a fraction of a cent.

Microtransaction: A business model where very small payments can be made in exchange for common digital goods and services, such as pages of an ebook or items in a game.

Mineable: Some cryptocurrencies have a system through which miners can be rewarded with newly-created cryptocurrencies for creating blocks through contributing their hash power. Cryptocurrencies with this ability to generate new cryptocurrencies through the process of confirmation is said to be mineable. * Not Mineable Some cryptocurrencies are generated only through other mechanisms, such as annual inflation through staking. These cryptocurrencies are said to be not mineable.

Mining: A process where blocks are added to a blockchain, verifying transactions. It is also the process through which new bitcoin or some altcoins are created.

Mining Contract: Another term for cloud mining, where users can rent or invest in mining capacity online.

Mining Difficulty: The mining difficulty of a cryptocurrency is how difficult it is to find the right hash for the next block.

Mining Farm: A mining farm is when a group of miners mine together for a variety of advantageous reasons, like energy use.

Mining Pool: An arrangement where a number of miners pool their resources to increase their chances of finding the next block.

Mining Reward: The income that miners receive after finding and validating a block.

Mining Rewards: Mining rewards are the rewards that crypto miners receive for mining a new block on the blockchain.

Mining Rig: Equipment that is used for mining cryptocurrencies.

Mt. Gox: Bitcoin’s first major exchange. It was shut down in February 2004 after losing around 850,000 bitcoin.

Multisignature: Multisignature crypto wallets require more than a single signature to sign a transaction.

N

Newb: A newb is someone that is new to a certain industry.

Nick Szabo: Nick Szabo is the inventor of Bit Gold and the use of smart contracts.

Nifty Gateway: Nifty Gateway is an NFT platform owned by the Winklevoss twins.

Nocoiner: Someone who heard about bitcoin relatively early on, but made the conscious decision not to invest and now potentially holds a grudge against the project for it.

Node: Any computer that is connected to a blockchain’s network is referred to as a Node.

Non-Custodial: Usually referring to the storage of keys, in relation to wallets or exchanges, a non-custodial setup is one in which private keys are held by the user directly.

Non-Fungible Token: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are cryptocurrencies that do not possess the property of fungibility.

Nonce: When a miner hashes a transaction, a random number is generated called a Nonce. The parameters from which that number is chosen changes based on the difficulty of the transaction.

Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins: Used to stress the importance of personally controlling private keys in bitcoin ownership.

O

Off-Ledger Currency: A currency that is created (minted) outside of the specified blockchain ledger but is accepted or used.

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC): The Office of the Comptroller (OCC) is a U.S. Treasury branch that regulates all national banks, federal savings associations, federal branches and foreign bank agencies

Offline Storage: The act of storing cryptocurrencies in devices or systems not connected to the internet.

On-Chain: Transactions that are recorded on the blockchain itself and shared with all of the participants are done on-chain.

On-Ledger Currency: A currency that is both minted on the blockchain ledger and also used on the blockchain ledger, such as Bitcoin.

One Cancels the Other Order (OCO): A situation where two orders for cryptocurrency are placed simultaneously, with a rule in place to enforce that if one is accepted, the other is cancelled.

Online Storage: The act of storing cryptocurrencies in devices or systems connected to the internet.

Open Source: Open source is a philosophy, with participants believing in the free and open sharing of information in pursuit of the greater common good.

Open/Close: The price at which a cryptocurrency opens at a time period or the programming principle of software parts being extendable.

OpenSea: OpenSea is a decentralized P2P platform for NFTs.

Optimistic Rollup: An optimistic rollup is a type layer 2 scaling solution that relies on off-chain computation to trustlessly record transactions that happen in the layer 2.

Option: A contract giving the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset or instrument at a specified strike price.

Options Market: A public market for options, giving the buyer an option to buy or sell a cryptocurrency at a specific strike price, on or before a specific date.

Oracle Manipulation: Oracle manipulation is when an oracle smart contract is manipulated by hackers.

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.

Orange Pill: "Taking the Orange Pill" is when a person has become aware of the existence of Bitcoin, and then spends countless hours trying to disprove the Bitcoin thesis. Once a person has exhausted all arguments and finally accepts the conclusion that Bitcoin will inevitably be the next Global Reserve Asset, they are said to have been Orange Pilled. The Orange Pill is a reference to the Movie The Matrix, when Neo becomes aware his reality is not as it appears. Neo is offered a choice between the Blue Pill, that will return him home to blissful ignorance, or taking the Red Pill, that will open his eyes to the truth and take him further down the rabbit hole. The color Orange refers to the orange color of the Bitcoin Logo.

Order Book: An order book comprises different key information regarding an asset.

Orphan: A valid block on the blockchain that is not part of the main chain.

Orphaned Block: An orphaned block is a block where the parent block does not exist or is unknown.

Over-the-Counter (OTC): Over-the-counter is defined as a transaction made outside of an exchange, often peer-to-peer through private trades.

Over-the-Counter (OTC) Trading: Over-the-counter refers to the process of how securities are traded through a broker-dealer network as opposed to a centralized exchange.

Overbought: When a cryptocurrency has been purchased by more and more investors over time, with its price increasing for an extended period of time.

Oversold: When a cryptocurrency has been sold by more and more investors over time, with its price decreasing for an extended period of time.

P

Paper wallet: Storing your wallet code (your private key) on a physical document makes it a Paper Wallet. Not considered a safe way to store your coins anymore.

Parachain: Parachains are application-specific data structures that run in parallel to each other within Polkadot.

Passive Income: Passive income is money produced from investments that do not require the earner to be actively involved.

Password Manager: A password manager is a tool or software that stores all sorts of passwords needed for online applications and services.

Paul Le Roux: Paul Le Roux is a criminal kingpin that many believe could be the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Payee: A payee is a party within an exchange of goods or even services that can receive payment.

Payment Channel: In Bitcoin, a payment channel usually refers to a smart-contract-based technique that allows users to make multiple Bitcoin transactions while settling only one transaction to the Bitcoin network, thus saving on fees and transaction times. The Lightning Network leverages payment channels.

Peer-to-peer: A type of network where participants communicate directly with each other rather than through a centralized server. The Bitcoin network is peer to peer.

Pig Butchering: This scam started in China and is called ‘sha zhu pan’ in Chinese. The scam involves a bad actor building an often romantic relationship, with the victim over many weeks/months, [similar to the fattening of the pig], before convincing them to invest money into a fake venture, i.e. slaughtering the animal. This type of scam has being going on for sometime and does not necessarily involve crypto currencies, but recently more and more of the scams are crypto related.

PlanB: PlanB is a anonymous Dutch individual who created the bitcoin ‘store of value’ model that treats bitcoin as if it were a store of value like gold, silver or platinum - see https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD

PND: Acronym for “Pump and Dump”

Poof of Stake: The Proof of Stake (PoS) concept states that a person can mine or validate block transactions according to how many coins they hold. This means that the more coins owned by a miner, the more mining power they have.

Pool mining: A mining pool is a joint group of cryptocurrency miners who combine their computational resources over a network to strengthen the probability of finding a block or otherwise successfully mining for cryptocurrency. The other type of mining is solo mining, where you mine alone - today is it almost impossible to mine bitcoin alone on your home pc due to the hugely intensive processor power required.

Pre-IDO: Pre-IDO refers to token offerings before the actual initial DEX offering (IDO) takes place.

Pre-Mine: When some or all of a coin’s initial supply is generated during or before the public launch.

Pre-Sale: The sale of a cryptocurrency, ahead of it going public, to specific investors.

Private Key: A private key in the context of Bitcoin is a secret number that allows bitcoins to be spent. Every Bitcoin wallet contains one or more private keys, which are saved in the wallet file. The private keys are mathematically related to all Bitcoin addresses generated for the wallet. You must NEVER reveal your private key to anyone, if you do they have control over your bitcoin. A bitcoin private key looks like this: 5Hwgr3u458GLafKBgxtssHSPqJnYoGrSzgQsPwLFhLNYskDPyyA

Proof of burn: Proof of burn is one of the several consensus mechanism algorithms implemented by the blockchain to make sure that all the nodes come to an agreement about the true state of the blockchain network. This algorithm is implemented to avoid the possibility of any cryptocurrency coin double spending. [Other consensus algorithms are proof of work & proof of stake]

Proof-of-Developer (PoD): Any verification that provides evidence of a real, living software developer who created a cryptocurrency, in order to prevent an anonymous developer from making away with any raised funds without delivering a working model.

Proof-of-Donation: Proof-of-donation refers to the integration of charitable donations into the functionality of a blockchain.

Proof-of-Replication: Proof-of-replication (PoRep) is the way that a storage miner proves to the network that they are storing an entirely unique copy of a piece of data.

Proof-of-Spacetime: In simplest terms, PoSt means that someone can now guarantee that they are spending a certain amount of space for storage. 

Proof of Stake: The Proof of Stake (PoS) concept states that a person can mine or validate block transactions according to how many coins they hold. This means that the more coins owned by a miner, the more mining power they have.

Proof-of-Validation: Proof-of-validation (PoV) is a unique proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism that works to achieve consensus through staked validator nodes.

Proof of Work: A piece of data that requires a significant amount of computation to generate but requires a minimal amount of computation to be verified as being correct. Bitcoin uses proof of work to generate new blocks.

Public Key: A bitcoin public key is another large number but allows bitcoin to be locked and received. It's called a public key because it is meant to be shared publicly and enables you to receive funds. Public keys start with the number 1, 3 or the letters bc e.g. the following are all examples of bitcoin public keys:

1J7mdg5rbQyUHENYdx39WVWK7fsLpEoXZy

3EktnHQD7RiAE6uzMj2ZifT9YgRrkSgzQX

bc1qw508d6qejxtdg4y5r3zarvary0c5xw7kv8f3t4

Pump and Dump (P&D) Scheme: A form of fraud involving the artificial inflation of the price of a cryptocurrency with false and misleading positive statements.

Pyramid Scheme: A pyramid scheme is a scam with a hierarchical top-down structure.

Q

QR Code: A scannable code that in the context of Bitcoin often represents a bitcoin address.

Quantum Computing: A computer that harnesses phenomena from quantum mechanics in order to perform much more efficient computations than older, classical computer technologies are capable of.

Quorum: A quorum is the minimum number of members of an assembly or group that must be present at any of its meetings to make the proceedings of that meeting valid.

R

Recovery Phrase: A recovery phrase is a series of 12-24 words you are asked to write down when creating your hardware wallet. Many people recommend neatly writing 2 or 3 copies of this backup phrase with a pen and store them in various safe places.

REKT: Slang term for “wrecked” and a term used to describe a bad loss in a trade.

ROI: Short for “Return on Investment,” the ratio between the net profit and cost of investing.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a type of technology that uses radio waves to passively identify a tagged item or individual.

Raiden Network: An off-chain scaling solution aiming to enable near-instant, low-fee and scalable payments on the Ethereum blockchain, similar to Bitcoin's proposed Lightning Network.

Rank: The relative position of a cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Ransomware: Ransomware is a type of malware used by hackers to steal or encrypt their victims’ files to extort them for a ransom in exchange for file decryption or restoration.

Rebase: A token designed so that the circulating supply adjusts automatically according to price fluctuations.

Recovery Seed: A recovery seed is a cryptographically derived security code composed of a list of random words, typically ranging between 12 and 14.

Regulated: Regulation is when something is controlled by a specific set of rules.

Replace By Fee: Replace By Fee (or RBF) refers to a method (supported by some wallets) that allows a sender to replace a “stuck” or unconfirmed transaction with a new one that uses a higher fee. This is done to make sure a transaction confirms as quickly as possible. The “replacement” transaction uses the same inputs as the original one.

Rehypothecation: Rehypothecation is the practice where banks, and even the brokers themselves, use assets that have been posted as collateral by their clients for their own purposes.

Relative Strength Index (RSI): A form of technical analysis that serves as a momentum oscillator, measuring the speed and change of price movements.

Relay Chain: The Relay Chain is the central chain that is used by the Polkadot network.

Repair Miners: Repair miners are a proposed type of mining node within the Filecoin network.

Replay Attack: Replay attacks are network security attacks where the comms between a sender and receiver is intercepted.

Replicated Ledger: A copy of a distributed ledger in a network that is distributed to all participants in a cryptocurrency network.

Resistance (Line/Level): The highest price level of an asset during a specific period.

Retargeting: A retargeting algorithm, also referred to as a difficulty adjustment algorithm, is used on proof-of-work blockchains, such as Bitcoin. 

Revenue Participation Tokens: Revenue participation tokens are a two token system that uses one participation token and one payout token.

Reverse Indicator: A person whom you may use as an indicator of how not to place buy or sell orders because they are always wrong at predicting price movements of cryptocurrencies.

Ring CT (Confidential Transactions): RingCT is how transaction amounts are hidden in Monero.

Ring Signature: A cryptographic digital signature that obfuscates the identities of two parties within a transaction.

Roadmap: A roadmap is a high-level visual summary that helps map out the vision as well as the direction of a specific product.

Roger Ver: Roger Ver, also known as Bitcoin Jesus, was passionate about Bitcoin then during the blockchain wars he forked bitcoin and created Bitcoin Cash. He owns the website www.bitcoin.com which is associated with Bitcoin Cash [www.bitcoin.org is the website for Bitcoin]

Roth IRA: Roth IRAs are generally the best investment option when you think your taxes will be higher in retirement than they are now.

Rug Pull: A rug pull is a type of scam where developers abandon a project and take their investors' money.

Rust: Rust is a multi-paradigm programming language, similar to C++.

Ryuk Ransomware: Ryuk ransomware is a ransomware attack first discovered in August 2018.

S

Satoshi: is the smallest unit of Bitcoin. It is named after the creator of bitcoin (Satoshi Nakamoto). Each BTC is divisible into one hundred million Satoshi (100,000,000), thus 1 Satoshi is equal to 0.00000001 bitcoin.

Satoshi Disappear Day: April 28th is Satoshi Disappear Day! This is the anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto stepping away from the project.

Satoshi Nakamoto: This is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original source code.

Satoshi’s prayer:

“Our father who art in hiding,
Satoshi be thy name.
Thy Bitcoin come.
Thy will be done
in finance as it is in blockchain.
Give us this day our next block,
And protect our network,
As we protect our private keys,
And lead us not into inflation,
But deliver us from fiat.
For thine is thy blockchain,
and the power, and the memes,
Forever. Amen.”

Sats: “Sats” is term that is short for “satoshis,” derived from the first name of Satoshi Nakamoto. It is the smallest fraction of a bitcoin and 1 sat is equal to 0.00000001 of a bitcoin.

Schnorr Signature: A digital signature created with the Schnorr signature algorithm. While Bitcoin currently uses the ECDSA algorithm for generating cryptographic signatures, many developers see Schnorr Signatures as offering advantages, including reduction of the size of multisignature payments.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): An independent agency of the United States federal government, responsible for enforcing federal securities laws, proposing securities rules, and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other related activities and organizations.

Seed Phrase: A single starting point when deriving keys for a deterministic wallet.

Scrypt: An alternative proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm to SHA-256, used in Bitcoin mining. Scrypt mining relies more heavily on memory than on pure CPU power, aiming to reduce the advantage that ASICs have and hence increasing network participation and energy efficiency.

Segregated Witness: (also called SegWit) is the process of separating digital signature data from transaction data. This lets more transactions fit onto one block in the blockchain, improving transaction speeds.

SHA-256: Secure Hash Algorithm 256 or SHA 256 is defined as one of the most secure ways to protect digital information. SHA 256 is a math process that generates a 256 bit (64 character long) random sequence of letters and numbers (hash) out of any input. A hash is as a mathematical computer process that takes information and turns it into letters and numbers of a certain length. Hashing is used to make storing and finding information quicker because hashes are usually shorter and easier to find. Hashes also make information unreadable and so the original data can become confidential. e.g. “I like bitcoin” can be hashed and will equal: ad3e58f21b94f32dcadca6b71df4c31a18179f38011551a17a80d0ff065d22c5

Shilling: Shilling is when a person or group of people covertly or overtly promote a cryptocurrency. In attempts to create buzz, the person(s) publicly endorse the product. For example, Elon Musk's very suggestive tweets about Bitcoin and Dogecoin.

Shitcoin: A term used to describe a cryptocurrency not expected to have a positive future also a term used by bitcoin maximalists to describe very other coin!

Side Chain: A blockchain ledger that runs in parallel to a primary blockchain, where there is a two-way link between the primary chain and sidechain.

SIM-Swap: A type of scam that exploits two-factor authentication measures.

Simplified Payment Verification (SPV): A lightweight client to verify blockchain transactions.

Stable coin: A stablecoin is a new class of cryptocurrencies that attempts to offer price stability and are backed by a reserve asset. Stablecoins have gained traction as they attempt to offer the best of both worlds—the instant processing and security or privacy of payments of cryptocurrencies, and the volatility-free stable valuations of fiat currencies. The first stablecoin, created in 2014, was Tether (USDT), which many other stablecoins are modelled after. Users receive one token for every dollar they deposit. In theory, the tokens can then be converted back into the original currency at any time, also at a one-for-one exchange rate. Tether is currently the 3rd largest crypto currency in the world (behind bitcoin and ethereum).

Smart Contract: A smart contract is a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. The code controls the execution, and transactions are trackable and irreversible.

Solidity: Solidity is an object-oriented programming language for writing smart contracts. It is used for implementing smart contracts on various blockchain platforms .e.g. Ethereum.

Spoon (Blockchain): A hard spoon is a meta-protocol that exists on top of a blockchain.

Spot: A contract or transaction buying or selling a cryptocurrency for immediate settlement, or payment and delivery, of the cryptocurrency on the market.

Spot Market: A public market in which cryptocurrencies are traded for immediate settlement. It contrasts with a futures market, in which settlement is due at a later date.

Spyware: Spyware is a malware that records all of the activities on an electronic device.

Stablecoin: A cryptocurrency with extremely low volatility, sometimes used as a means of portfolio diversification. Examples include gold-backed cryptocurrency or fiat-pegged cryptocurrency.

Stacking Sats: This means purchasing small amounts of bitcoin (called Satoshis or Sats for short) over long periods of time.

Staking: Participation in a proof-of-stake (PoS) system to put your tokens in to serve as a validator to the blockchain and receive rewards.

Staking Pool: Staking Pools allows users to combine their resources in order to increase their chances of earning rewards. This mechanism offers more staking power to the network to verify and validate new blocks.

Stale Block: A block which was successfully mined but not included on the current longest blockchain, usually because another block at the same height was added to the chain first.

State Channel: A second-layer scaling solution that reduces the total on-chain transactions necessary, moving the transactions off-chain and letting participants sign to the main chain after multiple off-chain transactions.

Stop-Loss Order: A stop-loss order in trading allows investors to determine the lowest price at which they are willing to sell an asset and trigger an automatic sell order when and if this price is reached.

Storage (Decentralized): Decentralized storage refers to the concept of storing files online by splitting them into encrypted fragments and delegating these fragments to multiple nodes on a distributed network, e.g. a blockchain.

Storage Miners: Storage miners are cryptocurrency miners who rely on offering sufficient storage space for nodes to reach consensus and validate transactions.

Store of Value: A store of value is an asset, commodity or currency that can be saved, retrieved as well as exchanged in the future without it losing any value.

Substrate: Substrate is a web app development framework developed by Parity Technologies.

Supercomputer: A supercomputer is a superior version of a general-purpose computer, which has a significantly increased capacity and processing power.

Supply Chain: A supply chain is the collection of steps that a product or service needs to go through before reaching the final customer.

Supply Chain Attack: A supply chain attack is a tactic used by hackers to compromise third-party suppliers to major corporations, governments and organizations to gain valuable information.

Sybil Attack: Sybil attacks undermine an online network by creating many IDs, accounts or nodes to upset the balance of power.

Symbol: The ticker of a cryptocurrency; for example, Bitcoin's symbol is BTC.

Synthetic Asset: Synthetic assets, sometimes referred to as synths, are a combination of cryptocurrencies and traditional derivative assets. In other words, synths are tokenized derivatives.

T

Tainted coins: Tainted Bitcoin is a concept that suggests that Bitcoin or cryptocurrency associated with illicit activity is “dirty” and that it remains that way indefinitely.

Taproot: Taproot is an instantiation of a soft fork for Bitcoin, intended to both improve privacy and improve other aspects tied to more complex transactions.

To The Moon: A phrase evoked by cryptocurrency enthusiasts when speculating as to where the profits and/or technological advances behind the digital economy will take them.

Testnet: When a cryptocurrency creator is testing out a new version of a blockchain, they do so on a Test Net. This runs like a second version of the blockchain but doesn’t impact the value associated with the primary, active blockchain.

This Is Gentlemen: Originally an error in writing the full “This is it, gentlemen”. It is now used as an introduction for good news.

Ticker Symbol: The ticker symbol is the unique combination of letters assigned to stocks or cryptocurrencies that makes them distinguishable on exchanges and other trading applications. e.g. the ticket symbol for bitcoin is BTC.

Transaction Fee: Bitcoin transaction fees (sometimes referred to as mining fees) allow users to prioritize their transaction (sometimes referred to as tx) over others and get included faster into Bitcoin's ledger of transactions known as the blockchain.

Tor: Tor is a decentralized network that anonymizes users' web traffic by encrypting it and routing it through a series of relays before it reaches its final destination. You can download TOR from the website torproject for Windows, MAC, Android and Linux.

Total Supply: The total amount of coins in existence right now, minus any coins that have been verifiably burned. *see Circulating Supply and Max Supply.

Total Value Locked (TVL): Тotal value locked represents the number of assets that are currently being staked in a specific protocol.

Trade Volume: The amount of the cryptocurrency that has been traded in the last 24 hours.

Trading Bot: A crypto trading bot is essentially a program that is designed to automate cryptocurrency asset trading on the behalf of the trader.

Trading Tournament: Trading tournaments are unique crypto trading campaigns organized by cryptocurrency exchanges, encouraging users to trade more to win incentives, such as tokens, hardware wallets and more/

Trading Volume: Тrading volume refers to the total number of shares (or tokens/coins) that have been exchanged between buyers and sellers of a given asset during trading hours of a certain day.

Trustless: An environment where there is no centralized authority.

Tumbler: A mixing service that helps make cryptocurrency funds and transactions more anonymous.

Turing Completeness: If a machine is capable of performing all conceivable programmable calculations, then it is Turing complete. This machine can process any computable function and includes most modern computers. Ethereum is considered turing complete and Bitcoin is considered turing incomplete.

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Two-factor authentication (2FA) is method of access that requires two different forms of authentication.

U

Unconfirmed: 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.

US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC): The US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the US Treasury Department.

UTC Time: Coordinated Universal Time.

Unbanked: Unbanked refers to those that are either unable to access banking services, or choose not to.

Unconfirmed: A state in which a transaction has not been appended to the blockchain.

Unpermissioned Ledger: A public ledger that is open to anyone, without being controlled by a single owner.

Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO): A transaction that is left unspent after being completed, similar to leftover change after making a purchase.

Unstoppable Domains: Unstoppable Domains is the name of a San-Francisco based company that provides blockchain-based domain names to users.

Utility Token: Tokens that are designed specifically to be able to help people use something.

V

Validator: A participant on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, involved in validating blocks for rewards.

Value Overflow Incident: On 15th August 2010 an unknown hacker took advantage of an obscure overflow bug within bitcoin. It was discovered that block 74,638 contained a transaction that created 184,467,440,737.09551616 bitcoins for three different addresses. Many well known developers like Jeff Garzik, Gavin Andresen and Bitcoin’s inventor Satoshi Nakamoto participated in addressing the issue. The block chain was forked to solve the problem. Although many unpatched nodes continued to build on the "bad" block chain, the "good" block chain overtook it at a block height of 74,691 at which point all nodes accepted the "good" blockchain as the authoritative source of Bitcoin transaction history.

Vanity Address: A cryptocurrency public address with custom letters and numbers, usually picked by its owner.

Vaporware: A cryptocurrency project that is never actually developed.

Venture Capital: A form of private equity provided to fund small, early-stage firms considered to have high growth potential.

Verification Code: A verification code is a security protection method that is used to avoid internet bots from abusing or even spamming various online services. 

Virgin Bitcoin: Bitcoin that can be considered “brand new” in that it has been released as a result of mining, but not yet used in any transactions. The source of these coins on bitcoin in ‘coinbase’ [very different from the exchange called Coinbase]

Virtual Automated Market Makers (vAMMs): A virtual Automated Market Maker (vAMM) is a system that provides synthetic (or virtual) liquidity, allowing traders to buy and sell derivatives entirely on the blockchain.

Virtual Reality (VR): Virtual reality (VR) technology is used to simulate an immersive artificial world that can mimic or transcend reality. V

Virus: Computers are usually infected with a virus when a user unknowingly installs it via a downloaded file. A virus is a program that self replicates

Vitalik Buterin: Vitalik Buterin is one of the creators of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin.

Volatility: A statistical measure of dispersion of returns, measured by using the standard deviation or variance between returns from that same security or market index.

Volume: How much cryptocurrency has been traded over a set period, such as the past 24 hours.

W

Wallet: A place where cryptocurrency users can store, send and receive digital assets.

Wallstreetbets (WSB): Wallstreetbets, otherwise known as /r/wallstreetbets or WSB, is a subreddit for participants to discuss stock and options trading. 

WannaCry Ransomware: WannaCry is a piece of ransomware that can infect and spread rapidly through a number of computer networks. 

Wash Trade: A form of market manipulation in which investors create artificial activity in the marketplace by simultaneously selling and buying the same cryptocurrencies.

Watchlist: A watchlist is a feature of the website where users can create their own lists of cryptocurrencies to follow. Alternative definition A watchlist is a set of pages a user has selected to monitor for changes.

Weak Hands: An investor prone to panic selling at the first sign of a price decline.

Web 1.0: Web 1.0 is a term that is often used to describe the early version of the internet.

Web 2.0: Web 2.0 describes the current state of the web, which supports more user-generated content and stability for front-end users than its predecessor, Web 1.0

Web 3.0: Web 3.0 is the coming generation of the internet, sometimes called the intelligent web.

Web3 Foundation: The Web3 Foundation was created to foster new technologies and applications in the field of decentralized web software protocols.

Wei: The smallest fraction of an Ether, with each Ether to 1000000000000000000 Wei.

Whales: A bitcoin whale is a cryptocurrency term that refers to individuals or entities that hold large amounts of bitcoin. Whales hold enough cryptocurrency that they have the potential to manipulate the currency valuations. It is estimated 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market.

Whirlpool bitcoin: All Bitcoin transactions are public and anyone can look at them. Whirlpooling your bitcoin is when you use mixing that breaks deterministic links to past transactions and provides forward-looking anonymity using coinjoin.

White paper: The Bitcoin white paper (published on Octobre 31st 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto) was the first document to outline the principles of a cryptographically secured, trustless, peer-to-peer electronic payment system. It was a 9 page document and was published to metzdowd.com which was run by a group of cypherpunks at the time.

X

XBT: An abbreviation for the bitcoin currency (more common to use BTC)

Y

YTD: Stands for Year to Date.

Yield Farming: Yield farming involves earning interest by investing crypto in decentralized finance markets.

Z

Zero confirmation transaction: Alternative term for an Unconfirmed transaction.

Zero Confirmation/Unconfirmed Transaction: A zero confirmation or unconfirmed transaction is defined as an exchange that has not yet been recorded or verified on the blockchain

Zero Knowledge Proof: Proving certain information or data is true without revealing it.

Zero Knowledge Rollup: A zero knowledge rollup is a type of layer 2 scaling solution that relies on zero knowledge cryptography

Zero Knowledge Rollups: A zero-knowledge rollup is a Layer 2 blockchain solution that performs computations and storage off-chain while funds are held in a smart contract.

Zero-Knowledge Proof: In cryptography, a zero-knowledge proof enables one party to provide evidence that a transaction or event happened without revealing private details of that transaction or event.

Zk-SNARKs: A proof that allows one party to prove it owns certain information without revealing it.

#

25th word: This refers to adding an optional “passphrase” or extra word to your 24 word seed. This offers you more security and could also possibly be used o protect you from a $5 Wrench Attack.

51% attack: A 51% attack refers to an attack on the Bitcoin blockchain by a group of miners controlling more than 50% of the network's mining hash rate or computing power. The attackers would be able to prevent new transactions from gaining confirmations, allowing them to halt payments between some or all users. They would also be able to reverse transactions that were completed while they were in control of the network, meaning they could double-spend coins. So far there has never been a 51% attack.

$5 Wrench Attack: A bad person finds out you have a lot of crypto currency and then visits you with a wrench they asks you to hand over your bitcoin and say if you don't hand over your bitcoin they are going to kill you and/or your family members. [The morale of the story is never boast publicly about how many bitcoin you own or you could become a target].