Crypto terms and what they mean

Hi button! Welcome to the wild and wacky world of crypto acronyms, where even the most experienced tech wizards can feel they are decoding ancient hieroglyphics. If you have ever wondered whether HODL is a new yoga pose, where DYOR is like a new fashion trend replacing Dior or if FOMO is a secret menu in your favourite restaurant, you are not alone as long as you know Finbutton. From moonshots to rug pulls, and from holding to mining, this guide will help you to navigate the crypto-verse’s crypto terms.

Therefore, grab your virtual shovel, and let’s dig into the most baffling, amusing, and downright hilarious jargon that crypto enthusiasts throw around at a blockchain party! But wait a little!

In this article, we will list the important crypto terms and the common ones you would come across more often than usual.

Common Crypto Terms and Their meaning

1. 0x Protocol: This is an Ethereum-based open-source platform for cryptocurrency trading. It allows for creating features in a decentralized exchange (DEX), a wallet, or a marketplace.
2. 52-Week High/Low: This is a given asset’s highest and lowest market price over 52 weeks or one year.
3. 52-Week Range: This is the difference between an asset’s highest and lowest prices over the past 52 weeks.
4. 51% Attack: This happens if more than half the computing power or mining hash rate on a network is run by a single person or a single group of people.
5. Airdrop: This is an event in which a crypto blockchain project gives away tokens or coins for free. However, most airdrops require some conditions to be met.
6. Accredited investor: This is a person or organization that is qualified to participate in financial opportunities that are not legally offered to regular investors.
7. Air-Gapped Device: This is a device that has never been and will never be connected to an unsecured network such as the Internet.
8. ASIC (Application Specific Integrated  Circuit): This is a computer that is specifically designed to mine cryptocurrency.
9. ASIC-Resistant: This term usually applies to blockchains and mining algorithms, designed to give no benefit to ASICs over consumer-grade hardware.
10. Atomic Swap: Transfer of one cryptocurrency to another without needing a trusted third party such as an exchange. They happen directly on the blockchain.
11. ATH (All Time High): This is the highest price an asset has ever been sold for.
12. ATL (All Time Low): Refers to the lowest price a cryptocurrency has hit during its trading history.
13. Algo Trading (Algorithmic Trading): Using software to strategically buy and sell assets eg a trading bot.
14. Alpha: this simply means any new information or insight that will allow people to have an advantage when investing.
15. Altcoin: Any cryptocurrency that isn’t bitcoin.
16. Altcoin Trader: A person who trades cryptocurrencies alternative to Bitcoin.
17. AML (Anti Money Laundering): A set of regulations designed to prevent the practice of generating income illegally.
18. Ape: To ‘ape in’ to an asset or trade simply means to buy a position in it. This sometimes means the decision was made recklessly or a large sum was invested.
19. 51% Attack: This happens if more than half the computer power or mining hash rate on a network is run by a single person or a single group of people.
20. Abnormal Return: An abnormal return refers to the unusual profits from certain assets or securities over a specific period.
21. Absolute Return: This is the return on investment (whether positive or negative) obtained in a specific time.
22. Account Abstraction: This is the process of making it easier for users to interact with blockchain by customizing certain elements of smart contract accounts.
23. Account Balance: This is the amount in a cryptocurrency account that can be accessed immediately.
24. Accumulation Phase: This is a stage in the market cycle right after a downtrend, where company investors start buying in tranches, signifying a positive uptrend soon.
25. Accumulation/Distribution Indicator: This indicator determines the supply and demand level of an asset or cryptocurrency by multiplying the closing price of a specific period by volume.
26. Address: This is a place where cryptocurrency can be sent to and from, in the form of a string of letters and numbers.
27. Aeternity Blockchain: A blockchain network that works on a hybrid consensus approach which includes both Proof of Work and Proof of Stake.
28. Aggressive Investment Strategy: This is a high-risk investment strategy that aims to generate the maximum possible returns in financial markets.
29. AI Coins: AI coins are coins designed to streamline AI-related transactions and interactions, while still upholding transparency and security through blockchain technology.
30. Airnode: Airnode is an Oracle node and API blockchain gateway that is readily deployed by API providers who want to engage in the API3 blockchain protocol and put their data feeds on-chain.
31. Algorithmic Market Operations (AMOs): These automatically control the supply of algorithmic stablecoins while improving scalability, decentralization, and transparency.
32. Algorithmic Stablecoin: This coin uses an algorithm underneath, which can issue more coins when its price increases and buy them off the market when the price falls.
33. All Risks Coverage: This refers to a type of insurance that covers any risk that the contract does not explicitly omit.
34. Allocation: This is the allotment of equity or tokens that may be earned, bought, or reserved for a specific team, group, investor, institution, or another similar entity.
35. aNFTs (autonomous NFTs): These are non-fungible tokens that can be programmed to initiate their own transactions.
36. Anti-dump/Anti-Dumping Policy: In the world of blockchain, the anti-dumping policy is a set of rules that protects investors from falling victim to a pump-and-dump scheme, in which a large number of tokens are purchased by an investor (whale) to boost the token’s value and then dumped at a much higher price, resulting in losses to investors who purchased the asset later.
37. Antpool: This is one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools and aggregates the computing power of many miners to increase the chance of solving a block and receiving the block reward.
38. AR Token (Arweave): AR is Arweave’s native token.
39. Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT): The arbitrage pricing theory (APT) offers a framework for evaluating market efficiency and identifying arbitrage opportunities in financial markets.
40. Arbitrageur: An arbitrageur is a type of investor who exploits pricing inefficiencies between two different markets.
41. Arm Virtual Machine (Qtum): Qtum’s arm virtual machine allows users to execute applications in a decentralized manner.
42. Aroon Indicator: Aroon Indicator is used to identify the existence, changes, and corrective retracements and gauge the strength of an ongoing trend in financial markets.
43. Ascending Channel: These are trend continuation patterns that have an ascending price action as their main characteristic.
44. Ashdraked: The complete loss of a trader’s total invested capital, specifically as a result of shorting Bitcoin.
45. Ask/Offer Price: The minimum price that a seller is willing to accept for an asset.
46. Asset: Assets are the resources that an organization can use to generate revenue or benefit.
47. Asset Class: An asset class is a classification of investments based on common traits, behaviors and laws.
48. Asset Swap: An asset swap is a financial transaction where an asset is swapped with another for various purposes.
49. Asset-Backed Tokens: Asset-backed tokens are digital claims on a physical asset and are backed by that asset.
50. Asset-Based Approach: This takes into account the company’s assets for valuation.
51. Asset-Based Lending: In asset-based lending, lenders have a vested interest in the value of a company’s assets rather than just its creditworthiness.
52. Assets Under Management (AUM): This measures the total market values of all the funds controlled by an individual or financial institution on behalf of their clients.
53. AtomicDEX: AtomicDEX offers a cryptocurrency wallet and DEX in one application that is available for multiple platforms.
54. Authentication: Authentication is a process that confirms a user’s identity using passwords, SMS codes, fingerprints, and other forms of ownership proofs before granting access to sensitive and/or personal information.
55. Authority Masternode (VeChain): An authority master node (AM) is a network-connected server that runs the VeChainThor full-node program.
56. Automated Market Maker (AMM): This is a system that provides liquidity to the exchange it operates in through automated trading.
57. Average Daily Trading Volume (ADTV): The average daily trading volume (ADTV) of stock or crypto is the number of shares/coins traded in one day.
58. Average Directional Index (ADX): This is a technical indicator that measures how strong a market trend is by using price moving averages and is represented by figures ranging between 1 and 100, where a larger value suggests a stronger trend.
59. Backtesting: This refers to using historical data to simulate the performance of a trading strategy.
60. Bag: This means a large quantity of a specific cryptocurrency. Used to refer to the contents of an individual’s crypto portfolio.
61. Bagholder: This is an investor who continues to hold large amounts of a specific coin or token, regardless of its performance.
62. Bait and Switch Scam: This is a sales strategy in which a customer is attracted to a product or a service at a low rate but is later encouraged to buy one at a higher rate.
63. Baking: Baking is a process that is used by Tezos to append new blocks of transactions onto its blockchain.
64. Balanced Investment Strategy: This attempts to balance the return and risk of a portfolio.
65. Bandwagon Effect: A phenomenon in which a person’s decision is influenced by the majority.
66. Bank for International Settlements (BIS): The BIS is an international financial institution that promotes global monetary stability.
67. Bank Run: A bank run occurs when most customers withdraw their cash from the bank out of fear of solvency and bankruptcy.
68. Bankruptcy: Bankruptcy is a state where an entity or a person cannot meet its financial obligations, such as debt repayment to creditors upon legal declaration.
69. Bar Chart: A bar chart is a graph used for data visualization and technical analysis in finance. It consists of vertical and horizontal lines arranged on a graph to give meaningful information.
70. Basket: This refers to a collection of digital currencies managed as a single asset.
71. Beacon Chain: This is a blockchain that coordinates shard chains, and manages staking and the registry of validators in a PoS cryptocurrency, such as Ethereum 2.0.
72. Bear: Someone who believes that prices in a given market will decline over an extended period.
73. Bear Market: This is when prices of assets in a market fall from recent highs. As a result, investor confidence is low, and the economy and market turn pessimistic.
74. Bear Trap: The attempted manipulation of a specific cryptocurrency’s price, based on the coordinated activity of a group of traders.
75. Bearwhale: Someone who has a high number of cryptocurrencies and uses their massive account to drive the price down and profit out of it.
76. Behavioral Finance: Behavioral finance is a branch of finance that combines psychology and economics to explain how human emotions and cognitive biases influence financial decisions.
77. Benchmark: Benchmarking is a method of comparing the performance of your asset or investment portfolio to that of similar assets to see whether there is a gap that can be bridged by increasing performance indicators.
78. Benchmark Index: A benchmark index is a popular index security that is used as a gauge or benchmark, against which the progress of the broader market may be tracked.
79. BEP-2 (Binance Chain Tokenization Standard): A technical standard for tokens on Binance Chain.
80. BEP-20: A BNB Chain token standard created to extend ERC-20.
81. BEP-721: BEP-721 is a Binance Smart Chain (BSC) token standard that enables the generation of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It is considered to be an extension of ERC-721 which is one of the most popular NFT standards.
82. BEP-95 (Bruno Hard Fork Upgrade): Binance Evolution Protocol (BEP-95) is a Bruno hard fork upgrade that aims to speed up the BNB token-burning process.
83. Bid Price: The cost that someone is willing to pay for a security, asset, commodity, service, or contract.
84. Bid-Ask Spread: The difference between the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay for an asset as well as the lowest price that a seller is willing to accept.
85. Big Tech: The biggest technological corporations like Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon, are referred to as “Big Tech” as they enjoy the biggest shares in their respective industries.
86. Binance Chain Explorer: Binance Chain Explorer is a web-based platform that provides access to information and data related to the BNB Chain.
87. Binance Labs: Binance Labs is a project to nurture, invest in, and develop blockchain and cryptocurrency businesses, initiatives, and communities, as well as a social impact fund.
88. Binance Launchpad: Binance Launchpad offers crypto startups a platform to raise capital and market their projects to millions of crypto investors in the Binance ecosystem.
89. Bitcoin 3.0: Bitcoin 3.0 represents the next evolutionary phase of Bitcoin mining.
90. Bitcoin ATM (BTM): An automated teller machine (ATM or cashpoint) that allows the user to buy and sell Bitcoin.
91. Bitcoin DApps: These are decentralized applications (DApps) running on Bitcoin-powered blockchains while benefiting from the core features of the Bitcoin network.
92. Bitcoin Dominance (BTCD): Bitcoin Dominance is a metric that determines how much share of the overall crypto market share is owned by Bitcoin.
93. Bitcoin ETF: A Bitcoin ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a type of investment fund that tracks the price of Bitcoin and allows investors to buy and sell shares of the fund on an exchange.
94. Bitcoin Halving: Bitcoin halving is an event in which the total rewards per confirmed block halves.
95. Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP): The standard format for documents proposing changes to Bitcoin.
96. Bitcoin Misery Index (BMI): The Bitcoin Misery Index (BMI) is used by investors as an investment tool that ranges from 0 to 100.
97. Bitcoin NFTs: These are Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) minted on Bitcoin-powered blockchains and secured by the Bitcoin network.
98. Bitcoin Pizza: Bitcoin Pizza refers to the infamous transaction where a guy, named Laszlo Hanyecz, paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas making it the first business transaction of Bitcoin in the real world.
99. Bitcoin Virtual Machine (BitVM): A proposed system described in a whitepaper by Robin Linus that allows complex computations and smart contracts to be executed on the Bitcoin network.
100. Bitcoiner: A person who is bullish on Bitcoin.
101. Bitcointalk: Bitcointalk is the most popular online forum dedicated to Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
102. BitLicense: A business license permitting regulated virtual currency activities, issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
103. BitPay: BitPay is a Bitcoin payment service provider.
104. Bits: A commonly used unit of a single Bitcoin.
105. Black Hat Hacker: Black hat hackers usually use malware to penetrate into computerized networks and systems to steal data.
106. Block Explorer: An application enabling a user to view details of blocks on a given blockchain. Also known as a blockchain browser.
107. Block Header: A block header is a unique identifier for a block on a blockchain that is hashed continuously to supply proof-of-work for mining incentives.
108. Block Height: This is a value describing the number of blocks preceding a given block in the blockchain.
109. Block Lattice (Nano): A data structure that replaces the traditional blockchain used by most cryptocurrencies with a network of individual blockchains, one for each user.
110. Block Producer: A block producer (BP) is a person or group whose hardware is chosen to verify a block’s transactions and begin the next block on most Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains.
111. Block Reward: The coins awarded to a miner or group of miners for solving the cryptographic problem required to create a new block on a given blockchain.
112. Block Size: Refers to the amount of data about transactions a single block in the chain can carry.
113. Block Time: Refers to the approximate time it takes for a blockchain-based system to produce a new block.
114. Block Trade: A large-scale purchase or sale of securities that occurs outside of an open market.
115. Blockchain: A distributed ledger system. A sequence of blocks, or units of digital information, stored consecutively in a public database. The basis for cryptocurrencies.
116. Blockchain 1.0: Blockchain 1.0 is the first generation of blockchain technology, which focuses on cryptocurrency and decentralization.
117. Blockchain 2.0: This is an extension of blockchain 1.0 as it introduced the concept of decentralization of business and markets through smart contracts and improved security and transparency.
118. Blockchain 3.0: Blockchain 3.0 is the final developmental stage of blockchain technology, which predicts global, institutional, and enterprise adoption.
119. Blockchain Mutual Credit: A framework within which stable cryptocurrencies can be derived from multilateral exchange networks.
120. Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP): This enables isolated blockchains to operate as a fully decentralized settlement layer by securely anchoring transactions using a universal protocol.
121. Blockchain Tribalism: Refers to people in the blockchain or crypto community becoming ideologically aligned with a specific blockchain or crypto.
122. Blockchain Trilemma: A set of three issues that plague blockchains: decentralization, security and scalability.
123. Blockchain-As-a-Service (BaaS): BaaS offers the capabilities of blockchain technology to businesses but without the necessity of creating and maintaining a dedicated blockchain framework.
124. Blockchain-Enabled Smart Locks: This solves many security issues and can be locked or unlocked based on the state of a variable that is embedded in a smart contract.
125. Blockweave: A data storage protocol that builds upon blockchain architecture. It utilizes a unique interconnected structure linking each block to the previous block and a random older block.
126. Bluesky Crypto Protocol: A decentralized social network protocol, organized by Twitter, that allows several social networks to interact with other social networks, thanks to an open standard.
127. Bollinger Band: A tool developed by Bollinger to help recognize systemic patterns in prices; it is a band that is plotted two standard deviations away from the simple moving average, or exponential moving average in some cases.
128. Bonding Curve: A mathematical curve that defines the relationship between the price and the supply of a given asset.
129. Bots: An automated software that can carry out tasks such as cryptocurrency trades.
130. Bounty: A cryptocurrency bounty is a reward users receive for performing tasks assigned by a given blockchain or project.
131. BRC-20: Taking its cue from Ethereum’s ERC-20, the Bitcoin blockchain’s BRC-20 is an experimental token standard. Ordinals protocol supports the generation and transfer of fungible tokens.
132. Bridges: A blockchain bridge allows the seamless transfer of data or tokens between two different blockchain projects.
133. Bubble: When an asset is traded at a price exceeding that asset’s intrinsic value.
134. Bug Bounty: A reward offered for the identification of vulnerabilities in software.
135. Bug Exploit: A bug exploit is an attack that takes advantage of a system’s vulnerabilities.
136. Bull: A person who is optimistic and confident that market prices will increase.
137. Bull Market: Refers to a time during which the prices of assets grow dramatically.
138. Bull Run: Also known as a bull trend is a period of time in the financial market during which the values of certain assets are constantly rising.
139. Bull Trap: A bull trap occurs when a steadily declining asset appears to reverse and go upward, but soon resumes its downward trend.
140. Burn/Burned: Cryptocurrency tokens or coins are considered “burned” when they have been purposely and permanently removed from circulation.
141. Buy The Dip (BTD/BTFD): An enthusiastic exclamation by supporters of a cryptocurrency to buy while prices are at a low point.
142. Buy Wall: A buy wall is a large buy limit order placed on a cryptocurrency exchange.
143. Byron Phase: Byron Phase is the first phase of Cardano which was released in September 2017.
144. Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT): The property of a computer system that allows it to reach consensus regardless of the failure of some of its components.
145. Byzantine Generals’ Problem: A situation where communication that requires consensus on a single strategy from all members within a group or party cannot be trusted or verified.

To be continued…