OG

The abbreviation traces back to 1970s Los Angeles gang culture, where the Original Gangster Crips used it to claim they were "the first" of their kind. Ice-T brought the phrase into the mainstream with his 1991 album O.G. Original Gangster, and hip hop culture carried it forward into general slang, where it shed its criminal connotation and became an honorific for anyone considered an authentic pioneer or veteran in a field.

Crypto communities on Twitter, Telegram and Discord adopted the term to describe people who were active participants before a coin, protocol or the wider industry became mainstream. A Bitcoin OG, for example, is someone who bought, mined or built with Bitcoin in its early, near-worthless years, long before exchanges and institutional interest existed. The same label applies to early holders or builders of any altcoin, marking them as having "inception-era" credibility rather than having jumped in during a later hype cycle.

Surviving the market's worst moments, such as the collapse of Mt. Gox, the 2018 bear market, or the 2022 collapse of Terra/LUNA, FTX and Three Arrows Capital, is often treated as part of earning the title, alongside deep technical or community knowledge. Because there is no formal test, OG status is largely conferred by community consensus and can be claimed loosely, sometimes to lend unearned authority to an opinion or a shill.