Krypto-Wörterbuch
In der Kryptowelt (Kryptowährung) werden eine Menge Slang und Begriffe verwendet. Dieses Glossar der Begriffe und Abkürzungen, die in der Welt der Blockchain verwendet werden, wird Ihnen helfen zu verstehen, was die Bedeutung von häufig verwendeten Wörtern wie FOMO, FUD, HODL, REKT, ERC-20 und vielen mehr ist!
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2 Factor Authentication (2FA)
2 Factor Authentication is a double layer security measure. Most crypto exchanges use it. To log in, you not only need to enter a password, but also a code that you receive from the Google authenticator for example.5
51% Attack
A ‚51% attack‘ refers to a possible attack on a blockchain by a group of ‚miners‘, who hold more than 50% of the hash rate. In such a situation the ‚miners‘ can deliberately not confirm transactions or to issue transactions twice (double-spend).A
Abstract
An ‚abstract‘ is a summary of a (technical) document. A logical place is the beginning of a ‚white paper‘ to describe it briefly.Account
To log in to a website or computer you need an account. This consists of a username and a password. In the cryptocurrency world, a private key is usually sufficient to log in to the wallet.Address
An address is comparable to a bank account number. It is a unique collection of numbers and letters. This identification code is required to carry out a blockchain transaction and is unique for each owner.Addy
ADDY means Address.AES256 (Asymmetric Key Algorithm)
AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard and 256 stands for the key-size (length) of 256-bit. AES is an encryption technique, which is used to encrypt data and is used in most modern encryption protocols and technologies. SSL is an example of such technology. It is also used in algorithms applicable to a blockchain, like Bitcoin for example (SHA-256).Affiliate link
An affiliate link is a specific URL that contains a special and mostly unique identification. This URL can be obtained when a website offers an ‚affiliate program‘. Sharing an affiliate link makes it possible for the website to record the traffic you generated. This is usually compensated with money, credits or coins.Airdrop
An airdrop is a way to distribute coins. End users can generally get coins for free or in exchange for a small task, such as subscribing to a newsletter, sending a tweet or inviting other people via a personal affiliate link. The opportunities and dangers of an airdrop are described in detail in this article: What is an airdrop?Algorithm
The ‚algorithm‘ is a way to solve a task using data processing and calculations. There are different types of algorithms in use by blockchains.Alphanumeric
Alphanumeric is something, like a code or password, that consists of both letters and numbers.Altcoin
An altcoin is any cryptocurrency or token created after the Bitcoin was developed.AMA
AMA is the abbreviation for ‚Ask Me Anything‘. This refers to a set of questions that can be asked to a person or team. Within the crypto world, this is a commonly used method to answer questions from the community. The answers can be given via a Youtube live stream, but also in writing in a blog post or on Reddit.Anonymous
Anonymous refers to anonymity. Within the blockchain world this is an important topic. Bitcoin transactions are anonymous to a certain extent, but the transactions are permanently visible in the blockchain. Eventually, it will be possible to link it to a person. This has led to the creation of privacy focussed coins, such as Monero and PivX. Anonymous can also refer to an international group of activists and ‚hacktivists‘, who in recent years have committed several (DDOS) attacks on websites of agencies and governments.Anti-Money Laundering [AML]
AML is the abbreviation for ‚anti-money laundering‘. AML stands for policy and legislation on money laundering. This prevents illegally acquired funds from being converted into a legal variant. Within the crypto world, it is no longer unusual for AML techniques to be used by exchanges and wallets. This term is often used as AML/KYC, where KYC stands for ‚Know your customer‘.Ape (aping)
In the cryptocurrency scene aping or to ape refers to entering a position in a coin. It’s a slang term used a lot in chats and on Twitter. For example ‘ What coin are you aping into?’ would mean ‘ What coin are you buying?’API
API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface. This refers to an interface of applications or websites to easily get data or push data or commands back. This is a widely used system inside and outside the crypto market. For example, Youtube and Telegram have handy API’s, but in the crypto space pretty much each crypto exchange has one for getting price data and even make trades with external programs like Coinigy. Block explorers, like Etherscan.io for example, also have API’s to retrieve transaction, wallet and coin supply details.APY
APY is short for ‚annual percentage yield‘, which is the total return rate that is earned on an interest-bearing asset or savings account. The compounding interest should be taken into account when the APY percentage is projected. An APY of 5% will turn $100 into $105 after exactly one year.Arbitrage
Arbitration can take place at the moment there is a price difference of a coin between exchange A and exchange B. A trader who responds to this is also called an arbitration trader.Ashdraked
Ashdraked means that someone has lost all his money in a certain position.ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) Miner
ASIC is the abbreviation for ‚application-specific integrated circuit‘. These are microchips or processors, designed to perform a very specific task very well. The Bitcoin ASIC is a very popular one, which makes it possible to mine Bitcoins very efficiently, making it impossible to mine them on a normal computer. ASICs are also developed for other coins, but they can become useless after a protocol upgrade, that makes the blockchain ‚ASIC-resistant‘.Asymmetric Key Algorithm
AKA stands for Asymmetric Key Algorithm. This is a cryptographic system that uses a ‚pair of keys‘, the so-called ‚public key‘ and the ‚private key‘. The public key is needed by both parties to execute a transaction. The private key is only known to the owner and acts as an authentication method for accessing the coins stored on the public address.ATH
ATH is the abbreviation of ‚All-Time High‘ and means the highest price ever paid for a particular coin. ATH is also often used to indicate that someone’s total portfolio has reached the highest value ever.ATL
ATL stands for ‚all-time-low‘ and is the opposite of ATH, or ‚all-time-high‘. ATL is used to indicate that the price of a coin or the entire wallet of a person is at the lowest level ever in terms of value.Atomic Swap
A technology that allows a user to exchange two different coins directly for each other without a third party or intermediary.Audit
An audit is an official examination of an organisation’s accounts. The organisation’s records are examined and checked to ensure that they fairly and accurately reflect the transactions that have been made. This is normally carried out by an independent body. If it is done by employees themselves, it is called an internal audit.B
Bag Holder
A bag holder is someone who has a position in a certain coin, which is not worth much more. Often this is accompanied by the hope that this position will be worth something again.Bear / Bearish
A ‚bearish‘ market means that the complete (crypto) market trend is in a downward spiral. The opposite of ‚bearish‘ is called ‚bullish‘.Bear flag
A bear flag is an indication of the price chart that the market is probably going to start a downwards trend. This is the opposite of a ‚bull flag‘.Bear market
A bear market is the state of the financial market in which the prices of securities fall or are expected to fall. As in traditional financial markets, this concept can also be applied to the crypto market. Prices rise and fall every day, but the term bear market is used only for extended periods of falling prices. This can last for months or even years. The opposite is called a bull market.Bear Trap
A bear trap is the opposite of a bull trap. This is when there are false signals on the price chart that a downtrend is coming. This can be a trigger for traders to take a short position. However, the price will rise again and the traders are lured into the trap and lose money with their short positions.Bearwhale
A ‚bear whale‘ is someone with a very large position in a coin, but with a ‚bearish‘ vision. The bear whale will take every opportunity to sell parts of his position, which prevents the price from rising significantly.BECH32
Bech32 is a Bitcoin ‚Segwit‘ address format. These addresses always start with ‚bc1‘ and therefore ‚bech32 addresses‘ are also known as ‚bc1 addresses‘. The format has not yet been implemented very widely in wallets, so it is not recommended to use it until that situation changes.Billion
A billion is in numbers 1,000,000,000. Since this is such a large number, you can also say that it is one thousand million. For most people that is a more understandable number. All the coins in the top 10 have a market cap higher than one billion.BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal)
BIP is the abbreviation of ‚Bitcoin Improvement Proposal‘. This is a standardized way to introduce functions and other issues, such as design issues. Because of the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and therefore the lack of a formal structure, this system is used to improve Bitcoin in a well-founded and consensus-driven way.Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin is the very first, best known and currently the most valuable digital coin. Read more in this article with an explanation about Bitcoin.Bitcoin (unit of currency)
The bitcoin is the very first cryptocurrency invented in 2008 by an anonymous developer named Satoshi Nakamoto. It can be divided up to 8 digits after the comma. The smallest one is called a satoshi (0.00000001 BTCBillions).Bitcoin ATM
A ‚Bitcoin ATM‘ is a physical ATM where you can exchange fiat money for cryptocurrencies and vice versa. Of course, you can get bitcoin in these machines, but often you can also get Ethereum or other coins.Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
The result of a so-called ‚Hard Fork‘ of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) makes it possible to generate more transactions per second than Bitcoin. In November 2018, Bitcoin Cash itself also had a ‚Hard Fork‘, from which ‚Bitcoin Cash SV and Bitcoin Cash ABC emerged.Bitcoin Pizza
The first known Bitcoin purchase ever. At the time this pizza was bought for 10.000 bitcoins, which would be worth a fortune today.Bitconnect
Bitconnect (BCC) is a cryptocurrency with the ticker BCC. It was a very popular altcoin in 2017 because it promised a daily yield of 1%. They said they could live up to this due to a very successful trading bot. It used a ‚multilevel marketing‘ method to attract new buyers. The company behind this coin was suspected of Ponzi fraud and was investigated by the American regulators. Eventually, the company could not provide any evidence and closed its doors in January 2018. The price of the coin plummeted dramatically afterwards and it is now no longer tradable.Bitgrail
Bitgrail‘ is an Italian cryptocurrency exchange. In February 2018 hackers have stolen Nano coins (formerly known as RaiBlocks) worth more than 170 million dollars.Bitpay
Bitpay (Bitpay.com) is a US-based bitcoin payment provider. It enables (online) stores to accept Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash as a means of payment without the risk of price fluctuations. This is achieved by converting the payments directly and automatically to fiat money.Bittube
BitTube is a video platform without ads in which publishers can make money with their content. It can be seen as an alternative to Youtube. Sometimes videos on Youtube are demonetized by the platform, cause some to switch to or republish it on BiTube.Block
A block is a file in which blockchain data, like transactions, is stored. Each block relates to its previous block, making it a chain. This is why it’s called ‚Blockchain‘. Most blockchains have a predetermined maximum file size per block. The first block in a blockchain is called the ‚genesis block‘.Block Explorer
A block explorer is an online service to track blockchain transactions. It usually is a website where you can see all the new blocks that are being created. You can also search for transactions and wallet addresses. The best-known block explorers are blockchain.info for Bitcoin and etherscan.io for Ethereum.Block Height
This is the number of blocks that make up the distance between the current block and the first block ever created in a blockchain, which is called the genesis block.Block Reward
The block reward is the payment that is offered to the node that is securing the blockchain. In the case of Bitcoin, which is has a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, these would be the miners. The payment is in the form of the native cryptocurrency of that blockchain. The amount is a predetermined reward per block, but often that is supplemented with the fees that are paid for the transactions that block contains. For Bitcoin, the current block rewards are cut in half every four years. This is called the ‚halving‘.Block Size
The block size represents the size of each block in a blockchain. Transactions are stored in a blockchain block. For Bitcoin, this is limited to 1MB per block. More transactions can be stored when the blocks are larger. This is the case with many altcoins. There are also disadvantages to large blocks, such as the required storage space. Also, it can become less attractive for miners if the transaction fees become too low as a result of large blocks.Blockchain
The blockchain is a technique that makes it possible to safely store data in a decentralized way. This data can be money, but it could be other data as well. Also, read this extensive explanation about blockchain.Bollinger Band
Bollinger bands is a tool for crypto or stock traders. The bollinger band consists of three lines, usually based on a ’simple moving average‘. The middle line is a ’simple moving average‘ and the outer lines are a multiplication of the middle ’simple moving average‘. A detailed explanation can be read in this article about ‚Technical Analysis‘.Bot
A ‚bot‘ is an autonomous program on a network, such as the Internet, that can interact with systems or users. It is often designed to automate certain manual tasks. Bots are often used in Telegram chat groups to prevent spam.Bounty program
Bounties are simple tasks of jobs by the team behind a coin. These can be as simple as joining a Telegram channel or by (re)tweeting. It could also be a bit more difficult like a translation job for example. The participants receive rewards in the form of coins in exchange for completing these bounties.Brute Force Attack (BFA)
A brute force attack is an attack performed by a hacker on a password or PIN. An automated script tries to execute as many different combinations as possible as quickly as possible until the password or PIN is guessed.BTD/BTFD (Buy the f****** dip)
BTF or BTFD stands for ‚Buy the f****** dip‘. This is a way of expressing to buy a coin when the price is dipping. This is mostly used in chat groups like Telegram. You can read more about dips in this blog post: ‚What is a dip‚.Bull flag
A bull flag is an indication of the price chart that the market is probably going to start an upward trend. This is the opposite of a ‚bear flag‘.Bull market
A bull market is the condition of financial markets where the prices of securities are rising or expected to rise. This concept can now also be applied to the crypto market. Prices rise and fall every day, but the term bull market is only reserved for longer periods of rising prices. This can go on for months or even years. The opposite of this is called a ‚bear market‘.Bull Trap
A bull trap is a false signal (during a bear market) that the price will go up again. However, after a short rise, the price drops again sharply.Bullish
A bullish market means that the complete (crypto) market is in an upward trend. The opposite of bullish is bearish.C
Candlestick Chart
A ‚candlestick chart‘ is a way of representing the price of a tradable effect. One candlestick stands for a certain period (a day, an hour, a quarter of an hour, etc.). The ‚body‘ of the candlestick represents the opening and closing price. The peaks indicate the highest and lowest price in the period.CB
CB is short for Coinbase, a very popular exchange based in the United States of AmericaCBDC
CBDC stands for ‚Central bank digital currency‘ and is the fully digital form of fiat money. Unlike at Bitcoin, this type of currency would be created by a centralised authority like a central bank or a monetary authority. It might or might not have a distributed ledger. Each central bank in the world can have a custom implementation. Currently, it is still in test phase or just a concept on paper.Centralized
Centralised means that one particular organisation has control. For example, governments and companies are centralised. The opposite of centralised is decentralised, such as the Internet and the blockchain.Chain Split
A chain split is another word for ‚fork‘. See hard fork for more info.Circulating Supply
The total number of freely tradable coins of a cryptocurrency or token.Cloud Mining
Cloud mining is like normal mining, but then with remote processing power. This is usually rented from companies located in areas with low electricity costs. These companies offer mining contracts for a limited or perpetual period. During this period the mining rewards are deposited to your account or wallet. The amount will be based on the hash power you purchased and the mining difficulty.CMC
CMC is the abbreviation of Coinmarketcap. This is one of the first websites to list cryptocurrencies and exchanges.Coin
A Coin is the umbrella term for cryptocurrencies and tokens.Coinbase
Coinbase is a cryptocurrency broker. You can directly buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and more with fiat currencies. It is based in the United States of America and has over twenty million users worldwide.Cold Storage
Cold storage refers to storing cryptocurrency on a place where the private key cannot be accessed via the internet. This can be done on a hardware wallet, paper wallet or software wallet in an offline environment.Cold Wallet
A cold wallet is a wallet for storing cryptocurrency where the private key is not exposed to the Internet.Collateral
Collateral refers to an asset that can be used as security for a loan, but only if the lender accepts it. DeFi is growing fast in the crypto world and collateral backed loans are more and more common and with an increasing number of cryptocurrencies or tokens that can be used as collateral. In crypto it is not only used for lending but can sometimes also be used when running (master)nodes. Chainlink is a good example of this implementation, where the node provides oracle services. Usually, the node will only get jobs if enough collateral in tokens is provided. This collateral is used to compensate the customer if something goes wrong with the node, like providing inaccurate data.Commit
In software development it is common to use version control techniques, like the open-source Git, to track all the development changes. The commit command refers to the command used to save the changes to the repository. This creates one or more commits, or simply a revision, with all the changes to a file or set of files. Each commit has a unique identifier (hash). The number of commits can give some insight on the development speed, but it’s not 100% reliable. Deletions and additions of code also count as commits and thus the number of commits can be faked. We track the commits of each coin that has a public Github repository, like for example the commit statistics of bitcoin.Confirmation
A new transaction on a blockchain must first get a confirmation before it has been definitively processed. This is done by one of the consensus mechanisms, such as proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. The more confirmations, the greater the chance that the transaction is valid and a double spend is no longer possible.Consensus
The consensus in the blockchain world can be defined as an agreement by a majority, which is often set to a minimum of 51%. When 51% of the entities or people on the (blockchain) network agree to a change, like a transaction or change to the system the consensus has been reached. Having consensus is a very important part of the cryptocurrency space since it is required to have the validity of transactions on a blockchain verified as well as having a method to manage decentralized systems. A consensus is, for example, also needed to perform a hard-fork.Contract address
A contract address is an address used by the smart contract on a DApp platform. For Ethereum each token is based on the ERC-20 standard and has a contract address.Correction
A correction is a price movement (up or down) after the price has risen or fallen. This is caused by traders that want to cash in their profits. This occurs with both long and short positions.Crypto
Crypto is the generic term to refer to cryptocurrency, the crypto market and the blockchain industry.Cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency, also known as ‚crypto‘, is a type of currency that is transferred via a blockchain. It uses strong cryptography to secure the transactions, that usually have value. While traditional fiat currencies are subject to counterfeiting, this is not possible in a cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is still the most valuable cryptocurrency.CT
CT is the abbreviation of ‚Crypto Twitter‘, which refers to the global group of crypto enthusiasts that is active on Twitter talking about everything blockchain-related. It can be used in a sentence like ‚I miss the saltiness of CT‘, meaning that not many people are as negative as during a heavy bear market.Cypherpunk
Someone who advocates a broad use of cryptography and technology to promote privacy with the aim of social and political change is called a ‚Cypherpunk‘. These people form an active community that has been around since the 1980s. Bitcoin is possibly developed by the ‚Cypherpunks‘.CZ
CZ refers to Changpeng Zhao (赵长鹏 in Chinese). He is the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which owns Coinmarketcap, since their acquisition in 2020. Since Binance is a popular exchange the abbreviation CZ is commonly used related to this exchange. For example: ‚CZ should list this coin asap!‘D
DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
DAO is an abbreviation of ‚Decentralised Autonomous Organization‘. This is an organisation that runs automatically on itself without any human interventions. The work is automatically executed through Smart contracts.DApp (Decentralized Application)
DApp is short for ‚Decentralized application‘ that relies partly on blockchain for its functionality. They are different than ‚Smart Contracts‘ because it can be interacted with. It does not need to have a financial function. Dapps can be created using common programming languages like Javascript, PHP or C#. At the time of writing, most Dapps are using the Ethereum blockchain.Dark Web
The Dark Web is referred to a part of the Internet that is not easily accessible without special software and/or access permission. The content is usually not indexed by the Google search machine and could be password protected. The information and content could be secretive or even illegal.Day trading
Day trading is a strategy in which securities positions (stocks, cryptocurrencies, options, warrants, bonds, etc.) are held by the trader for less than a day. Thus, a position can be taken and closed just a few hours later. To determine when to open and close a position, traders often use technical analysis.DCA (Dollar-cost averaging)
DCA is the abbreviation for Dollar-Cost averaging. This is an investment technique, where a fixed amount in dollars is used to invest. Not the entire amount is used in one time, but according to a fixed schedule, no matter what the price is. With this method, you can never buy on the top, but also not on the bottom. Within the crypto space, the term is also used to indicate that someone buys low after a huge price drop of a coin.Dead Cat Bounce
A ‚Dead Cat Bounce‘ is a term used in finance and now also in the crypto markets. It refers to a brief price recovery before a major crash.DeFi
DeFi is the abbreviation of ‚Decentralized Finance‘. It can be defined as a new financial ecosystem consisting of various financial tools, apps and services utilizing blockchain technology. It’s an umbrella term for all these projects combined and is growing daily. Examples of DeFi functionality are banking services in the form of stablecoins, decentralized exchanges, derivatives, prediction markets, or lending and borrowing systems. The last one can be either peer-to-peer or with a pool. It is a combination of replicating products and services in the traditional finance industry as well as innovative new ones only possible with blockchain technology.Degen (degenerate)
Degen is short for degenerate and refers to people trading crypto assets, mostly shitcoins, without doing proper research on it. These types of traders just go into a trade based on signals and just FOMO into price pumps. They will just buy it because it looks like a nice coin to trade and hope to make quick gains on it. Degen trades are often fueled by group chats on apps like Telegram for example.DEVCON
DEVCON stands for ‚Developers Conference‘. This is a meeting of software developers, usually organized by a company. The latest developments are discussed here. At Apple, it is called WWDC (the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference). In the blockchain space, the annual Ethereum Devcon is best known.DEX
A DEX is short for Decentralized Exchange. This is an exchange where people can trade cryptocurrencies and tokens without the need of a middleman. It is usually run by code in a ’smart contract‘. The transactions are generally written to the blockchain, which makes a DEX by default slower than a centralized exchange that uses fast databases. The main benefit of a DEX is that nobody, but yourself, holds the private key to the funds. Even though a DEX will not have a middleman regarding the trades, the exchange and the website are centrally managed. Therefore it’s not 100% decentralized in fact. The level of decentralization differs per DEX. Use the filters in this list with exchanges to find each DEX.Digital Identity
Digital identity refers to information used by computers to represent a real-world entity, like a person or an organisation. It could also represent an application or device. It can be seen a set of attributes related to the entity. This digital identity is used for authentication and verification to access systems on a network, such as the Internet. Several developments are going on in the blockchain world where a digital identity plays a crucial role.Dildo
A dildo, in crypto terms, refers to a large rise in the price of a coin. At the moment that a sudden rise in the price takes place, a ‚candlestick‘ in a ‚candlestick chart‘ shoots up. According to some people, this phenomenon looks like a dildo.Dip
A ‚Dip‘ is a rapid decrease in the value of, for example, a cryptocurrency or an entire market. It is less strong than a ‚crash‘ and can also quickly recover to the old price level. Also, read this extensive explanation about a ‚dip‘.Discord
Discord is a messaging app that can be used on mobile and desktop. Besides Telegram it is also a very popular messaging app in the crypto community. Discord allows the administrator to create several rooms, which is useful to divide the discussion topics. Examples are: general, marketing, support, development/tech talk and announcements. Coins often have both a Telegram and Discord channel for the community to meet each other.Dividends
Dividends are amounts of money that are periodically paid to reward people for holding certain securities over a period. In cryptocurrency, rewards are often paid on blockchains with a DPoS or PoS consensus algorithm, which can be seen as dividends but isn’t legally declared dividends. For security tokens with revenue sharing of the platform, this is more likely to be seen as real dividends.DYOR
DYOR is a term, which you often see in disclaimers and chat groups regarding the cryptocurrency market. It stands for ‚Do your own research‘. It is a quick way of saying that no financial advice is given and you have to do your own research before you invest.E
EEA
The EEA (Enterprise Ethereum Alliance) is a partnership as part of the Ethereum Foundation. It connects Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, academics and technology suppliers with experts regarding Ethereum.EIP
EIP is short for ‚Ethereum Improvement Proposal‘. This is similar to the ‚BIP‚ that relates to Bitcoin. EIPs describe standards for the Ethereum platform. This includes contract standards, protocol specifications and client APIs. An EIP can be proposed by any Ethereum community member and is then discussed within the community.Emission Rate
The term ‚Emission‘ is in relation to blockchain, often used as ‚Emission Rate‘. This is the speed at which new coins are released and thus increases the ‚circulating supply‘. This speed is known in advance by the design of the blockchain and can be shown in a graph, the ‚Emission Curve‘.ERC-20
ERC20 coins are all tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. These coins are also supported by most Ethereum wallets.ETF
ETF is an abbreviation for ‚Exchange-Traded-Fund‘ or a listed fund on a stock exchange. This is a tradable product (security) that follows the price of an underlying asset. Examples are an equity index, a basket of certain securities, bonds and commodities. There are several applications for a Bitcoin ETF, but none of these has yet been approved by the SEC in the United States of America.Ether (ETH)
Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain. According to their website, it is a necessary element (a fuel) for operating the distributed application platform. It is a form of payment made by the clients of the platform to the machines executing the requested operations. The transaction fees for using the platform are paid for in Ether and measured based on the gas limit and gas price.Ethereum
Ethereum (ETH) is consists of one blockchain where both its own transactions (Ether) and those of numerous other coins (tokens) are recorded. Ethereum distinctive feature is the so-called “smart contract”. The programming language of Ethereum is written in such a way that programmers can write their own programs based on the Ethereum blockchain. Read more about Ethereum in this article: ‚What is Ethereum?‘Ethereum Classic (ETC)
Ethereum Classic (ETC) is a cryptocurrency that came to existence due to a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain. After a major hack where over 200 million USD worth of Ether was stolen, the Ethereum Foundation decided to roll back the blockchain. Part of the community didn’t agree with this decision and kept mining the original chain, which was then called Ethereum Classic.Exchange
An exchange is a place where you can buy and sell different kinds of cryptocurrencies and tokens. These coins can then be deposited back to a wallet, which supports the coin. Sometimes it’s also possible to convert it to dollars. This is an overview with all exchanges.F
FA
FA is the abbreviation of ‚Fundamental analysis‘. It is a method of evaluating an investment, such as a cryptocurrency, by looking at its intrinsic value. Related economic and financial factors are also examined.Falling Knife
A falling knife is a term referring to a tradable asset falling hard in price. „Never catch a falling knife“ is a well-known saying that warns you not to invest in a security that is currently falling hard. The idea behind this is that a price must first show some recovery (aka bottoming out) before it is wise to take a position in it again.Fanboy
A fanboy or sometimes purposely misspelt ‚fanboi‘ is a term to describe an obsessive (male) fan of something, like cryptocurrency for example. In the crypto space, most coins have chat groups on Telegram or Discord, where this term is often used.Fiat
Fiat money relates to all currencies issued by governments. Examples are the Euro (EUR), American dollar (USD) and the Chinese Yuan (CNY).Fiat Currency
Fiat currency or also simply called fiat is money issued by a government or organizations that are allowed to issue it, like banks for example. It doesn’t have any value by itself and is for decades not backed by gold anymore either. It instead remains value based on the trust of the people. Once the trust goes away it will decrease in value and could eventually cause hyperinflation.Flippening
The Flippening is a term used to describe the moment that a coin becomes more valuable than Bitcoin. Ethereum has been the second most valuable coin for most of the time, but so far it’s market cap has been always lower than Bitcoin’s.Floor price
The floor price, or price floor, is a term that comes from the NFT corner in the crypto world. Generally, individual NFTs are part of a larger series, and it is 1 out of 1000, for example. This series is published in its entirety on marketplaces such as OpenSea. These users can filter by properties and compare among themselves. An interesting feature there is the floor price, which in this situation means the cheapest NFT offered in that range. This gives you, as a buyer or seller, an indication of what other NFTs are worth. After all, if your NFT has many more special features compared to the cheapest one, you can ask for a higher price. Once the cheapest NFT is bought, the next asking price is the new “floor price”. This is generally updated in real-time since they are blockchain transactions. If you have an NFT in such a range, you can also lower the floor price by offering it for sale at a lower price.FOMO
FOMO is the abbreviation for and is used regarding people who are afraid they are missing the boat and therefore take a position in a coin.Freecoiner
A person who owns cryptocurrency, but has not bought it himself. The coins are obtained for free as a gift, airdrop or through affiliate programs. This term is coined by Blockspot.io (Tweet).FUD
FUD is the abbreviation for Fear, uncertainty and Doubt. An article or post can be seen as FUD and can lower the price of a coin.FUDster
A ‚Fudster‘ is a person who spreads wrong information in order to negatively influence the price.Fully Diluted
Fully Diluted in crypto refers to fully diluted market cap. This is the market cap of a coin based on its total supply instead of the circulating supply. This is an important metric for investors to compare coins and help with the decision if it’s overvalued or undervalued.Future
The term ‚futures‘ comes from the financial markets. It is a financial contract, which obliges the buyer to buy a security or the seller to sell it. This has to be done on a predetermined date and price in the future. It is a trading instrument on the stock exchange and is used for various underlying instruments, including Bitcoin nowadays. Some contracts require the physical delivery of the underlying instrument and others are settled in cash.G
Gas
Gas or ‚Wei‘ is used to execute a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. The ‚gas‘ that is used can be seen as ‚fee‘ for the ‚miners‘. The more ‚gas‘ you set, the faster your transaction will be completed. Because of the higher reward, more miners will be incentivized to process the transaction earlier.Gas Limit
The gas limit is the maximum amount of gas you are willing to pay for a blockchain transaction (gas price). The higher you set the limit, the faster your transaction will be executed. If you set the gas limit too low, there is a chance that your transaction will never be executed or will fail, and you will still have paid.Gas Price
The gas price is the price that must be paid to execute a crypto transaction. Transactions on the blockchain are conducted in a manner similar to an auction. Miners want to make as much money as possible from executing transactions and therefore look for the transactions that earn them the highest fee. The more gas you are willing to pay on it, the faster your transaction is executed. At times when there are a lot of transactions being executed, the gas price can rise significantly. As a result, during the DeFi boom of 2020, there were times when an Ethereum transaction cost well over $100.Gem
A gem in the world of cryptocurrency is a coin, which is unique in a person’s perception and therefore will increase in value.Genesis block
The ‚Genesis Block‘ is the first block in the blockchain of a cryptocurrency.GIF
A GIF is the abbreviation of Graphics Interchange Format. It is an image format that allows an animation. These can be a couple of seconds long and are often used in the cryptocurrency chat groups and Twitter. Most of the time they are used in a funny way.Gwei
Gwei is used to measure the cost of gas for transactions on the Ethereum network. A single Gwei amounts to 10⁹ Wei or 10^-9 ETH.H
Hard Fork
A hard fork is a major change in the Blockchain protocol. A hard hork requires all nodes to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software. Usually, there is a transition period where the miners can show their support of the hard fork. Once a date is set via a specific block number, everybody will need to have updated their software by that time. The ones that fail to upgrade could cause a chain split. The chain with the highest number of nodes or hash rate will be seen as the original chain.Hardware Wallet
A hardware wallet is a device meant to store coins securely. It usually looks like a USB flash drive with a small display and a few buttons. The best-known manufacturer of hardware wallets is the Ledger SAS company from France. The Ledger Nano S has been very widely sold. The main function of a hardware wallet is that your private key always remains offline. When commissioning the device, 12 or 24 words are shown on the display, which you then have to write down on paper. Keep these safe! If you lose the words, you also lose your crypto assets if the wallet stops working. With these words, you can always recover your crypto assets if the device breaks down. You can find many types of hardware wallets in our wallet overview. In the case of Ledger and also Trezor, multiple blockchains are supported with the same private key. So you can use the same set of words to secure your Bitcoin, Ethereum (tokens) and other coins. Before you purchase it, look carefully at which blockchains are supported.HODL
HODL is the wrong spelling of ‚hold‘. This spelling mistake was once made by someone accidentally or intentionally on a forum. Since then, this term has been used to indicate that you keep or should be holding your position.Hopium
Hopium is a slang term created from the words hope and opium. In the cryptocurrency trading world, this is used on chats and social media in relation to people who are very positive about the market or a specific coin and keeps holding on to their positions. If somebody says that a coin will moon very soon, a response can be, ‘You are high on hopium!’, to say that you totally do not agree.I
ICO
An ‚initial coin offering‘ (ICO) can be compared a bit with an IPO. Investors get an opportunity to invest in a certain coin for the first time. The difference with the stock market however is that a company has to meet all kinds of requirements before the IPO can take place. The market of ICO’s is much less regulated. Therefore, it happens more often that an ICO is fraudulent.IDO
The abbreviation IDO stands for Initial DEX Offering. This is very similar to an ICO but still slightly different. With an ICO, you have different forms: via a smart contract, an agreement contract, or via a launchpad of a centralized exchange. When the tokens are tradable depends on the listing on an exchange. An IDO also involves raising money for a new coin but goes through a DEX. In this way, the tokens are tradable almost immediately. The amount of supply does depend on the release schedule set by the team behind the coin and the available liquidity offered by the Liquidity Provider. Sometimes it is necessary to have the DEX’s own tokens to participate in the IDO.Immutable
A property that defines the inability to be changed. This is especially true over time. Usually, a blockchain has this property by default and makes it distinct from a traditional database. Though a rollback of blocks is possible, this is rare to happen and could cause a chain split. That would also mean that a transaction will be gone and unchanged. The more blocks generated after a transaction the harder it will be to perform a rollback.Initial margin requirements
If you plan to borrow money from your broker to take positions for margin trading, you will have to deal with initial margin requirements. This is a percentage you need in your account to make a purchase. Say you want to buy 10,000 USD worth of Bitcoin, and the initial margin requirement is 50%. Then you need at least 5,000 USD which you can deposit yourself. You borrow the other half from your broker.Interoperability
The term interoperability in crypto refers to blockchain interoperability. In short, this means the ability to share information between different blockchains. Since the launch of Bitcoin, a lot of new blockchains have emerged of which the most well known Ethereum. All these new blockchains are in a way competing with each other to get adoption by developers and users and results in a lot of silos. Since each blockchain usually has it’s own speciality it would make sense for developers to utilise more than one blockchain. In order for this to work there is a need for the interoperability and several projects are working on this.IRS
IRS stands for the ‘Internal Revenue Service’ and is a government agency of the United States of America and responsible for collecting taxes.J
JOMO
JOMO is the abbreviation of ‚Joy Of Missing Out‘ and refers to a trader who is happy that he has not taken a certain position and is often said after a considerable price drop.K
Key pairs
A key pair is the combination of a public and private key together. During the process of creating a wallet, a pair of keys is generated. The private key is the most important one and should be backed up safely and not shared with anyone.KYC
KYC is an abbreviation for ‚Know Your Customer‘ and was created to combat money laundering via cryptocurrencies. At almost every ICO it is mandatory to prove that you are who you say you are. This is also regularly requested at crypto exchanges.L
Lambo
Lambo is an abbreviation of Lamborghini, a fast Italian car. In the crypto world, this is often used to ask when the price is going to rise sharply so that he can pay for such a car. In general, it is written: ‚When Lambo? An alternative is: ‚When Moon?Ledger Blue
A ‚Ledger Blue‘ is a Hardware wallet in the shape of a small tablet and is made by the French company Ledger SAS. It is the successor of the popular Ledger Nano S.Ledger Nano S
A ‚Ledger Nano S‘ is a popular Hardware wallet in the form of a USB stick, made by the French company Ledger SAS.Limit Order
With a ‚limit order‘, you give the order to the stock exchange to buy an x number of coins for price x. When ‚filling‘ the order, the price can’t differ with the order you gave. The number of coins can however differ, but never more than the order.Liquidity mining
Liquidity mining refers to the process where a yield farmer will receive a new token as well as the usual APY in exchange for providing liquidity to a pool. The received token is the native token of the specific project and usually represents governance rights. This can be used to vote in favour or against proposed changes to the underlying project.Liquidity Provider
A liquidity provider is somebody who submits assets of a trading pair on an exchange for market-making. This has become popular in the crypto scene with the launch of the Ethereum based exchange, Uniswap. For example on the Ethereum <> Chainlink pair you can submit the equivalent of $1000 on both assets, so a total of $2000, to the pool. In exchange, you get a pro-rato claim token of that pool. All the trades on that pool are shared with the claim token holders and this way you can earn a passive income. Though there is the risk of one the assets going up/down really a lot and then you might get stuck with too much of the asset on the other side. This phenomenon is called ‚impermanent loss‘ and is a risk to be aware of before starting to provide liquidity. In the article ‚What is Uniswap?‘ you can learn more about how it works.LP
LP is short for Liquidity ProviderLT
LT stands for long-term. In crypto, it could be used as ‘ This is the perfect timing for an LT position into Ethereum’.Lurk (Lurker)
A lurker or somebody who lurks is a person that joins a message board or chat group, but does not actively participate in the conversations. This can have various reasons, like for example not having the confidence of knowing enough about the topic. It could also be that this person joins a crypto chat group to analyse the overall market sentiment or that of individual coins.M
MA (Moving average)
MA is the abbreviation for ‚Moving Averages‘ and is a common term in technical analysis. It allows you to understand the price trend of an underlying security, such as a share or coin. Well-known types are the EMA and MACD.MACD
MACD stands for ‚Moving Average Convergence/Divergence‘. This is a tool used by traders to see what the trend is in a price. The instrument consists of 2 parts. An exponential moving average (EMA), which is subtracted from another EMA (usually 26 and 12 days) and an EMA which is calculated with a less number of days (usually 9), this last EMA is also called the signal line. A common trading signal is that as soon as the signal line breaks the other line from below, a buy order is placed and as soon as the line is broken from top to bottom, a sell order is executed. Read more about this subject in this article.Maintenance margin
Maintenance margin is what you have to deal with when you engage in margin trading. The maintenance margin is the minimum value that you must keep in your broker account to prevent a margin call. How high the maintenance margin is depends on several factors (underlying asset, a regulated market or not, your broker, etc.).Margin call
A margin call occurs when you borrow money from your broker to be able to take certain positions (margin trading) and the price falls so far that the broker no longer has the confidence that they will get their money back if the price falls even further. The moment you engage in margin trading you have a predetermined “maintenance margin”. This is the minimum amount you have to keep in your broker account before your broker will either ask you to deposit extra money, or will close your positions. If the value of your portfolio falls below the maintenance margin, you will receive a margin call. Example:- Value of portfolio is 100,000 USD
- Maintenance margin is set at 75,000 USD
- Portfolio drops 30% in value and is now worth 70,000 USD
- Broker asks for an additional deposit of at least 5,000 USD
- If you do not manage to deposit this amount (usually within a day) the broker will close your positions until they have enough security again.
Margin Trading
Margin trading means trading securities with borrowed money. This means you are trading with leverage. Trading with leverage increases your profit if your prediction is correct but also increases your loss if your prediction turns out to be incorrect. You can do this with many online brokers. Depending on the provider and the risk of the securities you trade, you can invest initial margin requirements with a certain percentage of borrowed money. On that borrowed money, you often pay a fixed interest rate (the margin rate) on a daily basis. The broker will require you to hold a certain amount of collateral. This is called the maintenance margin. If the price drops and you fall below the maintenance margin, your broker will make a margin call. As a trader, you will then have to deposit extra money into your broker account or sell positions. If you fail to do so, the broker will force you to close your position. Margin trading is also possible on DeFi platforms such as Aave. You can take out a crypto loan with crypto assets as collateral.Market Buy
The moment you want to buy a coin or other security, you can place your order in several ways. A market order is one of the ways to do this. With the market order, you do not specify a price at which you want to buy, for example, Bitcoin, but indicate that you want to buy as soon as possible at the then lowest possible price. When liquidity is low, this type of order is not recommended. You might have to buy your shares at a much higher price than the price at that moment. This is because if there are few sellers, it is possible that the next one who offers his pieces for sale will ask a much higher price.Market Capitalization (Market Cap)
The market cap shows the total value of all coins together. Many beginners make the mistake to only look at the unit price of a coin to decide if the coin in question is worth much or little. The market cap is a more suitable instrument for this.Market Maker (MM)
A market maker or sometimes referred to as MM is an individual or a company who actively submits sell (ask) and buy (bid) orders on the order book of an asset. By being on both sides on the market the market maker can realise a profit using the spread. Market makers have an important role as well since they provide liquidity for that asset.Market Order
With a ‚market order‘ you give the order to buy or sell a coin at the best price at that moment. The chance that an order will be executed is almost 100 per cent, because there are almost always buy or sell orders. With coins with little volume, the market order is a dangerous order because your coins may be sold at a very low price, or the opposite happens: you buy your coins at a very high price.Market Sell
A market sell is the opposite of a market buy. With a market sell order, you again indicate that you want to sell at the then highest offered price. Before you submit a market sell order, it is advisable to first check in the order book whether there are enough bidders for the price you have in mind. However, if you have the possibility, it is advisable always to use a limit orderMasternode
A masternode is a server, ran from home or in a data center, that has an essential role in a decentralized network. It usually performs specific tasks, like storing files or data and keeping it accessible in the network. It could also function to validate the transaction or for consensus purposes like voting on proposals. The technical (memory, CPU, etc) and financial criteria (number of coins needed) are different for each coin. If the masternode you set up does not perform well it’s possible to lose your coins if those are meant as collateral. The rewards could also just stop and then you can just start over again. A masternode usually gives a high reward that’s paid out in the coin itself.Maximum Supply (Max Supply)
This is the maximum number of coins that will exist for a token or cryptocurrency. If there is a max supply defined, no more coins can be created. ‘Burned’ coins are part of this supply, so therefore it is always larger than or equal to the total supply. For Bitcoin, the maximum is set to 21 million.MCAP
MCAP is short for Market CapitalizationMedium
Medium (medium.com) is a platform for online publications. It is especially popular for blogs and news and is used by many coins to share the latest developments and newsworthy events.Metamask
Metamask is a popular browser plugin that bridges your cryptocurrency holdings with a website. It allows you to easily perform blockchain transactions and send coins.MEW
MEW is the abbreviation for MyEtherWallet. This is one of the best-known wallets to store Ether and tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.Microbitcoin (uBTC)
Microbitcoin is the name for the abbreviation uBTC. This represents one-millionth of a bitcoin and is commonly written as 0.000001 BTC.Millibitcoin (mBTC)
Millibitcoin is the name for the abbreviation mBTC. This represents one-thousandth of a bitcoin and is commonly written as 0.001 BTC.Miner
A ‚miner‘ is a person or organisation that uses computing power (CPU, GPU or ASIC) required to find the next blockchain block. Once the answer is found, a new ‚block‘ is generated, in which a number of transactions are permanently stored. The miner is rewarded with the predefined number of cryptocurrencies. Usually, this is complemented with the transaction costs, which are paid by the user.Mining
Mining is also known as ‚Cryptocurrency mining‘ or ‚Cryptomining‘. It is a process where blocks are added to a blockchain by solving a mathematical puzzle. The block can also contain transactions on that blockchain and will then become verified and immutable. Depending on the blockchain, mining can be done with a CPU, GPU, specialised hardware or a combination of all.Moon (Mooning)
Mooning‘ is used to describe a rapid increase in the price of a cryptocurrency or token. It’s often used in chats like ‚Coin X is mooning!‘. It is also used to show the desire of a price increase by saying ‚When moon?‘ or alternatively ‚When lambo?‘.Mt GOX
Mt. Gox (or Mount Gox) was the largest and most important exchange for Bitcoin in its early years. However, it went bankrupt on February 28, 2014. The cause, according to the company, is a hack, in which Bitcoins worth hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen.N
NFT
NFT is the abbreviation of non-fungible token. This is a type of token representing a unique asset. These can be either digital or represent real-world assets. Examples are a sword in a game or ownership of a piece of land. NFT’s are generally scarce, unique and indivisible. The Ethereum blockchain makes it easy to create NFT’s with it’s ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards.Nocoiner
A person, who does not possess any cryptocurrency, is also called a nocoiner.Nonce
A nonce is short for number only used one. This relates to a number that is added to a hashed or encrypted block in a blockchain. It is the number that blockchain miners are trying to solve. Once the solution is found, the miner will receive a reward in the form of cryptocurrency. You can read more about this in the blog post ‚What is blockchain‘.noob / n00b
A person who is not very experienced in a particular topic, like the complex world of crypto, for example, can be called a noob or sometimes spelt n00b. This person might think they know enough about the topic, but actually does not and is often not very willing to learn as well. It is different from a newbie or newb. The topic is new to them and they ask questions to learn more about it.O
ODN
ODN is the abbreviation of ‚OriginTrail Decentralized Network‘. This is an open-source and permissionless network that relies on an off-chain technology stack consisting of several inter-related layers. It is a decentralised network of data providers, data creators, data holders, and data viewers. The glue between all entities is the ERC-20 based Trace Token (TRAC). This is used as a collateral stake to keep data holders honest and for payments to compensate the data holders for providing their resources.OG
OG refers to ‚original gangster‘ and has its origins in the rap and hip hop culture. These days it’s used more widely and also in the crypto space on Twitter and in Telegram chat groups. It means somebody who is around and involved since the early beginnings. In crypto, this would mean since around the inception of a coin. There can be Bitcoin OG’s and altcoin OG’s.Orphan
An ‚Orphan‘ or ‚Orphan block‘ is a block in the blockchain that is not further built on. Blockchain blocks are usually generated by ‚mining‘ or ’staking‘; occasionally two blocks are created simultaneously by different computers. Only one of the two can be valid on the blockchain, so the other expires and becomes an orphan block.P
Paper wallet
A paper wallet is an alternative to a hardware or software wallet. It is a piece of paper or a PDF containing the information to access the cryptocurrency in that wallet. It normally consists of a ‚public key‘ and a ‚private key‘.Parachain
A parachain is a part of the Polkadot blockchain and is a simpler form of blockchain where the security is provided by a “relay chain” instead of providing its own. The relay chain provides the security to the attached parachains and guarantees passing messages between them in a secure way. Computations on parachains are independent and this prevents slowing down of transactions due to it’s parallelized execution instead of sequential.Permabull
A permabull is someone who always sees developments in the market in an optimistic light and therefore has no eye for negative developments. A permabull continues to believe that his positions will be worth more in the future than they are now. When the entire crypto market crashed in 2018, there were many people who continued to believe in better times (and were eventually proven right). Here you can find the famous bagholder bingo card for crypto Permabulls: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/legoem/bagholder_bingo/Permissioned blockchain/ledger
Anyone can mine Bitcoins because it is a public blockchain. This is not the case with a permissioned blockchain. There is a layer above it that determines which entity is allowed to write transactions in a block. The XRP coin from the company Ripple Labs is an example of such a blockchain and has CGI, MIT and Microsoft as approved entities for example. These are called ‚transaction validators‘.Phishing
Phishing is when hackers try to get a user to give up personal information such as login and password or credit card details. This is often done using a fake website or application, which is very similar to the original. This is common in cryptocurrency because only the private key is enough to steal all coins.PoA (Proof of Authority)
PoA stands for ‚Proof of Authority‘. This is a validation method to process transactions and blocks in a blockchain only by approved accounts. These are known as ‚validators‘ and run specific software to store the transactions in blocks. Since the identity is linked to the system, it can contribute to more trust.PoB (Proof of Burn)
PoB stands for ‚Proof of Burn‘. This is a method to invest in a new cryptocurrency by destroying coins of an existing one, which has been given the term ‚Burning‘ in the crypto world. This is done by sending coins to a special, unusable address. That’s usually the only way to destroy coins within a blockchain. This method can also be used when a coin gets a relaunch with a new team and a new coin.PoD (Proof of Developer)
PoD is the abbreviation for ‚Proof of Developer‘. This can be any verification that can serve as proof that a cryptocurrency was created by a real software developer. This method is mainly used when launching a new cryptocurrency to prevent scams.Polka
Polka is short for Polkadot, which is a cryptocurrency similar to Ethereum. Because of the growth of the ecosystem, it is referred to in short using Polka instead of the full name, like for example: ‘this is a new polka project.’Portfolio
A cryptocurrency portfolio is total holdings of your crypto assets in one place. You can own several cryptocurrencies and tokens and to track the value of that you need to register the size and price of each buy and sell order. This can be done in a spreadsheet, but it is much more convenient to use a dedicated app like Delta for example. With these types of apps, you can easily register your portfolio changes since they retrieve the current price of a coin from API providers. Often you can also set alerts on to notify you when the price goes above or below your target.Pre-Sale
A ‚Pre-sale‘ the phase of an ICO before the ‚Public-sale‘. During this phase, investors can make the first investment. The tokens often have a lower price than during the public sale. The money raised is generally used for further development, financing of the public sale and as a method to explore the market’s enthusiasm. It is possible that the ICO itself is not successful and a ‚refund‘ is not always guaranteed. This also makes a pre-sale riskier than a public sale.Privacy coin
A privacy coin is a cryptocurrency, which focuses on security and anonymity of the users. Some examples are Pivx, Dash, and Monero. There are several methods to make a transaction anonymous.Private key
A private key in the crypto space can be defined as the combination of letters and numbers that corresponds to a specific public key. The private key can be used to gain access to the assets on that public key, also known as the wallet address. Once you share your private key with somebody, store it on your computer in plain text or type it in a website or app, you risk losing all your funds stored on its a corresponding public address.Proof of Stake (PoS)
The Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm is introduced as an alternative to Proof-of-Work (PoW) without the energy-consuming aspect. In the case of PoS the creator of the next block is randomly chosen based on a combined selection of age and wealth, where the wealth is the ’stake‘ or amount of cryptocurrency that has been put to work. This is done by having it in an unlocked wallet for staking. The staking can usually be done on a VPS or computer at home.Proof of Work (PoW)
The Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm successfully came to life with the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009. It is the algorithm that is used to confirm transactions and the creation of new blocks in a blockchain. Specialised devices, computers or graphic cards can be used to do calculations. In PoW a new block is created or found by solving a mathematical puzzle. The process of trying to solve that puzzle is called mining. The miners are working hard and usually consuming a lot of energy to find the solution to the puzzle. This is basically where the definition ‚Proof-of-Work‘ comes from. Read more about this topic in our article ‚What is Blockchain?‘Public key
A public key in the crypto space can be defined as a combination of letters and numbers and forms the address to which the cryptocurrencies or tokens can be sent to. Everybody who knows the public key of somebody can see the assets stored on that address. Only the owner of the corresponding private key can send those assets out.Q
QR Code
A QR code is a type of barcode in the form of a square. The letters QR stand for ‚Quick Response‘. The code contains many dots, a few small squares and sometimes a small logo in the middle. This is different from most other barcode types, which are rectangular with lines. A QR code can therefore contain much more information. Within the crypto world, it is often used to make a ‚wallet‘ address scannable. This speeds up the process of transferring crypto and prevents errors.R
Raiden Network
The ‚Raiden Network‘ is a way to make the Ethereum blockchain scalable, for example by making off-chain transactions possible. It is a separate ERC20 token and the team held an ICO in 2017.Rebrand
Rebrands already happened many times in the crypto space. It means that the coin changes their name, logo and sometimes their vision. This can be done for several reasons. It could be a better fit for what they are trying to achieve, or the old name has a bad reputation. Rebranding can be used as an attempt to make people forget it. Sometimes it even causes hype where the price goes up. The ‚ticker‘ sometimes stays the same though, because it’s more practical in regards to third parties like wallets and exchanges.Refund address
A ‚Refund address‘ is a wallet address that a user sometimes has to enter to receive a chargeback. This is often necessary for coin conversion websites in case a transaction fails.REKT
The term ‚REKT‘ is a comes from the word ‚Wrecked‘ and is used in the crypto community to indicate enormous losses.Rektdrop
A rektdrop is a new term, which may have been coined by Evmos, a Cosmos-based project, and is a combination of the terms ‚REKT‚ and ‚Airdrop‚. It is basically an airdrop for people who have ‚rekt‘ in certain projects or paid a lot of ETH fees. This is a playful way to offset those losses. In addition, you immediately build a community, which is generally the purpose of an “airdrop”.Replay attack
These are attacks on a blockchain after a fork. When you try to send coins on one of the chains there could be an attempt to mirror the action on the other chain. So when sending 1 BTC it could happen that 1 BCH is also sent. Bitcoin Cash has implemented a replay protection method, but not all (Bitcoin) forks have this, which could be done on purpose. This is a risk when claiming hard fork coins.Ripple
Ripple is the company that created the coin XRP. The coin itself is sometimes also called Ripple, but that is not correct.Roadmap
A roadmap is a plan that shows what an organization or team wants to achieve. This usually contains the deliverables for the year, but sometimes it’s even a couple years in the futures. In can be as detailed with specific dates or months, but it can also be broader and based on quarters. In crypto, it’s a common practice that the team shares this roadmap publicly to give insight into the coming features and when those will be realised.ROI
ROI is an abbreviation for ‚Return on Investment‘. This is an indicator to show the ratio between your initial investment and the return on it. The formula is ((current value – investment) / investment) x 100. Example: if 1 Ether deposit in an ICO total has become worth 1.6 Ether, then the ROI is 60%.Rugged
You are rugged if you have experienced a rugpull. In such a case, you have generally pretty much lost your entire investment in that coin. For example, a saying in the chat groups is: “I got rugged”.Rugpull
A rug pull is a scam variant in crypto where the team behind the coin intensively promotes the project and tries to drive up the price only to dump all their coins at once on the order book or by removing all liquidity in case of a DEX. Just like a literal rug pull where a rug is pulled out from under your feet, and you fall, the price of the coins also collapses. This is then clearly visible on the chart with a large red candle.S
SAFU
SAFU is a term in the cryptocurrency world that means safe. It is used by, for example, exchange CEO’s when a hack has happened and then can say ‚All user funds are SAFU!‘. It became popular when this Youtube video by Bizonacci was released.Sat
Sat is the abbreviation of Satoshi.Satoshi
A satoshi (sat) is the smallest amount of bitcoin and is named after the creator Satoshi Nakamoto. It is the eighth decimal place, so 0.00000001 BTCSatoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto is the alias of the creator of Bitcoin, who wants to remain anonymous. Nobody knows who it is. It could be a person, a group, a company or even a government. It is quite likely that it is a person because there are people who have communicated with him or her via e-mail. You can read more about this in our article about Satoshi.Scam
A scam is a fraudulent scheme that is performed by a dishonest individual, group or company. The goal is to get money or something else of interest like personal information or in the case of cryptocurrency the ‚private key‘.Scammer
A scammer is a person who performs a scam.SEC
SEC is the abbreviation of ‚Securities and Exchange Commission‘. This is an independent government organization of the United States of America. The SEC holds the primary responsibility regarding the financial markets. They enforce the federal securities laws, propose new rules and regulate the US financial markets.Segregated Witness (SegWit)
SegWit is a solution to make Bitcoin more scalable with the goal of faster transactions at lower costs. The use of SegWit required a ’soft fork‘ which took place on 21 July 2017. Altcoins like Litecoin, Digibyte or Vertcoin have also implemented SegWit in their Bitcoin-based blockchain.Shilling
Shilling is when someone is subjectively promoting a coin or ICO. This is sometimes just out of enthusiasm and sometimes just to convince as many buyers or investors as possible to join in withto have as much profit as possible when the price goes up.Shitcoin
A Shitcoin is any coin, which is badly rated by the one who talks about it. So it can be any altcoin, but also Bitcoin. The reason given could be a lack of innovation, poor communication, slow development or another coin is considerably better according to that person.Short
Shorting or going short on an asset is a trading strategy where you speculate on a price decline of that asset. It is a very risky tactic and you can easily lose money with this method. Therefore it is only useful for experienced traders and investors with a high-risk tolerance. Shorting comes from the traditional finance world, but is now also possible on crypto and is mostly done on Bitcoin. The shorting method itself is a practice where borrowed assets are sold on the market to buy back at a lower price and make gains with the difference. It’s also possible to use high leverage for even higher gains, but that bears even more risk of losing. The opposite of going short is going long.Slack
Slack is a cloud-based software for team collaboration. It became popular among coins in 2016 and 2017 to create a place where fans can discuss the coin and interact with the team behind it. Though it is not very suitable for large groups of thousands of members in its free version. This often caused problems where new people weren’t able to join. Nowadays a lot of coins have moved their community to Telegram and Discord.Smart Contract
A smart contract came to existence with the launch of the Ethereum blockchain but has nowadays also been replicated in different forms on other blockchains. It can be seen as a protocol or computer program that is meant to autonomously and automatically execute pre-defined commands based on relevant events. The goal of this technology is to automate events and reduce the need for trusted third parties. This technology can be used for various purposes like the creation of tokens, facilitating DeFi, prediction markets and more. Oracles enable the usage of real-world data in smart contracts. The possibilities of this technology are endless.Solidity
Solidity is a programming language for writing or implementing ‚Smart Contracts‘ that run on the Ethereum blockchain. Several Blockchains now support this new language.Stablecoin
Stablecoins are tokens or cryptocurrencies attempting to have a minimized volatility of its price. It usually tries to keep a stable price of a related asset like USD for example. It can be backed by the related asset or replicated using smart contracts. Stablecoins are usually pegged to fiat money, but it’s also possible to be pegged to precious metals like gold or silver, or even other assets. It enables an easily accessible way to store crypto wealth, temporarily, in a more stable asset during market volatility instead of using the traditional financial ecosystem. Fiat withdrawals can take a few days and could be costly as well.Staking
Staking the process that belongs to Proof-of-Stake.Steemit
Steemit is a social media platform that runs entirely on the Steem blockchain. The coins allow the user to promote messages. The coins can be bought on an exchange, but can also be earned within Steemit by actively contributing in the form of new messages or reactions to existing messages.Stimmy
Stimmy is a slang term for stimulus, referring to the money that citizens of the USA received from their government to support them financially during the Coronavirus period. This is part of the relief package. In the cryptocurrency world, people believe that many people will use this money to buy Bitcoin or other altcoins.Stock-to-Flow model (S2F)
The Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow model (S2F) is invented by PlanB and explained in detail in this post. This model uses scarcity to quantify the value of bitcoin, but it can also be applied to other assets like gold or silver. Although the model has become very popular in the crypto space, not everybody agrees. This post, for example, contains a list of the greatest blows to the S2F model.Swing
A ‚Swing‘ is a zigzag movement of price. A ‚Swing trader‘ is someone who makes intensive use of it to get more coins.T
TA
TA stands for technical analysis. This is used to analyze the graph of a cryptocurrency or stock with different indicators. This gives an investor or trader more justification for the choice to buy or sell. The different indicators are explained in this post about TA.Tanking
Tanking stands for a decrease in value. If a cryptocurrency ‚tanks‘, the price drops considerably. This can have several causes on a fundamental level or when an important cross in technical analysis is formed.Telegram
Telegram is a messaging app that can be used on mobile and desktop. It is very popular in the crypto community. Most coins have a telegram channel, where interested people can join and discuss the developments of the coin. You can join as many channels as you want. It is abused a lot though by scammers, who send out links and viruses. But since Telegram supports advanced bots, this can be tackled easily. The bot is also often used to welcome new users or for sending cryptocurrency tips to each other.Tether
The Tether is often abbreviated as USDT on exchanges. This is a non-government regulated ’stablecoin‘ with a value of around 1 US dollar. The company behind this coin claims that every Tether in circulation is covered with real dollars on their bank account.The Flippening
The moment that another cryptocurrency has a market value greater than Bitcoin is called ‚The Flippening‘. This has not happened yet.Ticker
A ‚Ticker‘ is an abbreviation of, among other things, shares on the stock exchange. It consists of a few letters. In the crypto world, this system is also used. In the case of shares, a unique ID has also been developed, the so-called ISIN code. Such a system does not yet exist for crypto. It happens a ticker exists several times for different coins. Therefore it is extra important to check the name before placing a buy or sell order.To the moon
This expression is common in cryptocurrency chat groups and forums. It is used to communicate the desire for a huge price increase. For that purpose, they say ‚When Moon?‘. It is also used at times when the price of a coin is rising rapidly. In those cases the phrase ‚To the moon!‘ is common.Token
Briefly, a token, according to our definition, is a coin without its own blockchain. So tokens are different from cryptocurrencies, which is the native coin of a blockchain. There are quite a lot of different blockchains today where it is easy to generate a token on them. The best known is Ethereum, and many thousands of tokens have been launched on it. Anyone can do this, and no approval is needed. You do need the blockchain’s native coin for fees if you want to create a token. So in the case of Ethereum, you will need some Ether. Tokens are actually a kind of smart contract, which are generally generated according to a standard, such as ERC-20, with a supply, name, ticker, and the number of decimal places.Tokenomics
Tokenomics is a crypto-specific term and is the combination of “Token” and “Economics”. So, as the term itself actually makes clear, this refers to the economics of a token. Tokens decompose value from their use and thus will need to have a good use case. Among other things, the way it can be used, the offering – including the release speed – and any lock-ups with the team or early investors relate to the tokenomics of a token. By studying tokenomics, you can make a pretty good assessment of whether to invest in a particular token. Everyone makes their own trade-offs to determine which aspects of tokenomics weigh more heavily.TOR
TOR is an abbreviation for ‚The Onion Router‘. Onion routing is a method to send data anonymously over the Internet. The TOR Network consists of thousands of proxy servers on the Internet run by volunteers, which enables the routing. There are already cryptocurrencies that support ’nodes‘ on the TOR network.Total Supply
The ‚total supply‘ indicates the number of coins already in circulation, supplemented with the coins that are not tradable yet. So it only applies to coins already in existence. This is different from the ‚max supply‘, in which future coins are included. The total supply is greater than or equal to the ‚circulating‘ supply‘. It can consist of tradable and non-tradable coins, such as reserved or not yet released coins for the team or investors.TPS
TPS stands for transactions per second and refers to the number of transactions that a network can process each second. For example, the TPS of Bitcoin is around 5 and that of Ethereum is around 10 at the moment. This means that a higher fee is needed to have a transaction processed quickly. New Blockchains can distinguish themselves by having a much higher TPS, but this often comes with more centralisation of lower (chain) security.Trading Bot
A trading bot is an algorithm that trades for a trader on a stock exchange or crypto exchange. Trading bots are used by both professionals and amateurs.Transaction fee
The ‚transaction fee‘ is the amount that has to be paid to execute transactions on the Blockchain. This fee is usually paid to the ‚Miners‘, but sometimes they are burned. There are also several cryptocurrencies, where you don’t have to pay a fee.Transaction ID
All transactions in the Blockchain, such as the amount, the address of the sender and recipient and the date of transfer, are provided with an identification, which is publicly accessible in the ledger of the Blockchain. This is the ‚Transaction ID‘.Trezor
The Trezor is a popular ‚Hardware Wallet‘, which supports multiple blockchains.Trillion
A trillion is in numbers 1,000,000,000,000. Since this is such a large number, you can also say that it is one thousand billion or one million million. For most people, those are more understandable numbers. In 2021 Bitcoin reached a market cap of 1 trillion for the first time.TVL
TVL is the abbreviation for total value locked. This refers to DeFi platforms, where users lock their crypto assets for yield or put them to work as liquidity providers. All assets combined are the TVL, and it is an important metric to see how popular a DeFi platform is. The TVL is often shown as a current figure but also with a historical chart, so you can clearly see how it is trending. An example of this is Uniswap. The TVL is useful for end users to use when looking for yield. A new platform with a low TVL can be significantly riskier than one with a much higher TVL. Regardless of size, there is always a risk associated with any platform. Therefore, it is wise to do some good research beforehand. After all, if the website goes offline, it is very complicated or sometimes impossible to get your assets back. In addition to the TVL per DeFi platform, this can also be a composite amount from multiple platforms. A good example can be seen on DeFi pulse (https://www.defipulse.com/).U
USDT
See Tether for the meaning of USDT.UXTO
UXTO is the abbreviation of ‚Unspent Transaction Output‘. The total balance of bitcoins on an address can be spread over multiple blocks in the blockchain. The unspent bitcoins have a UXTO attribute. By searching the blockchain for the UXTO’s, which belong to a ‚wallet‘ address, the total spendable balance can be determined. This is displayed by the wallet when it is fully synchronised.V
Vaporware (aka Vapourware)
Vaporware is a term that comes from the software world to indicate announced, but not released or cancelled software. In the cryptocurrency world, this also happens, but the term Shitcoin is more common.Vitalik Buterin
Vitalik Buterin is a programmer of Canadian-Russian descent. He is the inventor of ‚Smart Contracts‘ and co-founder of Ethereum.W
Wallet
A ‚wallet‘ is a place to store cryptocurrencies encrypted. There are several variants, such as a paper wallet, hardware wallet or software wallet. Each coin has one or more supported wallets. See here all wallets.Wash Trading
Wash trading is the activity on an exchange where trades are done with themselves. The sole purpose of this is to increase the trading volume. This could lure in new investors to trade that asset or makes it look like that specific exchange is heavily used and thus makes it look more trustworthy. This behaviour is forbidden in traditional markets.Weak Hands
The term ‚weak hands‘ refers to an investor that has sold their investment or a part of it, due to emotional distress. People who got nervous and sold too early are then called ‚weak hands‘ in crypto chat groups. The opposite of this can be the term HODL or Hodler.WEB3
WEB3 refers to ‘Web 3.0 Technologies Stiftung’ , which is a foundation that funds research and development teams who are building the foundation of the decentralized web. Web2 refers to the internet as we know it today. A large number of entities received this funding, among a lot of blockchain projects. This is why you’ll see the term WEB3 more often in the crypto space. More broadly WEB3 also refers to an abbreviation of the Third Generation Web, which is the next generation of the internet with new technologies like AI, Blockchain. A big part of this is the ability of value exchange over the internet.Wei
A ‚Wei‘ is the smallest denomination of Ether. 1 Ether = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Wei (10-18)Whale
A ‚whale‘ is someone with a very large position in a coin.Whitelist
A Whitelist is a list of approved participants, who may participate in an ICO or Pre-ICO. A ‚whitelist‘ is not always used, but it is usually used to generate ‚hype‘ and exclusivity for the ICO.Whitepaper
A ‚whitepaper‘ is a document that is almost always written for the launch of a new coin through an ICO. All aspects of a coin should be explained here: how it is used, for what and sometimes also the price expectation. After the ICO new versions can be released if the situation changes.Wholecoiner
A wholecoiner is someone who owns 1 full Bitcoin. The higher the price of Bitcoin gets, the harder it becomes to achieve this. Therefore, the number of ‚wholecoiners‘ will also be limited.satWire transfer
A wire transfer is the electronic transfer of money through a network of banks or related agencies across the world. The sender pays a fee for the transaction and provides the recipient’s name, bank account number, and the amount that should be transferred. The fee of this transfer could vary a lot. Within the European union it’s free, but intercontinental it should become quite expensive. Unlike cryptocurrencies, there is always a middleman involved and a transfer could take up to days instead of a couple seconds or minutes.Withdrawal address
Dit is over het adres dat op gegeven moet worden om een cryptocurrency op te ontvangen bij een terugstorting (withdrawal). Deze term wordt over het algemeen door exchanges gebruikt. Meestal geef je hier je persoonlijke wallet address op, maar het kan ook het ‚deposit address‘ zijn van een andere exchange.Wojak
The Wojak literally means warrier or soldier in Polish and has its origin from the image-board Krautchan, where a user posted the picture for the first time with an accompanying phrase ‚That feel when X‘ after which is spread to other boards, including 4chan. It’s original is in white and looks like a cartoony bold man expressing several types of emotions, but later deformed (pink) variants were used heavily in the crypto scene as a way to mock or criticize people’s actions or intelligence. It’s nowadays also often seen together with Pepe, a green cartoony frog used in a similar way.X
XBT
XBT is an alternative abbreviation for Bitcoin (BTC) and is the official ISO 4217 standard. It is a country independent cryptocurrency. The abbreviation for gold is XAU.Y
Yellow paper
A ‚yellow paper‘ is a research document. It describes a more in-depth and technical analysis. The purpose of this document is to inform those involved and interested.Yield farming
Yield farming is the process of generating the most returns possible on your crypto assets by putting them to work. Within the crypto space, DeFi has taken on a big role and services inside this space are making yield farming possible. There are nowadays ways to move your crypto assets to pools to gain interest on those assets giving it an annual percentage yield (APY). Just buying crypto-assets and holding them in your wallet, won’t generate any yield, but lending them out with DeFi services like, Compound, for example, does make this possible. A term closely related to yield farming is liquidity mining.Z
Zerocoin (protocol)
Zerocoin, also known as Zerocoin protocol, is originally a proposal to give Bitcoin a privacy function. It is currently implemented by, among others, the coins Firo (formerly Zcoin) and PivX. Read more about this in this detailed description of zerocoin.Kürzlich veröffentlicht
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