Crypto Terms Dictionary: A to Z

A comprehensive dictionary of Bitcoin, crypto, and blockchain terms and definitions. Learn the terminology related to cryptocurrency with this dictionary.

A

Airdrop

A marketing technique in which crypto projects send their native tokens directly to the wallets of their users in an effort to increase awareness and adoption.

Altcoin

Alternative coins, meaning all coins and tokens that are not Bitcoin.

Alt L1

Alternative Layer 1’s are smart contract platforms that are not Ethereum.

Algorithmic stable coin

Stablecoins stay pegged to the dollar by running on an algorithm, which can issue more coins when their price increases and buy them off the market when the price falls. Algo stables are non-collateralized. A notable example is FRAX

Alpha

A term to describe investment outperformance measured against the market performance. Alpha is what everyone seeks. When someone shares valuable info on a token that will help you outperform, that’s alpha.

AMM — Automated market maker

A decentralized asset trading pool that enables market participants to buy or sell cryptocurrencies. Uniswap is the most well-known AMM.

Anon

Anon refers to someone who is anonymous.

APR — Annual percentage rate

APR refers to the yearly interest generated by a sum that’s charged to borrowers or paid to investors.

Arbitrage

Arbitrage is the practice of quickly buying and selling the same asset in different markets to take advantage of price differences between the markets.

ATH — All-time high

The highest price an asset has ever been.

ATL — All-time low

The lowest price an asset has ever been.

Audit

An audit is a process where developers inspect the underlying code and/or algorithm that compose systems and applications. Since crypto has a lot of risks, audited smart contracts are preferred.

B

Bag

In crypto, a bag refers to the coins and tokens one is holding in their portfolio. “I have a big bag of $ETH”.

Bagholder

An investor who continues to hold large amounts of a specific coin or token, regardless of its performance. Cardano holders who bought at $3 and are still holding.

Bearish

The market right now. When you are bearish, you believe that the market or an asset is going down. The opposite of bullish.

Bitcoin

The first and largest cryptocurrency, was created by Satoshi Nakamoto. The genesis block (the first block of bitcoin) was mined in 2009.

Bitcoin dominance (BTC.D)

Bitcoin dominance is a metric that determines how much share of the overall crypto market hare is owned by bitcoin. At the time of writing, this is around 43%.

Black swan event

An unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity and severe impact. An example was the COVID crash in 2020.

Block

A batch of transactions written to the blockchain. Every block contains information about the previous block, thus, chaining them together.

Block explorer

A tool for browsing information on a blockchain, such as transactions, wallet addresses, market caps, and hash rates.

Blockchain

An immutable permanent public record or ledger of all transactions since the beginning of a cryptocurrency coin or token.

Bridges

A protocol allows separate blockchains to interact with one another, enabling the transfer of data, tokens, and other information between systems.

BTFD

The acronym for Buy The Fucking Dip. Used by people who are underwater and want others to buy their bags. “BTC is down 40%, BTFD!!”

Burn

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

Bullish

Refers to an investor who believes an asset will go up in price. The opposite of bearish.

Buy wall

A buy wall is a situation where a large limit order has been placed to buy when a cryptocurrency reaches a certain value.

Byzantine General 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 4 points of information opening price, closing price, high, and low. Also known as “candles” for short.

Capitulation

Capitulation is the process of selling assets or cryptocurrencies at a significant loss because you have lost hope or belief that it will ever increase in price.

CeFi — Centralized Finance

CeFi is represented by centralized exchanges, businesses, or organizations with a physical address, and usually with some sort of corporate structure like traditional financial market participants (banks, exchanges, fund managers, etc.)

CEX — Centralized Exchange

A cryptocurrency exchange is managed by a centralized business or entity.

Cold wallet

An offline device is used to store tokens. Cold wallets can be hardware devices or simply sheets of paper containing a user’s private keys. Because cold wallets are not connected to the internet, they are generally a safer method of storing cryptocurrencies.

Collateral

Any asset accepted as security for a loan, such as a physical asset like real estate, or a digital asset like an NFT.

Composability

The measure of the usability and ability of the product to be used as a building block in the construction of other products. A protocol that is simple, powerful, and that functions well with other protocols would be considered to have high composability.

Compound Interest

Compound interest allows greater interest rates and returns on investments by allowing interest gained to be automatically reinvested back in with the original deposits and accrued interest.

Consensus mechanism

A process through which nodes on a blockchain come into agreement on a transaction or state of the network. The most common consensus mechanisms today are Proof of Work and Proof of Stake.

Cross-chain

Cross-chain is a technology that enhances the interconnection between blockchain networks by allowing the exchange of information and value.

Cope

A term used to describe a way or attempt of dealing with problems. “I sold SOL at $5 but I don’t mind, I’m not greedy.” “lol, cope.”

CT

CT is short for Crypto Twitter. Twitter evolved into a huge information pool for the crypto community from the latest drops to daily news. Most of CT is just shitposting.

D

DAO — Decentralized Autonomous Organization

An organization based on open-source code and governed by its users. DAOs typically focus on a specific project or mission and trade the traditional hierarchical systems of corporations for guidelines written on the blockchain.

DApp

A type of application that runs on a decentralized network, avoiding a single point of failure.

Dead Cat Bounce

A dead cat bounce is a temporary, short-lived recovery of asset prices from a prolonged decline or a bear market that is followed by the continuation of the downtrend.

Decentralized

A system that operates without the control of a central authority, and replaces it with a distributed peer-to-peer network.

DeFi — Decentralized Finance

The ecosystem of borderless, trustless, peer-to-peer financial tools is being built on public blockchains without the use of banks.

DeFi 1.0

DeFi 1.0 refers to the first wave of DeFi projects, which are mainly based on liquidity mining. Popular projects are Compound and Maker.

DeFi 2.0

DeFi 2.0 is a movement of projects improving on the problems of DeFi 1.0. The term got hype after OHM became hit, which uses mechanisms like bonding and Protocol Owned Liquidity.

Degen

Short for “degenerate”. It does not hold a negative connotation and is generally a self-assigned term.

Diamond Hands

A term implying that you are extremely bullish on a certain asset, and have no plans to sell regardless of market volatility, FUD, or extreme drops in price.

Dildo

Refers to a big candlestick on a chart. These candlesticks demonstrate the range of prices for an asset during specified periods. When Elon talks about doge, we see a big green dildo on the chart.

Dino coins

Dino coins refer to older coins like ETC, NEO, and EOS. If they start pumping you should start running.

DD

The acronym for Due Diligence. The process of conducting your own research before investing in an asset.

Derivatives

A financial instrument deriving its value from the value of an underlying asset. Derivatives markets contain instruments such as futures contracts or options.

DEX — Decentralized Exchange

A peer-to-peer exchange allows users to trade cryptocurrency without the need for an intermediary.

Dumping

The opposite of pumping. The act of selling tokens.

DYOR

The acronym for Do Your Own Research. The process of conducting your own research before investing in an asset.

E

Ethereum

A public blockchain serves as the foundation for decentralized applications. Ethereum is the biggest smart contract platform at the moment and has the most adoption and TVL out of all other platforms.

Ethereum 2.0

ETH 2.0 is an upgrade to the already existing ETH blockchain that aims to increase speed, efficiency, and scalability, enabling it to address the bottlenecks and increase the # of transactions. The two major changes are “proof of stake” and “sharding.”

ENS

The acronym for Ethereum Name Service. It’s a naming system on the Ethereum blockchain. Notice all the .eth people on Twitter? They’ve used ENS.

ERC-20

The Ethereum token standard provides a standardized smart contract structure for fungible tokens.

ERC-721

An Ethereum token standard that allows for the formation of unique tokens, otherwise known as NFTs. Unlike the ERC-20 standard, ERC-721 tokens have specific properties that allow each to be uniquely identified and valued independently of one another.

EVM — Ethereum Virtual Machine

The EVM is the software platform that developers can use to create dApps on ETH and where all ETH accounts and smart contracts live, as well as the entire state history of Ethereum.

F

FA — Fundamental analysis

Fundamental analysis involves taking a deep dive into the available information about an asset. You could look at its use cases, adoption, the team behind the project, etc. The goal is to reach a conclusion to make investment decisions.

Fade

Fade means to bet against.

Fair Launch

Refers to a token generation event that is fair. Often used for LBP’s or Dutch auctions.

Few

Short for ‘few understand’. Refers to a perspective an individual thinks is important but not enough people are aware of.

Flash crash

A flash crash is a market condition where an asset’s price falls very rapidly within a very brief time interval.

Flash loans

A flash loan is a transaction in which a specific quantity of liquidity is borrowed and repaid in the same transaction or block.

Flippening

The reference of the possible event of Ethereum becoming more valuable than Bitcoin in terms of market cap. This is a cursed term and should not be mentioned.

Floor price

The lowest available asking price on an NFT marketplace is for either an entire collection or a subset of the collection.

FOMO

The acronym for Fear Of Missing Out. When the whole market pumps 20% and you buy, you have the fear of missing out.

Fork

A change to a blockchain protocol. When these changes are minor, this results in a soft fork. When the changes are more fundamental, this may result in a hard fork, leading to the formation of a separate chain with different rules.

Fren

A friendly way to address an anon. Fren means Friend.

FUD

The acronym for Fear Uncertainty Doubt. Refers to a general mindset of pessimism about a particular asset.

G

GameFi

GameFinance, often referred to as play to earn, refers to games that are designed with economic and financial aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, enabling players to exert full control over their in-game assets to generate revenue.

Gas Fee

A term used on smart contract platforms that refers to a unit, measuring the computational effort of conducting transactions or smart contracts, or launching DApps on the blockchain. It is the “fuel” of the network.

Gas Limit

A term used on smart contract platforms refers to the maximum amount of gas the user is willing to spend on a transaction.

Gas War

A gas war happens when many ecosystem participants try to make transactions at the same time, driving up the gas prices for the whole Ethereum network. This often happens when minting NFT drops or participating in ICO’s.

Gem

A term for a relatively unknown lower market cap coin that has immense potential or is grossly undervalued.

Gm

The acronym for Goodmorning. This is the first thing you say when online.

Governance token

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

Gwei

A denomination of Ether is used as the unit of measure for Ethereum gas prices. 10⁹ gwei = 1 ether.

H

Halving

An event in which the total rewards per confirmed block halves. For bitcoin, this happens around every 4 years.

Hash

A hash is the output result of a hashing algorithm, which creates a unique, fixed-length string to encrypt and secure a certain selection of arbitrary data.

Hot wallet

A cryptocurrency wallet that is connected to the internet for hot storage of crypto assets, as opposed to an offline, cold wallet with cold storage.

HFSP

The acronym for Have Fun Staying Poor. Used by investors against non-believers. Peter Schiff: “Bitcoin eventually to zero” Community: “HFSP”

HODL

The acronym for Hold on for dear life. It has become a mantra among crypto enthusiasts denoting a long-term approach to cryptocurrency investing.

I

ICO — Initial Coin Offering

The selling of tokens to the public in order to raise capital for a crypto-based project. ICOs are a crowdfunding approach, similar to a traditional company’s IPO.

IDO — Initial Dex Offering

An IDO is an alternative to an ICO. IDO’s happen on decentralized platforms like launchpads where investors are required to stake the launchpads native token to participate.

IEO — Initial Exchange Offering

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

Inflation

The increase of the supply of an asset.

Intern

It’s a new trend on CT where a user will follow a certain Podcast/Project and write condensed notes after every new launch/update/episode.

Interoperability

Blockchain interoperability, or cross-chain interoperability, is the ability to see and share information across multiple blockchains.

IoT — Internet of Things

Internet of Things 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.

IPFS — Inter Planetary File System

The Inter Planetary 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.

K

KYC — Know Your Customer

These are checks that crypto exchanges and trading platforms must complete to verify the identity of their customers.

L

L0 — Layer 0

Layer 0 projects allow entire blockchains to be built on top of them and allow for cross-chain interoperability between these layer 1 projects. The two most prominent layer 0 blockchain protocols today are Cosmos and Polkadot.

L1 — Layer 1

The blockchain or the main chain itself. Often referred to smart contract platforms like Ethereum or Solana.

L2 — Layer 2

Protocols built on top of a layer 1 blockchain are commonly used to improve scalability, privacy, and add cross-chain communication. Layer 2 solutions are secured by their underlying mainchain. Examples are Arbitrum, Optimism, and Lightning Network.

LFG — Lets Fucking Go

Used when you are excited about something. When you find valuable tokens in a random wallet: “LFG”

Liquidated

Forced liquidation refers to an involuntary conversion of assets into cash or cash equivalents. It is a mechanism that creates market orders to exit leveraged positions. It’s why people get rekt while trading leverage.

Liquidity

How easily a cryptocurrency can be bought and sold without impacting the overall market price.

Liquidity Mining

Liquidity mining is a mechanism where platforms reward users with their own native token in return for depositing resources that some other user may trade or borrow.

Liquidity Pool

A collection of user-provided funds locked into a smart contract to facilitate trading on a DeFi platform. On decentralized exchanges and lending protocols, liquidity must be provided by the users, as there is no central bank or figure to do so.

Liquidity Provider

Liquidity providers are decentralized exchange users who fund a liquidity pool with tokens they own. In return, they receive rewards in the form of trading fees and liquidity mining rewards. Liquidity providers receive LP tokens.

M

Marketcap

The total value of an asset is based on its current market price. A cryptocurrency’s market cap is found by multiplying the price of a single coin by its circulating supply.

Memecoins

Memecoins are the crypto tokens created as a joke or meme and claim to offer huge gains to holders. Examples are Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

Mempool

A mempool is the node’s collection of all of the unconfirmed transactions that it has seen.

Metamask

An online digital wallet that allows users to manage, transfer and receive Ethereum (or other EVM compatible tokens), operating as an extension to a regular browser.

Metaverse

The metaverse can be defined as a simulated digital environment that uses augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and blockchain, along with concepts from social media, to create spaces for rich user interaction mimicking the real world.

Mining

In a Proof of Work system, this is the process of verifying transactions, organizing them into blocks, and then adding blocks to the blockchain. Participants who perform this process are called miners.

Mining pools

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

Minting

Minting is the process of generating new coins using the proof-of-stake mechanism and adding them to the circulation to be traded.

Mnemonic phrase

A list of words used in sequence to access or restore your crypto assets. These words must be kept secure and not be shared with anyone, to prevent getting hacked.

Multi-sig — Multi signature

An added layer of security by requiring more than one key to authorize a transaction. Community governed projects like a DAO often require multiple signers to approve a transaction before it will be executed.

N

NFA — Not Financial Advice

Used by people who share alpha but don’t want to be responsible. It often is Financial advice, they just don’t want to get sued.

NFT — Non Fungible Token

A digital certificate of authenticity is used to assign and verify ownership of a unique digital or physical asset. Unlike fungible tokens, NFTs are not interchangeable with one another.

NGMI — Not Gonna Make It

Used against people who won’t buy your bags, or against yourself when making a mistake.

Node

Any device connected to a blockchain network. Different nodes have varying levels of responsibility, and may help validate transactions, store the blockchain’s history, relay data, and perform other functions.

O

OG — Original Gangster

Refers to individuals who have been around since the beginning and earned respect.

On-Chain Analysis

On-chain analysts attempt to improve their understanding of a network in order to predict future price movements through analyzing a variety of metrics.

On-chain/Off-chain

Transactions that are recorded on the blockchain itself and shared with all of the participants are done on-chain. A transaction that is processed outside the blockchain network is done off-chain.

Oracles

A service supplying smart contracts with data from the outside world. Smart contracts are unable to access data that exists off-chain, so they rely on oracles to retrieve, verify, and provide external information. The biggest oracle today is Chainlink(LINK).

OTC — Over the counter

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

P

Peg

A “peg” is a specified price for the rate of exchange between two assets. An example would be stable coins, which are often pegged to the US Dollar.

Pleb

Other word for normie or noob.

POL — Protocol Owned Liquidity

POL is a new approach toward providing liquidity pioneered by OHM. Instead of relying on incentives for LPs, the protocol sells discounted tokens in exchange for another token which then forms part of the protocol’s treasury.

PoW — Proof of Work

Proof of work is a consensus mechanism that requires members of a network, called miners, to expend effort solving an arbitrary mathematical puzzle to verify transactions and add blocks to the blockchain.

PoS — Proof of Stake

Proof of stake is a type of consensus mechanism used by blockchain networks to achieve distributed consensus. It requires users to stake their crypto to become a validator in the network. Validators are responsible for the same thing as miners in PoW.

Private Key

An alphanumeric passcode is required to withdraw assets from a blockchain wallet and authorize digital transactions. Because these private keys are long and difficult to memorize, wallets will generally associate them with a seed phrase that is easier to remember.

Probably nothing

It means the opposite. When someone says “probably nothing” there is probably something there.

Protocol

A blockchain protocol is a rule that governs the network.

Public key

An alphanumeric code that serves as the address for a blockchain wallet, similar to a bank account number. Other users can send tokens to your wallet via your public key, but only you can access the contents by using the corresponding private key.

P2E

The play-to-earn business model supports the notion of an open economy and gives financial rewards to players who bring value to its game or metaverse.

R

Rebase

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

Rekt

Utterly destroyed or ruined, short for wrecked. Most people’s portfolios right now. “Safemoon went down -80%, I’m so rekt.”

ROI — Return on investment

The ratio between the net profit and the cost of investing.

Rug Pull

A bad maneuver where crypto devs abandon a project and run away with investor’s funds. Also used as “rugged”. If you want to get rugged, buy some shitcoins on BSC.

S

Satoshi Nakamoto

The individual or group of individuals that created Bitcoin. Definitely not Craig White.

Sats — Satoshi

The smallest denomination of BTC, is equal to 0.00000001 bitcoin. Satoshis are named after Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Scalability

A protocol’s capacity to handle higher demand and increase transaction throughput as the network grows.

Ser

A respectful way to address an anon. Ser refers to ‘Sir’.

SHA256

SHA stands for Secure Hashing Algorithm, a set of cryptographic hashing functions. SHA-256 takes an input of data and generates a long sequence of letters and numbers, called a hash. This hash is then used as a secure placeholder for the data it represents.

Shill

Shilling refers to promoting tokens through implicit advertising. I’m shilling when I’m telling my friends about how great my bags are.

Slippage

The price of a cryptocurrency may change between the time an order is placed and the time that order is ultimately filled. Slippage is the difference between a cryptocurrency’s quoted price and the price that trade actually executes at.

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.

Solidity

The native programming language of Ethereum is mainly used to write smart contracts.

Stablecoin

A stable coin is a cryptocurrency that has its value pegged to the value of a stable asset. Stable coins are most commonly pegged to the US Dollar but can be pegged to other assets like gold or a basket of crypto assets.

Staking

The act of staking a cryptocurrency deposit to yield farm additional cryptocurrency via CeFi or Defi staking offerings, programs, or projects.

T

TA — Technical analysis

An evaluation method involving statistical analyses of market activity, such as price and volume. Charts and other tools are used to identify patterns to underpin and drive investment decisions.

Ticker

An abbreviation used to uniquely identify cryptocurrencies. For example, the ticker of Bitcoin is BTC.

Tokenomics

Tokenomics is the science of token economy which consists of a set of rules that governs a cryptocurrency’s issuance and supply.

Trading volume

Тrading volume refers to the total number of coins or tokens that have been exchanged between buyers and sellers of a given asset during trading hours of a certain day, often nominated in US dollars.

TPS — Transactions per second

Transactions per second (TPS) is a measure of a network's capacity to perform transactions or calculations in a second.

TVL — Total Value Locked

The Total Value Locked into a Smart Contract is used as a measurement of investor deposits. It is the dollar value of all the coins or tokens locked into a platform, protocol, lending program, yield farming program, or insurance liquidity pool.

TWAP — Time Weighted Average Price

TWAP is an algorithmic trade execution strategy that aims to achieve an average execution price close to the time-weighted average price of the user-specified period. Often used to minimize a large order’s impact on the market.

U

Up Only

A phrase used by traders to symbolize the market going only up.

V

Vitalik Buterin

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

W

WAGMI

The acronym for We All Gonna Make It. It is used by the crypto community to build confidence, and encourage the community to not lose hope.

Web 3.0

The next version of the internet. It is all about reading, writing, and owning. Web3 is decentralized, open, and of greater utility. Web 1.0 = Read-only Web 2.0 = Read and write

Wen moon

“wen moon?” is a phrase used by crypto investors to ask when the price of an asset will be going up in value.

Whale

Whales are entities — individuals, institutions, and exchanges — that hold significant amounts of tokens of a particular cryptocurrency.

Whitepaper

A document released by a crypto project that gives investors technical information about its concept, and a roadmap for how it plans to grow and succeed.

Y

Yield farming

Yield farming is the practice of staking or lending crypto assets in order to generate high returns or rewards in the form of additional cryptocurrency.