Crypto Glossary

Must-know crypto terms

Bears The party doing all the selling. Driving the price down with their increased supply.

Bulls The party doing all the buying. Driving the price up with their increased demand.

Black Swan A single event that could have a dramatic impact on market fundamentals - usually negative.

Block A small segment of information or set of transactions, which are encrypted and added to the main blockchain. The transactions are maintained in a pool, and miners compete to solve the calculation required to add their block to the chain.

Blockchain The underlying technology behind all coins. Blockchain, which the Economist called “the Trust Machine,” is a decentralized ledger that creates unalterable, tamper-proof records of transactions and smart contracts to enable logic and automation.

Correction When the market adopts a bearish tendency to return to normal after a moon attempt.

DYOR Do Your Own Research. Highly recommended.

Fiat Most of the modern day globally accepted currencies. They are not backed by anything, no gold no nothing, hence making them fake or fiat. Many world leaders have called for a non-fiat system to be re-introduced to shave off the need (and indeed ability to perform) quantitative easing and the necessary inflation that ensues.

Fibonacci retracements A method of technical analysis that uses recurring numbers from nature to predict how high or low an asset price will go. The key values are: 0.236, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618, 0.764, 1, 1.618, 2.618 and so on.

FOMO Fear of missing out

FUD Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.

Fundamental Analysis In-depth analysis of a company, its background, financials, marketing, team etc. to really get a sense of the company's worth. Warren Buffett lives by it. 

HODL An actual misspelling that made its way into crypto lingo, it actually means what it should, i.e. hold: buy a currency and hold on to it a little while (weeks, months, or years).

ICO An 'Initial Coin Offering,' similar to a traditional IPO. The first time the public is offered a chance to invest in a new company with a stated mission and purpose.

Impulse When a coin shows a strong bullish move up, sometimes referred to as the price 'taking the elevator up.'

Long When you buy tokens with the expectation that the price will increase.

Market Cap Refers to the total amount of money that is currently involved in the system. Cap = Capitalization.​

Mining The act of using computer hardware (usually graphics cards with high processing power) and electricity to help process transactions in a particular blockchain. Miners are compensated in cryptocurrencies for providing 'hash' or computing power to achieve this.

Moon When a cryptocurrency's price increases drastically over the course of a few hours or days and then suddenly corrects to the regular, much lower, price. Traders with the right set-up see enormous gains, sometimes up to 500%.

Pump and Dump When several traders collude to artificially increase the price of a coin and then sell when it peaks.

Retracement When a cryptocurrency's price decreases and takes a bearish trend after a quick impulse or upward trend in price. Some people use Fibonacci retracements to approximate how low the price could potentially go.

Short When you sell tokens with the expectation that the price will decrease, and buy them back at the lower price.

Smart Contract A digitally signed part of a blockchain that can be used to trade assets of various types.

T2FA Two-Factor Authentication. Most exchanges will want you to install an authenticator app like this one from Google. It helps secure your wallets/funds by requiring a one-time code be entered on the exchange, generated by that app. It basically proves that you are you, because you can access your phone.

Technical Analysis The use of charts and charting tools/functions to analyze the price of a token. Common techniques include the 17th century rice candlestick method from Japan and Fibonacci retracements.

Token A fixed denomination of a coin, e.g. 1 Bitcoin.

Wallets Where you store your coins. They can be physical, virtual, or even paper based.

Whales Individuals or corporations with deep pockets. You can spot them once in a while on exchanges, but usually only hear rumors of their movements.

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