The crypto glossary, in plain English.

Also: Majority Attack

When one party controls more than half of a network's mining power (or stake) and uses it to rewrite recent history, typically to double-spend. The bigger and more distributed the network, the more expensive this is. Small chains have been hit by it; Bitcoin never has.

See also: Double Spending, Proof of Work (PoW)

Also: AA, ERC-4337, Smart Wallet

Giving a wallet account smart-contract features that a plain key-only account lacks: recovering access through trusted contacts, letting someone else pay the gas, batching several actions into one, or setting spending limits. It can be done with dedicated smart-contract accounts (ERC-4337) or, since Ethereum's May 2025 Pectra upgrade, by letting an ordinary account delegate to smart-contract code (EIP-7702).

See also: Externally Owned Account (EOA), Smart Contract

A scam where an attacker sends a tiny or zero-value transfer from an address that looks nearly identical to one you use, hoping you'll copy it from your history and send real funds to it. Always verify the full address.

See also: Wallet Address, Phishing

Also: AI Agent Payments

Payments made by AI agents acting on a person's or company's behalf. Several competing standards exist, some built on stablecoins (such as x402) and others on card networks and checkout flows (such as Google's AP2 and the OpenAI and Stripe protocol). All of them raise new questions about spending limits, authorization, and accountability.

See also: x402, Account Abstraction

A free distribution of tokens to wallets, usually to reward early users or to promote a project. Airdrops attract farmers who create many wallets, and also scammers who send fake tokens meant to lure you to malicious sites.

See also: Token Generation Event (TGE), Sybil Attack

A fixed set of step-by-step rules for solving a problem. In crypto, algorithms power everything from hashing and signatures to the consensus rules that decide which block comes next.

See also: Hash, Consensus

A stablecoin that tries to hold its peg through code and incentives, typically by minting and burning a companion token, rather than relying mainly on reserves. The model's high-profile failure came with TerraUSD in 2022, which collapsed and wiped out tens of billions in value. US law now restricts new designs that rely only on a companion token.

See also: Stablecoin, Depeg

Also: ATH

The highest price an asset has ever reached.

See also: All-Time Low (ATL)

Also: ATL

The lowest price an asset has ever traded at.

See also: All-Time High (ATH)

Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. The term ranges from serious networks to speculative projects, so it says nothing about quality.

See also: Bitcoin, Token

A stretch when altcoins broadly outperform Bitcoin, usually late in a bull market, as money rotates into smaller assets. Many have also ended in steep reversals.

See also: Altcoin, Dominance

Also: AML

The laws and procedures that require financial firms to detect and report suspicious activity and stop criminals from hiding the origins of money.

See also: Know Your Customer (KYC), Travel Rule

Also: API

A defined way for one piece of software to request data or actions from another. In crypto, APIs are how apps pull prices, wallet balances, and on-chain data.

See also: Software Development Kit (SDK)

Also: ASIC

A chip built to do one job, such as Bitcoin's SHA-256 hashing, far more efficiently than a general-purpose computer. ASICs made home CPU mining of Bitcoin obsolete.

See also: Mining Rig, Hashrate, ASIC Resistant

Also: APR, APY, Annual Percentage Yield

APR is the simple annual rate of return, while APY includes compounding, so APY looks higher for the same product. Variable DeFi rates change by the minute, so a quoted figure is a snapshot, not a promise.

See also: Yield Farming

Profiting from a price difference for the same asset in two places by buying low in one and selling high in the other. Arbitrageurs keep prices aligned across exchanges.

See also: Flash Loan, Kimchi Premium

A mining algorithm designed to be inefficient on custom chips so that ordinary computers can keep competing. In practice, determined manufacturers have often built ASICs for these anyway.

See also: Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), Graphical Processing Unit (GPU)

Also: AMA

A live Q&A in which a founder or team answers community questions. Useful for listening, though teams control what they say.

See also: Whitepaper

A trade of one cryptocurrency for another across different chains, using time-locked contracts so that either both sides complete or neither does, with no middleman.

See also: Cross-Chain, Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

Also: AMM

A trading system that prices assets with a mathematical formula and a pool of tokens instead of matching buyers with sellers in an order book. Uniswap popularized it.

See also: Liquidity Pool, Impermanent Loss, Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

A feature built into a fork so transactions signed on one chain are automatically invalid on the other, preventing replay attacks without any action from the user.

See also: Replay Attack, Hard Fork

Also: Bag Holder

Someone stuck holding an asset that has collapsed in value, often after buying near the top, who hasn't sold.

See also: Dump

A trading method that collects orders over a short window and settles them all at one uniform price, which reduces the advantage of front-running. CoW Swap uses it.

See also: Decentralized Exchange (DEX), MEV

A prolonged period of falling prices and pessimism, conventionally a drop of 20 percent or more from a recent peak. In crypto, bear markets have often lasted a year or longer.

See also: Bull Market, Bearish, Drawdown

Expecting prices to fall. A bearish trader or analyst is pessimistic about an asset.

See also: Bullish, Bear Market

Also: Spread

The gap between the highest price buyers are offering and the lowest price sellers are asking. A wide spread signals thin trading and higher hidden costs.

See also: Order Book, Liquidity

Also: BTC

The first cryptocurrency, launched in January 2009 following a whitepaper published in October 2008. It is a decentralized digital currency with a fixed supply cap of 21 million coins, secured by Proof-of-Work mining. "Bitcoin" with a capital B usually means the network; "bitcoin" in lowercase, the coin.

See also: Satoshi Nakamoto, Halving, Proof of Work (PoW)

A kiosk that lets people buy or sell bitcoin for cash. Fees are typically much higher than on an exchange, and the machines are a frequent tool in scams, so they are increasingly regulated.

See also: Wallet, Know Your Customer (KYC)

Also: BIP

A formal design document proposing a change or standard for Bitcoin, discussed openly before anything is adopted. BIP-39, which defines seed phrases, is a notable one.

See also: Soft Fork, Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)

A license that New York State's financial regulator requires of businesses dealing in virtual currency with New York residents, in force since 2015. It is among the strictest US state regimes.

See also: Know Your Customer (KYC)

Also: Proto-Danksharding, EIP-4844

A temporary, cheaper kind of data space added to Ethereum in the March 2024 Dencun upgrade, designed for rollups to post their data. It sharply cut fees on many Layer 2 networks, and later upgrades such as Fusaka have raised how many blobs fit in each block.

See also: Rollup, Data Availability

A batch of transactions bundled together and added to the chain. Each block carries a reference to the previous block, which is what links the chain together.

See also: Blockchain, Block Height, Block Confirmation

Also: Confirmation

Each new block built on top of the one containing your transaction counts as one more confirmation. More confirmations mean it is less likely the transaction can ever be reversed. Exchanges often wait for several before crediting a deposit.

See also: Block, Finality, Zero-Confirmation Transaction

Also: Chain Explorer

A public website that lets anyone look up blocks, transactions, and wallet addresses on a chain. It is the quickest way to verify that a payment really happened, with no one's word needed. Etherscan and mempool.space are common examples.

See also: Wallet Address, Transaction

The number of blocks between a given block and the very first one. It works as a position marker: "block 800,000" names one exact point in a chain's history.

See also: Block, Genesis Block

Also: Mining Reward, Block Subsidy

The newly created coins a miner receives for adding a block, on top of the transaction fees it collects. On Bitcoin the subsidy halves roughly every four years, so fees are gradually expected to matter more.

See also: Halving, Mining, Transaction Fee

A shared record of transactions, stored as a chain of blocks that each reference the one before. Because every participant holds a copy and changing history would mean rewriting every block after it, the record is very hard to alter after the fact. Blockchain is the technology; Bitcoin is one application of it.

See also: Block, Distributed Ledger, Consensus

The idea that a blockchain struggles to be fully decentralized, secure, and scalable at the same time, and that improving one tends to cost another. Most scaling debates are really debates about which trade-off to accept.

See also: Layer 1, Layer 2

Also: Bug Bounty

A reward offered to people who find and responsibly report vulnerabilities, or complete defined tasks. Bug bounties pay hackers to disclose flaws instead of exploiting them.

See also: Smart Contract Audit

Also: Cross-Chain Bridge

A protocol that moves tokens or messages from one blockchain to another, commonly by locking the original and issuing a representation on the destination chain. Bridges hold large pools of assets and have been behind some of the biggest hacks in crypto history.

See also: Cross-Chain, Wrapped Token, Interoperability

A deliberate misspelling of "build," in the style of HODL, urging people to keep building during bear markets instead of trading.

See also: HODL

A sustained period of rising prices and optimism. Crypto's bull runs have historically been steep and followed by sharp declines.

See also: Bear Market, Bullish

Expecting prices to rise. A bullish trader or analyst is optimistic about an asset.

See also: Bearish, Bull Market

Also: BTFD, Buy the F***in Dip

Buying after a price drop, expecting a recovery. It has worked often in crypto's history and failed badly when the dip turned out to be the start of a collapse.

See also: Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA)

A very large buy order, or cluster of orders, placed at a price on the order book that appears to hold the price up. Walls can be pulled in an instant, so they are not reliable support.

See also: Sell Wall, Order Book

Also: Transaction Tax

A fee built into a token's contract that takes a percentage of every buy or sell, sent to the project, liquidity, or holders. Very high or hidden sell taxes are a common feature of scam tokens.

See also: Variable Buy/Sell Tax, Memecoin

A failure in which some participants in a system act incorrectly or dishonestly, possibly by sending conflicting information to different parts of the network. A "Byzantine fault tolerant" system keeps working correctly anyway.

See also: Byzantine Generals' Problem, Consensus

A thought experiment about how separated parties can agree on a plan when some of them may be traitors and messages can't be trusted. It frames the core challenge blockchain consensus solves: agreement among strangers who might cheat.

See also: Byzantine Fault, Consensus

Also: Open/Close, Candle

A chart bar that shows four prices for a period: open, high, low, and close. Its body is colored to show whether the price ended up or down. The Open/Close pair is the heart of it.

See also: Support and Resistance, Trading Volume

Also: Bloodbath

A sharp wave of panic selling in which holders give up and sell at a loss, often with surging volume. Some see it as a sign a bottom is near, though it is only clear in hindsight.

See also: Bear Market

Also: CC0

An NFT whose creator dedicated the artwork to the public domain under Creative Commons Zero, so anyone can use, copy, and build on it commercially.

See also: Non-Fungible Token (NFT), PFP

Also: CBDC

A digital form of a country's official currency issued directly by its central bank. Unlike cryptocurrencies, a CBDC is centrally controlled. Several countries are piloting them and others have ruled them out.

See also: Fiat, Stablecoin

A ledger controlled and maintained by a single authority, such as a bank or a government registry. Blockchains were designed as the alternative: a shared ledger that no single party controls.

See also: Ledger, Centralized

Controlled by one entity or a small group that can change the rules, freeze accounts, or shut the system down. A centralized exchange (CEX) is the everyday example.

See also: Decentralized, Central Ledger

Also: CEX, Exchange

A company-run platform, such as Coinbase or Binance, where you trade through an account and the exchange holds your assets. It is easy to use and liquid, but you rely on the company's honesty and security, and funds can be frozen or lost if it fails.

See also: Decentralized Exchange (DEX), Custody, Know Your Customer (KYC)

The number of a token's coins that are currently available to the public and trading. It excludes locked, unvested, or burned tokens.

See also: Total Supply, Market Capitalization (Market Cap)

Also: Digital Asset Market Clarity Act

US market-structure legislation that aims to define which digital assets are treated as commodities and which as securities, and to divide oversight between the CFTC and the SEC. It passed the House in 2025 but has not become law, and a Senate vote to advance it failed in September 2026, so check current coverage before relying on any status.

See also: Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

Renting mining power from a company instead of running your own hardware. It is a favorite cover for scams, since you can't verify the machines exist, so scrutinize the economics and track record.

See also: Mining Contract, Mining

Keeping crypto keys entirely offline, on a hardware device or even paper, for long-term holding. It is the standard approach for savings that don't need to move often.

See also: Cold Wallet, Hardware Wallet

A wallet whose keys are kept offline, away from internet-connected devices. It is much harder to attack remotely, though it can still be lost, damaged, or stolen.

See also: Hot Wallet, Cold Storage, Hardware Wallet

Assets pledged to secure a loan, which the lender can claim if the borrower doesn't repay. In DeFi, the smart contract holds them.

See also: Overcollateralization, Liquidation

Also: CDO

A traditional-finance product that bundles loans, such as mortgages, into securities sold in tiers of risk. Mispriced CDOs sat at the center of the 2008 financial crisis, and the term is cited in debates over the opacity of financial engineering.

See also: Collateral, Derivatives

Also: CFTC

The US regulator of commodity and derivatives markets. It treats bitcoin and ether as commodities, oversees crypto futures, and since December 2025 has allowed spot crypto trading on its registered exchanges. Its authority over spot markets rests on agency action rather than a new law, and Congress has not settled it.

See also: Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Derivatives

Also: Money Legos

The ability for open smart contracts to plug into one another like building blocks, so a new app can use existing protocols without anyone's permission. It drives DeFi innovation and also lets failures spread from one protocol to another.

See also: Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Smart Contract

Also: Consensus Mechanism

The method by which thousands of independent computers agree on which transactions are valid and in what order. Without it there would be no single shared record. Proof of Work and Proof of Stake are the two best-known approaches.

See also: Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), Byzantine Fault

What you originally paid for an asset, including fees. It is the starting point for working out your gain or loss, and for taxes.

See also: Crypto Taxes, Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA)

Anything that operates across more than one blockchain, such as a cross-chain swap, bridge, or message. Each additional chain adds more places for things to go wrong.

See also: Bridge, Interoperability

An older name for a token sale in which a project raises money from the public, which became known as an ICO.

See also: Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

A period when prices climb far beyond any underlying value, driven by speculation and fear of missing out, until the rush reverses. Bubbles are easier to name afterward than to spot in real time.

See also: Bull Market, Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

In the US and many other countries, crypto is taxed as property: selling, swapping, or spending it can trigger a capital gain or loss, and income such as staking rewards can be taxable when received. US brokers now report some transactions on Form 1099-DA, but that does not replace your own records, and a qualified tax professional can help.

See also: Cost Basis

A stablecoin backed by other crypto locked in smart contracts, held in excess of the stablecoins issued so that price drops don't break the peg. DAI, launched by MakerDAO and now part of the Sky system alongside USDS, is the classic example, though over time much of its backing has shifted toward stablecoins and other assets.

See also: Stablecoin, Collateral, Overcollateralization

Also: Crypto

A digital asset that uses cryptography and a blockchain to record ownership and transfers without a central issuer. The term covers everything from Bitcoin to thousands of tokens of very different quality.

See also: Bitcoin, Token, Blockchain

The science of securing information with mathematics. It underpins nearly everything in crypto: proving who owns what, linking blocks, and keeping data secret.

See also: Encryption, Hash, Digital Signature

Also: Custodian

Holding assets on someone else's behalf. When you keep crypto on an exchange, the exchange has custody and you hold an IOU, which exposes you to its failures.

See also: Non-Custodial, Self-Custody

Also: DAA, Active Addresses

The number of unique addresses that send or receive a transaction in a day. It is a common proxy for network usage, but one person can control many addresses and exchanges use many, so treat it as a rough signal, not a headcount.

See also: Wallet Address, Block Explorer

Also: DA

The guarantee that the data needed to check a block was actually published, so anyone can verify it. It is a central concern for rollups, and dedicated data availability layers exist to provide it.

See also: Rollup, Modular Blockchain

A brief rebound in price during a longer decline, which tempts buyers before the fall resumes. Named for the idea that even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from high enough.

See also: Bear Market

The opposite pattern: a short-term moving average falls below a long-term one. It is read as bearish, and like its counterpart, it trails the price rather than predicts it.

See also: Golden Cross, Moving Average (MA)

Control is spread across many independent participants, so no single party can unilaterally change the rules. It is a spectrum, not a switch, and many projects that call themselves decentralized still rely on a few key operators or token holders.

See also: Centralized, Trustless, Node

Also: dApp, dApps

Apps whose core logic runs on smart contracts instead of a company's servers. Users interact with them by connecting a wallet. Many still depend on centralized pieces, such as a website, so check what is actually decentralized.

See also: Smart Contract, Web3

Also: DAO

An organization whose rules and treasury are managed by smart contracts and whose members, usually token holders, vote on decisions. DAOs run many DeFi protocols. In practice, voting power is often concentrated in a few large holders.

See also: Governance Token, Smart Contract

Also: DEX

A trading venue run by smart contracts that lets you swap tokens directly from your own wallet, with no account and no one holding your funds. You still pay network fees and face risks such as fake tokens and price slippage.

See also: Automated Market Maker (AMM), Centralized Exchange (CEX), Slippage

Also: DeFi

Financial services, such as trading, lending, borrowing, and earning interest, run by smart contracts that anyone can use without an intermediary. It is open and always on, but comes with smart-contract, oracle, and market risks that no company stands behind.

See also: Smart Contract, Decentralized Exchange (DEX), Lending Protocol

Turning encrypted data back into readable form using the correct key.

See also: Encryption

Also: Degens

Short for "degenerate": a trader who takes very high-risk bets, often in speculative tokens. It is used both as a joke and as a badge.

See also: Leverage, Memecoin

Also: dPoS

A variant where token holders vote for a small set of delegates who validate blocks on their behalf. It is fast, but concentrates power in a handful of elected operators.

See also: Proof of Stake (PoS), Delegation

Also: Address Delegation

Assigning the staking power of your tokens to a validator you choose, while still owning the tokens. It lets people who can't run a validator earn rewards, and the chosen validator's behavior affects them.

See also: Staking, Liquid Proof of Stake (LPoS)

When a stablecoin's market price drifts away from its target, usually one dollar. It can be temporary, as when USDC briefly traded below 90 cents in March 2023 during a banking panic, or permanent.

See also: Stablecoin

Also: Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks

Networks that use token rewards to get people to build and operate real-world infrastructure, such as wireless hotspots, data storage, or GPU computing, instead of one company funding it all. The challenge is proving demand beyond the token incentives.

See also: Decentralized, Token

Contracts whose value is based on an underlying asset, such as bitcoin, instead of owning it. Futures and options are the most common types.

See also: Futures, Option, Derivatives Market

The venues where derivatives trade. In crypto, derivative trading volume regularly exceeds spot volume, so it has an outsized influence on price moves.

See also: Derivatives, Open Interest

Also: Mining Difficulty

A measure of how hard it is to find a valid block. Bitcoin adjusts it roughly every two weeks (2,016 blocks) so blocks keep arriving about every ten minutes regardless of how much hashrate joins or leaves.

See also: Hashrate, Block Reward

Also: DAT, Crypto Treasury Company

A public company that holds cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin or ether, as a major treasury asset, giving shareholders indirect exposure. Their share prices can swing more than the underlying asset, and trade at premiums or discounts to it.

See also: Custody

Proof, created with a private key, that a message or transaction was authorized by the key's owner and wasn't altered. Anyone can check it with the matching public key, yet no one can forge it. Every blockchain transaction carries one.

See also: Public Key, Private Key, Transaction

Also: DAG

A data structure where transactions link to earlier transactions without ever looping back, instead of being packed into sequential blocks. Some networks use DAGs hoping for higher throughput.

See also: Hashgraph, Tangle, Distributed Ledger

Also: DDoS

An attack that floods a website or network with traffic from many sources at once so that it can't serve real users. Exchanges and nodes are frequent targets.

See also: Node

Also: Distributed Ledger Technology, DLT

A record that is copied and synchronized across many computers instead of sitting in one company's database. Every blockchain is a distributed ledger, but not every distributed ledger uses blocks.

See also: Blockchain, Ledger, Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)

Also: DYOR

A reminder to verify a project yourself rather than trusting a tip or an influencer. It is also a convenient disclaimer for people hyping things, so take it as advice, not as an excuse.

See also: Whitepaper

Also: DCA

Investing a fixed amount at regular intervals regardless of price, to smooth out the entry price over time instead of trying to pick the bottom.

See also: Volatility, Cost Basis

Also: Bitcoin Dominance, BTC.D

Bitcoin's share of the total cryptocurrency market cap. A rising number suggests money is moving into Bitcoin and away from altcoins, and vice versa.

See also: Market Capitalization (Market Cap), Altcoin

Spending the same digital money twice. Preventing it without a central bank was the problem Bitcoin was invented to solve.

See also: 51% Attack, Block Confirmation

The fall from a peak to a later low, expressed as a percentage. Drawdowns of 70 to 80 percent have occurred in major cryptocurrencies, and many smaller ones never recover.

See also: Volatility, All-Time High (ATH)

A rapid, large drop in price, often from heavy selling by big holders.

See also: Pump and Dump Scheme, Bagholder

Sending tiny amounts of crypto to many wallets in order to trace activity, link addresses to an identity, or lure recipients into a scam. Best practice is simply to ignore dust.

See also: Wallet Address, Address Poisoning

An auction where the price starts high and falls until someone accepts it. It is used in NFT mints, token sales, and DeFi liquidations to find a fair price quickly.

See also: Batch Auction, Token Generation Event (TGE)

Also: Issuance

The rate at which new coins are created and enter circulation. Emission schedules, such as Bitcoin's declining one, are set in the protocol.

See also: Halving, Circulating Supply

Scrambling data so only someone with the right key can read it. Wallets and exchanges use it to protect stored information.

See also: Decryption, Cryptography

A standard that lets one contract manage many token types, fungible and non-fungible, and move them in a single transaction. It is popular in gaming.

See also: ERC-20, ERC-721

The standard for fungible tokens on Ethereum, where every unit is identical and interchangeable. Because it defines a common set of functions, wallets and exchanges can support any ERC-20 token. Most stablecoins and DeFi tokens follow it.

See also: Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP), Token

The standard for non-fungible tokens on Ethereum, where each token is unique. It is the basis of most NFT collections.

See also: Non-Fungible Token (NFT), ERC-1155

Also: ETH

The native cryptocurrency of Ethereum. It is used to pay transaction fees (gas), to stake as a validator, and as collateral across DeFi.

See also: Ethereum, Gas

Also: ETH

A blockchain, proposed by Vitalik Buterin and launched in 2015, built to run programs called smart contracts instead of only moving a currency. It is the base for most of DeFi, NFTs, and stablecoins, and moved from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake in 2022.

See also: Ether, Smart Contract, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)

Also: EIP

A formal design document proposing a change to Ethereum or a standard for apps on it, debated publicly before adoption. Standards for tokens are called ERCs.

See also: Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP), ERC-20

Also: ENS

A naming system that maps readable names like name.eth to wallet addresses and other data, so you don't have to share a long string of characters.

See also: Wallet Address, Ethereum

Also: EVM

The software environment that executes smart contracts on Ethereum. Many other chains and Layer 2s are "EVM-compatible," meaning apps built for Ethereum can run on them with little change.

See also: Smart Contract, Solidity, Layer 2

Also: ETF

A fund that trades on a stock exchange like a share and holds a basket of assets or tracks an index. Crypto ETFs let people gain exposure through an ordinary brokerage account, with no wallet.

See also: Spot Bitcoin ETF

Also: ELI5

A request for a simple, jargon-free explanation, which is also the purpose of this glossary.

See also: Do Your Own Research (DYOR)

Also: EOA

A standard Ethereum account controlled by a private key, such as the one in MetaMask. Contrast with a contract account, which is controlled by code.

See also: Private Key, Account Abstraction, Smart Contract

A site or service that gives away small amounts of cryptocurrency for free. Most are for testnets so developers can try things out.

See also: Testnet

A composite score, commonly from 0 to 100, that blends signals such as volatility, momentum, and social activity to gauge whether the market is dominated by fear or greed. Extreme readings are sometimes used as contrarian signals.

See also: Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD)

Also: FOMO

The urge to buy because prices are rising and you worry about being left behind. It tends to push people to buy near peaks.

See also: Crypto Bubble

Also: FUD

Negative news, rumors, or sentiment, whether justified or spread to push prices down. The skill is telling real risks from noise. Not everything called FUD is false.

See also: Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Also: Fiat Currency

Government-issued money, such as the US dollar or the euro, whose value comes from government backing rather than a physical commodity. Crypto prices are usually quoted against fiat.

See also: Stablecoin, Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)

Also: Fiat-Pegged Cryptocurrency

A stablecoin backed by reserves of cash and short-term government securities held by an issuer, and redeemable one-for-one. USDT and USDC are the largest. The safety question is the quality and transparency of the reserves and the issuer's ability to honor redemptions.

See also: Stablecoin, Proof of Reserves

The point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed. Some chains offer probabilistic finality (confidence grows with each block, as in Bitcoin) and others offer deterministic finality (a block is final once validators sign off).

See also: Block Confirmation, Reorg

A loan with no collateral that must be borrowed and repaid within a single blockchain transaction, or the whole thing is cancelled. It lets anyone move huge sums briefly, useful for arbitrage and refinancing, and a tool in many DeFi exploits.

See also: Smart Contract, Arbitrage

The lowest price at which any item in an NFT collection is currently listed for sale. It is the common benchmark for a collection's value, though a single cheap listing can set it.

See also: Non-Fungible Token (NFT)

Also: Front-Running

Spotting someone's pending transaction and placing your own ahead of it to profit from the price move it will cause. It is illegal in traditional markets but a built-in feature of open mempools.

See also: MEV, Sandwich Attack

A node that downloads and independently verifies every block and transaction against the protocol rules, rather than trusting someone else's word. Running one is how individuals check the chain for themselves.

See also: Node, Block

Also: FPPS

Like PPS, but the payout also includes each miner's share of the transaction fees in the block, not just the block subsidy.

See also: Pay-Per-Share (PPS), Transaction Fee

Also: FDV, Fully Diluted Valuation

The price multiplied by the maximum (or eventual total) supply, showing what the project would be worth if every token were already in circulation. A big gap between FDV and market cap signals many tokens still to be released, which can pressure the price.

See also: Market Capitalization (Market Cap), Circulating Supply

A periodic payment between long and short traders in a perpetual futures market that nudges its price toward the spot price. A strongly positive rate means longs are paying to hold their positions, which can signal crowded optimism.

See also: Perpetual Futures, Open Interest

A contract to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a future date. Traders use them to hedge or speculate, often with leverage.

See also: Perpetual Futures, Derivatives

The unit that measures how much computing work a transaction on Ethereum requires. Simple transfers use little gas and complex contract interactions use much more. You pay for gas in ether.

See also: Gas Limit, Gas Price, Transaction Fee

The most gas a user is willing to spend on a transaction. If the work needs more, it fails and the gas spent is not refunded. The term also refers to the cap on total gas per block.

See also: Gas, Gas Price

Also: Base Fee, Priority Fee

What you pay per unit of gas, quoted in gwei. Since the 2021 London upgrade (EIP-1559) it has two parts: a base fee that is burned, set by network demand, and an optional tip to the validator for faster inclusion.

See also: Gas, Gwei

The first block of a blockchain, at height zero. Bitcoin's genesis block was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto in January 2009.

See also: Block, Block Height

US federal law, signed in July 2025, that created a legal framework for payment stablecoins, including requirements for backing reserves, redemption, disclosure, and licensing of issuers. Regulators are still writing the implementing rules, and the main requirements apply from January 2027 at the latest.

See also: Stablecoin, Fiat-Backed Stablecoin

Also: Good Morning, GM

Crypto's all-purpose greeting, short for "good morning," used at any time of day as a friendly signal that you're part of the community.

See also: Web3

A chart pattern in which a short-term moving average, typically the 50-day, rises above a long-term one, typically the 200-day. Traders read it as a bullish signal, but it lags and is often wrong.

See also: Death Cross, Moving Average (MA)

A token that gives holders the right to vote on a protocol's decisions, like fee levels or how treasury funds are spent. Voting power usually scales with holdings, so large holders can dominate.

See also: Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), Token

Also: GPU

The graphics card chip in a computer. GPUs were once the main hardware for mining Ethereum before it moved to Proof of Stake, and are also the workhorses of AI.

See also: Mining Rig, ASIC Resistant

A unit of ether equal to one billionth of an ETH (a billion wei), used to quote gas prices. A gas price of 20 gwei is 0.00000002 ETH per unit of gas.

See also: Wei, Gas Price

Also: Halvening

The built-in event, about every four years (every 210,000 blocks), when the reward miners receive for each new block is cut in half. It is how Bitcoin's issuance slows toward the 21 million cap. The April 2024 halving lowered the reward from 6.25 to 3.125 bitcoin.

See also: Block Reward, Emission, Mining

Also: Max Supply

A fixed, permanent limit on how many tokens can ever exist, such as Bitcoin's 21 million. In an ICO or sale, it also means the maximum amount the project will raise.

See also: Total Supply, Soft Cap

A change to the protocol rules that is not backward-compatible: nodes that don't upgrade can no longer follow the new chain. If the community splits, the result can be two separate networks, as happened with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash in 2017.

See also: Soft Fork, Replay Attack, Immutable

A dedicated physical device that stores private keys and signs transactions without exposing the keys to your computer or phone. Buy only from the manufacturer, and treat the recovery phrase it gives you as the real backup.

See also: Cold Wallet, Mnemonic Phrase

Also: Hash Function

A function that turns any input into a fixed-length fingerprint. The same input always gives the same result, a tiny change gives a completely different one, and the process can't be run backward. Blockchains use hashes to link blocks and detect tampering.

See also: SHA-256, Merkle Tree, Nonce

A DAG-based distributed ledger design, used by Hedera, in which nodes gossip transactions to one another and reach agreement on ordering through "virtual voting."

See also: Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), Distributed Ledger

Also: Hash Rate, Hash Power

The total computing power being used to mine a network, measured in hashes per second. A rising hashrate means more competition and, generally, a more secure network.

See also: Mining, Difficulty, Hash

A single number, used by lenders such as Aave, that summarizes how safe a loan is. Above 1 the position is safe, and at or below 1 it can be liquidated. Falling collateral prices or rising debt both push it down.

See also: Liquidation Threshold, Liquidation

Crypto slang for holding through volatility instead of selling. It began as a typo for "hold" in a 2013 forum post and was later read as "hold on for dear life."

See also: Bear Market

A token or contract built so you can buy but not sell. It looks like it is going up while only the scammer can cash out.

See also: Rug Pull, Buy/Sell Tax

A wallet connected to the internet, such as a phone app, browser extension, or exchange account. It is convenient for frequent use and more exposed to hacking and phishing.

See also: Cold Wallet, Wallet

The US legal test, from a 1946 Supreme Court case, for what counts as an investment contract, and therefore a security: money invested in a common enterprise with an expectation of profit from the efforts of others. It sits at the center of the debate over which tokens are securities.

See also: Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Security Token Offering (STO)

A design that mixes mining and staking, typically so each group checks the other. Decred is the best-known example.

See also: Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS)

Also: Hyperledger Foundation

A family of open-source blockchain frameworks for business use, now hosted by the Linux Foundation's LF Decentralized Trust. Hyperledger Fabric is the best known.

See also: Permissioned Blockchain, Open Source

Cannot be changed once recorded. Blockchain history is practically immutable, though not literally so: a majority of the network could in theory rewrite it, and communities have occasionally agreed to reverse damage through a hard fork.

See also: Blockchain, Hard Fork

The shortfall a liquidity provider can face compared with simply holding the same tokens, when the prices of the pooled tokens move apart. It is "impermanent" only if prices later return, and fees may or may not make up for it.

See also: Liquidity Pool, Automated Market Maker (AMM)

Also: ICO

A fundraising method in which a project sells new tokens to the public, usually for established cryptocurrencies. The 2017 ICO boom produced some real projects and a great many failures and frauds, and led to regulatory crackdowns. Compliant, platform-run token sales have since returned.

See also: Initial Exchange Offering (IEO), Security Token Offering (STO)

Also: IEO

A token sale run through a centralized exchange, which vets the project and handles the sale for its users. It is meant to be safer than an ICO but is only as good as the exchange's diligence.

See also: Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

Also: IPO

A company's first sale of shares to the public on a stock exchange. Crypto firms such as exchanges, miners, and stablecoin issuers have gone public this way, bringing crypto into traditional market oversight.

See also: Venture Capital (VC)

Also: IoT

Everyday physical devices, from sensors to appliances, that connect to the internet. Blockchain is sometimes proposed as a way for such devices to authenticate and pay one another.

See also: DePIN

The ability of different blockchains to exchange data and value with each other. It remains one of the hardest unsolved problems in crypto.

See also: Bridge, Cross-Chain

Also: IPFS

A peer-to-peer system for storing and sharing files by their content rather than their location. NFTs often store their images on IPFS so the file doesn't depend on a single company's server.

See also: Decentralized, Non-Fungible Token (NFT)

The price gap between crypto, notably bitcoin, on South Korean exchanges and on global exchanges. It has swelled to double digits when local demand was strong and limits on moving money across borders blocked arbitrage, but in recent years it has often been small and has at times turned negative.

See also: Arbitrage

Also: KYC

The identity checks a regulated platform runs before letting you trade or withdraw, usually requiring a government ID. It exists to prevent fraud and illicit finance.

See also: Anti-Money Laundering (AML)

Also: L1, Base Layer

The base blockchain itself, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana, where transactions are ultimately settled. Scaling solutions built on top are called Layer 2s.

See also: Layer 2, Mainnet

Also: L2, Second-Layer Solutions

A separate network built on top of a base blockchain that handles transactions more cheaply and quickly, then settles back to the base layer for security. Rollups, state channels, and the Lightning Network are all Layer 2 approaches.

See also: Layer 1, Rollup, Blockchain Trilemma

A record of who owns what and which transactions happened. Banks keep ledgers privately; blockchains keep one publicly.

See also: Distributed Ledger, Central Ledger

Also: Money Market

A DeFi app where users deposit assets to earn interest and others borrow against collateral, with rates set automatically by supply and demand. Aave and Compound are well-known examples.

See also: Collateral, Overcollateralization, Liquidation

Using borrowed money to take a bigger position than your own funds allow. A 10x position magnifies gains and losses tenfold, and a 10 percent move against you can wipe out the whole stake.

See also: Margin Trading, Liquidation

Also: Lightning

A Layer 2 payment network on Bitcoin that makes near-instant, very low-fee payments through channels between users, settling only occasionally on the main chain. It is aimed at everyday payments.

See also: Layer 2, State Channel, Microtransaction

Also: Limit Buy, Limit Sell

An order to buy or sell only at a price you set or better. It gives price control but may never fill if the market doesn't reach your level.

See also: Market Order, Order Book

Also: LPoS

A variant where holders can delegate their stake to a validator while keeping their coins in their own wallet and under their own control. Tezos is a well-known example.

See also: Proof of Stake (PoS), Delegation

Staking through a service that gives you a receipt token, like stETH, that represents your stake and can still be traded or used in DeFi while the original stays locked. It adds smart-contract risk, and the receipt can trade below the value of what it represents.

See also: Staking, Restaking

When a loan or leveraged position is forcibly closed, and collateral is sold, because its value has fallen too far. In DeFi, third parties trigger it for a bonus, and the borrower loses part of their collateral as a penalty.

See also: Health Factor, Collateral, Margin Call

The LTV at which a loan stops being safe and can be liquidated. It sits above the maximum LTV a protocol lets you borrow at, giving a small cushion.

See also: Loan-to-Value (LTV), Liquidation

How easily you can buy or sell an asset without moving its price. Deep liquidity means big trades go through smoothly, and shallow liquidity means a modest order can swing the price.

See also: Trading Volume, Slippage, Liquidity Pool

Also: Pool, LP

A pot of two or more tokens locked in a smart contract that traders swap against. People who supply tokens, called liquidity providers, earn a share of trading fees.

See also: Automated Market Maker (AMM), Impermanent Loss

Also: LTV

The size of a loan compared with the value of the collateral behind it. A $50 loan against $100 of collateral is a 50 percent LTV. The higher it climbs, the closer the position is to liquidation.

See also: Overcollateralization, Liquidation Threshold, Health Factor

Also: Recursive Lending, Leveraged Staking

Depositing collateral, borrowing against it, buying more of the same asset, depositing that, and repeating, to build a larger position than you could afford outright. It magnifies gains and losses and leaves less room before liquidation.

See also: Lending Protocol, Leverage, Liquidation

The live version of a blockchain where transactions are real and carry real value. "Launching mainnet" is when a project goes from testing to production.

See also: Testnet, Protocol

A demand to add collateral when your leveraged position falls in value. On crypto platforms it is often automatic: if you don't act, the platform liquidates the position.

See also: Margin Trading, Liquidation

Trading with borrowed funds, using your own assets as collateral. It can amplify profits and also losses beyond your intent.

See also: Leverage, Margin Call

Also: Market Cap

The price of a coin multiplied by its circulating supply: a rough measure of its size. It is not the money invested in it, and in thinly traded tokens a small purchase can swing it a lot.

See also: Circulating Supply, Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV)

A trader or firm that continuously places buy and sell orders, providing liquidity and earning the difference between them. In crypto, some are professional firms that deal directly with projects.

See also: Market Taker, Liquidity, Bid-Ask Spread

Also: Market Buy, Market Sell

An order to buy or sell immediately at the best available price. It fills fast, but on a thin market you may get a worse price than expected.

See also: Limit Order, Slippage

A trader whose order is filled immediately against orders already on the book, removing liquidity. Exchanges commonly charge takers higher fees than makers.

See also: Market Maker, Market Order

Also: Masternodes

A node that locks up a fixed amount of coins as collateral and performs extra network services, such as instant transactions or governance voting, in return for rewards. Dash popularized the model.

See also: Node, Staking

Also: Meme Coin

A token built around a joke, image, or internet culture, such as Dogecoin, with little or no underlying function. Prices run on attention and sentiment, and most lose nearly all their value.

See also: Shitcoin, Pump and Dump Scheme

Also: Memory Pool

The waiting area where valid transactions sit, visible to the network, before a miner or validator includes them in a block. When it gets crowded, fees rise.

See also: Transaction, Transaction Fee, MEV

A structure that summarizes a large set of data into a single fingerprint, built by repeatedly hashing pairs of items together. It lets a lightweight wallet prove that a transaction is in a block without downloading the whole block.

See also: Hash, Block

Persistent online worlds where people interact, play, and own digital items. In crypto, it usually refers to virtual worlds in which land and assets are tokens. Hype peaked in 2021-22 and has cooled.

See also: Web3, Non-Fungible Token (NFT)

Also: Maximal Extractable Value, Miner Extractable Value

The profit that block producers or sophisticated bots can capture by choosing which transactions to include and in what order, including inserting their own. It is a hidden cost to ordinary traders, and a major area of protocol design.

See also: Mempool, Frontrun, Sandwich Attack

Also: Markets in Crypto-Assets

The European Union's comprehensive crypto regulation. Its stablecoin rules began applying in mid-2024 and its rules for service providers at the end of 2024, and the transition periods for existing firms ended on July 1, 2026. It sets licensing, disclosure, and reserve requirements for issuers and service providers across EU member states.

See also: Stablecoin

A payment of a very small amount, such as a cent or less. High fees make them impractical on most blockchains, which is a problem the Lightning Network and some newer chains try to solve.

See also: Lightning Network, Transaction Fee

Describes a cryptocurrency whose new coins can be created through mining. Others are issued up front or earned through staking instead.

See also: Mining, Proof of Work (PoW)

Also: Miner

The individuals or companies that run the hardware doing the mining. Today most Bitcoin mining is done by large operations with specialized machines and cheap electricity.

See also: Mining, Mining Pool

The process of using computing power to compete for the right to add the next block to a Proof-of-Work chain. Winners earn newly issued coins plus transaction fees. It is also how new bitcoin enters circulation.

See also: Proof of Work (PoW), Miners, Hashrate

An agreement to rent a slice of mining hashrate for a set period in exchange for a share of the output. Returns depend on fees, difficulty, and the coin's price, and are often oversold.

See also: Cloud Mining, Hashrate

A group of miners who combine their computing power and split the rewards in proportion to their contribution. Pools turn a lottery-like income into a steadier one.

See also: Mining, Pay-Per-Share (PPS), Pay-Per-Last N Shares (PPLNS)

The computer hardware set up to mine, ranging from a single machine to warehouses of them. For Bitcoin, rigs are built from ASICs; for some other coins they are built from GPUs.

See also: Mining, Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)

Also: Minting

Creating a new token or NFT on a blockchain. Buying an NFT directly from its creator at launch is called minting it.

See also: Non-Fungible Token (NFT), Whitelist

Also: Seed Phrase, Recovery Phrase, Secret Recovery Phrase, Mnemonics, Seed

A list of 12 or 24 common words that backs up a wallet's keys and can restore everything if a device is lost. Anyone who has it can take all your funds. No legitimate support team, app, or site will ever ask for it.

See also: Private Key, Wallet, Hardware Wallet

A design that splits the jobs of a blockchain (executing transactions, reaching consensus, settling disputes, and storing data) across separate specialized layers, instead of one chain doing everything. Ethereum with its rollups and data layers is a common example, though Ethereum's own roadmap now puts more weight on scaling the base layer itself.

See also: Data Availability, Rollup, Layer 1

Also: Brrr

A meme about central banks creating money, with the idea that more money chasing assets pushes prices up, used to justify holding Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.

See also: Bull Market

Also: To the Moon, When Moon, When Lambo

To rise dramatically. "When moon?" is the impatient question holders ask about when prices will surge. It's the same impulse as "When Lambo?", a joke about buying a luxury car with crypto gains.

See also: Bull Market

Also: MA, SMA, EMA

The average price over a set number of periods, such as 50 or 200 days, recalculated each period. It smooths out noise to show the trend direction.

See also: Golden Cross, Death Cross

Also: Multi-Party Computation Wallet

A wallet that splits a key into pieces held by different parties or devices so it is never in one place, and signs by combining them. It offers multisig-like safety with a smoother user experience.

See also: Multisignature (Multisig), Private Key

A Tokyo-based exchange that once handled most of the world's bitcoin trading, and collapsed in 2014 after hundreds of thousands of customers' coins were stolen or lost to poor controls. It is the textbook case for "not your keys, not your coins." Creditor repayments began in 2024, and the trustee has repeatedly extended the deadline to finish, with part of the coins still held back.

See also: Bitcoin, Custody

Also: Multisig, Multi-signature

A wallet that requires approval from several keys, such as two of three, before funds can move. Treasuries, DAOs, and careful individuals use it so no single lost or compromised key is fatal.

See also: Private Key, Wallet

Any computer that runs the network's software and holds or relays blockchain data. Nodes are what make a network decentralized, since each one independently checks the rules.

See also: Full Node, Validator, Peer-to-Peer

Also: Non-custodial

A service or wallet where you alone control the private keys, and the provider cannot move or freeze your funds. The trade-off is that you carry the responsibility for keeping them safe.

See also: Custody, Self-Custody

Also: NFT, NFTs

A unique token on a blockchain that proves ownership of a particular item, such as artwork, a collectible, or a ticket. "Non-fungible" means each one is distinct, unlike dollars or bitcoin, where any unit is interchangeable. Owning one does not by itself give you the copyright to the underlying work.

See also: ERC-721, Mint, Floor Price

Short for "number used once." Miners change this number again and again, hashing the block each time, until the result meets the network's difficulty target.

See also: Mining, Hash

Also: NFA

A disclaimer attached to opinions about assets. Blockchain IQ's research is general information for education, not advice tailored to you.

See also: Do Your Own Research (DYOR)

Also: Off-chain

Activity or data handled outside the blockchain itself, such as trades inside an exchange's own database or payments in a Lightning channel. It is faster and cheaper, but it relies on the operator or on extra safeguards, since the main chain isn't checking each step.

See also: On-Chain, Layer 2, Lightning Network

Recorded directly on the blockchain, where it is public, permanent, and verifiable by anyone. On-chain data, such as transfers, balances, and contract activity, is the raw material for much crypto analysis.

See also: Off-Chain, Block Explorer, Transaction

Also: OI

The total number of derivative contracts that are still open and unsettled. Rising open interest means more money is entering the market, and can foreshadow bigger moves and liquidation cascades.

See also: Derivatives Market, Futures

Software whose code is public for anyone to read, copy, audit, and improve. Most major blockchains are open source, which lets outsiders check what the system really does.

See also: Protocol, Hyperledger

Also: Optimistic Machine Learning

A cheaper approach to verifying AI computation on-chain: assume a result is correct unless someone challenges it within a window and proves otherwise. Like optimistic rollups, it trades speed of finality for lower cost.

See also: zkML, Optimistic Rollup

A rollup that assumes transactions are valid unless someone proves otherwise during a challenge window, commonly around seven days. That window is why withdrawing from one back to the base layer through its official bridge can take a week. Arbitrum and Optimism work this way.

See also: Rollup, ZK Rollup

Also: Options

A contract giving the right, but not the obligation, to buy (a call) or sell (a put) an asset at a set price by a certain date. Buyers can lose at most what they paid; sellers can face far larger losses.

See also: Derivatives

Also: Oracles

A service that delivers outside information, such as prices, weather, or sports results, to smart contracts, which cannot reach beyond their own blockchain. Because so much value depends on them, manipulating or breaking an oracle is a classic way to attack DeFi protocols.

See also: Smart Contract, Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

A live list of all open buy and sell orders for an asset, organized by price. It shows how much demand and supply sit at each level.

See also: Limit Order, Market Order, Bid-Ask Spread

Also: Ordinals

A 2023 system that numbers individual satoshis and lets people attach data, such as images or text, to them. This brought NFT-style collectibles to Bitcoin, and also stirred debate over using block space that way.

See also: Satoshi, Non-Fungible Token (NFT)

Also: OTC

A trade negotiated directly between two parties off a public exchange. Large buyers use OTC desks to avoid pushing the price with a big order.

See also: Market Maker, Liquidity

Posting more collateral than the amount you borrow, such as $150 of crypto to borrow $100. DeFi lenders rely on it because they can't check borrowers' credit.

See also: Collateral, Loan-to-Value (LTV)

Also: PPLNS

A payout method that, when the pool finds a block, pays miners based on their shares among the last N shares submitted. It rewards miners who stay loyal to the pool but leaves them carrying more luck variance.

See also: Mining Pool, Pay-Per-Share (PPS)

Also: PPS

A pool payout method that pays a fixed amount for each valid share of work, whether or not the pool finds a block. The pool absorbs the luck, so payouts are steady, and pools usually charge higher fees for it.

See also: Mining Pool, Full Pay-Per-Share (FPPS)

Also: P2P

A network in which participants connect and exchange data directly with one another, with no central server in the middle. Blockchains spread transactions and blocks this way.

See also: Node, Decentralized

Also: Private Blockchain

A blockchain where only approved participants can read, write, or validate. Common in enterprise settings where privacy and control matter more than open access.

See also: Public Blockchain, Hyperledger

Also: Perps, Perpetual Swaps

Futures with no expiry date, which are the most traded crypto derivative. A funding rate keeps their price close to the spot price. High leverage makes them a major source of liquidations.

See also: Futures, Funding Rate, Leverage

Also: Profile Picture NFT

A "profile picture" NFT collection, usually a set of thousands of generated characters, used as an online avatar and as a membership badge. CryptoPunks and Bored Apes are the best known.

See also: Non-Fungible Token (NFT)

Also: Social Engineering

A scam that tricks you into revealing secrets or signing something harmful, through fake websites, emails, DMs, or support chats that imitate real ones. The golden rule: never enter your recovery phrase anywhere, and check URLs carefully.

See also: Mnemonic Phrase, Token Approval

A long-running scam in which a fraudster builds a friendship or romance over weeks, then steers the victim into a fake investment platform and drains them. In 2025 the FBI recorded $7.2 billion in reported US losses to cryptocurrency investment fraud, the category these scams fall under and the largest single source of reported cybercrime loss, and many operations are run by organized groups using trafficked workers in Southeast Asia.

See also: Phishing, Ponzi Scheme

A fraud that pays earlier investors with money from newer ones, rather than from real profits, until recruitment dries up and it collapses. Guaranteed high returns are the telltale sign.

See also: Pump and Dump Scheme

The collection of assets a person or fund holds. A diversified one spreads risk across different assets, though in crypto many holdings tend to fall together.

See also: Watchlist, Return on Investment (ROI)

Also: Presale

A sale of tokens, often at a discount, before the public launch. Early buyers get lower prices but carry more risk and often face vesting.

See also: Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Whitelist

Cryptocurrencies built to hide transaction details such as who sent funds, who received them, or how much. Monero and Zcash are the best-known examples. Many exchanges have delisted them under regulatory pressure, and rules such as the EU's from 2027 limit how regulated firms may handle them, though the trend has not run in one direction only.

See also: Ring Signature, Zero-Knowledge Proof

Also: Private Keys

The secret that proves ownership of crypto and authorizes spending. Whoever holds it controls the funds, and a lost key is generally unrecoverable. Never share it or type it into a website.

See also: Public Key, Mnemonic Phrase, Self-Custody

Also: PoR

An attempt by an exchange or custodian to prove it holds the assets backing customer balances, often using cryptographic techniques. It shows assets only: unless liabilities are also proven, it doesn't show the firm is solvent.

See also: Custody, Fiat-Backed Stablecoin

Also: PoS

A consensus method where validators lock up (stake) their own coins for the right to propose and confirm blocks. Honest behavior earns rewards and dishonest behavior can cost part of the stake. It uses far less energy than Proof of Work. Ethereum switched to it in 2022.

See also: Validator, Staking, Slashing

Also: PoW

A consensus method where miners compete to solve a computational puzzle, and the winner adds the next block and earns a reward. The cost of the computing power is what makes cheating expensive. Bitcoin uses it.

See also: Mining, Hashrate, Proof of Stake (PoS)

Also: PoA

A consensus method where a small set of pre-approved, identified validators produce blocks. It is fast and efficient, but depends on trusting those validators. Common in private networks and testnets.

See also: Permissioned Blockchain, Validator

Also: PoB

A consensus method where participants prove commitment by sending coins to an address from which they can never be spent, "burning" them in exchange for the right to validate blocks. Rarely used in major networks.

See also: Token Burn, Proof of Work (PoW)

The rulebook a network follows: how nodes talk to each other, what counts as a valid transaction, and how blocks are produced. Bitcoin and Ethereum are protocols.

See also: Blockchain, Mainnet

Also: Permissionless Blockchain

A blockchain anyone can read, send transactions to, and (under the protocol's rules) help validate. Bitcoin and Ethereum are public.

See also: Permissioned Blockchain, Decentralized

The shareable half of a cryptographic key pair. Others use it, or an address derived from it, to send you funds and to verify your signatures. It cannot be used to spend your money or to work out your private key.

See also: Private Key, Digital Signature, Wallet Address

Also: Pump & Dump

Coordinated promotion that inflates a low-liquidity token's price so insiders can sell to latecomers at the top. It is illegal in traditional markets and common in crypto.

See also: Dump, Shilling

A scannable square barcode. Wallets use them to share addresses and payment requests without typing a long string. Check the address after scanning, because malware can swap it.

See also: Wallet Address

Also: Post-Quantum Cryptography

The concern that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break the digital-signature math protecting today's blockchains. No such machine exists yet, but research estimates of how large one would need to be have fallen sharply, and developers are working on quantum-resistant options in advance, such as a draft Bitcoin proposal (BIP-360) for a new type of address.

See also: Cryptography, Private Key

Also: RWA, RWAs

Traditional assets, such as Treasury bills, private credit, real estate, or commodities, represented on-chain. The token is only as good as the legal claim behind it, so look at who holds the asset, who can redeem it, and who is allowed to own it.

See also: Tokenization, Tokenized Fund

Also: Rekt

Slang for "wrecked": suffering a severe loss, often through a leveraged trade, hack, or scam.

See also: Liquidation

Also: RSI

A momentum gauge from 0 to 100 that compares recent gains with recent losses. Readings above 70 are conventionally called overbought and below 30 oversold, though strong trends can stay at extremes for a long time.

See also: Moving Average (MA)

Also: Chain Reorganization

When a network switches to a different, longer or heavier version of the chain, discarding blocks it had previously accepted. Short reorgs happen routinely; deep ones are rare and can be a sign of an attack.

See also: Stale Block, Finality

Re-broadcasting a valid transaction on a second chain (for example after a fork) so it executes twice. Users can lose funds on the chain they did not intend to use.

See also: Hard Fork, Automatic Replay Protection

The slice of the interest that borrowers pay that a lending protocol keeps for its own treasury, instead of passing to depositors. A higher factor means lower rates for suppliers.

See also: Lending Protocol, Utilization Rate

Re-using already staked assets to help secure additional networks or services, in exchange for extra yield. It stacks more risk on the same collateral, since misbehavior in any service can lead to slashing.

See also: Liquid Staking, Slashing

Also: ROI

The profit or loss on an investment as a percentage of what you put in. Compare it over the same period and after fees, and keep in mind that past returns don't predict future ones.

See also: Portfolio

A signature technique that mixes the real signer among a group of decoys, so observers can tell the group signed but not which member did. Monero has used it to hide senders, and plans to replace it with a stronger proof system.

See also: Privacy Coins, Digital Signature

A Layer 2 design that executes transactions off the main chain, then posts compressed data and a proof or a challenge window back to it. The base chain's security backs the result. Most Ethereum scaling today happens on rollups.

See also: Layer 2, Optimistic Rollup, ZK Rollup, Sequencer

Also: Creator Royalties

A percentage of each resale that goes back to an NFT's creator. Whether they are enforced depends on the marketplace, and many now make them optional.

See also: Non-Fungible Token (NFT)

A scam in which developers raise money for a token or project, then abandon it and drain the funds, leaving buyers with worthless tokens. Warning signs include anonymous teams, locked-out sells, and concentrated holdings.

See also: Honeypot, Shitcoin

Also: Salt

Random data added to an input before it is hashed so that identical inputs, such as two people's identical passwords, produce different results. It makes precomputed guessing attacks far harder.

See also: Hash

A form of front-running in which a bot buys just before your trade, lets your purchase push the price up, then sells right after, pocketing the difference at your expense. Setting a tight slippage limit helps defend against it.

See also: MEV, Slippage

Also: Sat

The smallest unit of bitcoin: one hundred-millionth (0.00000001) of a coin. Named after Bitcoin's creator.

See also: Bitcoin

The pseudonym of the person or group who created Bitcoin and disappeared from public view in 2011. Their real identity remains unknown, and their early coins have never moved.

See also: Bitcoin, Genesis Block

A hashing algorithm that demands a lot of memory, originally chosen to make mining harder to dominate with custom chips. Litecoin and Dogecoin use it.

See also: Hash, ASIC Resistant

Also: SAFU

An emergency fund that an exchange, Binance most famously, sets aside to cover users in the event of a hack or other crisis. Binance's fund, started in 2018, has held different assets over time, including stablecoins and, since early 2026, bitcoin, so its dollar value can move. It is also a meme for "safe." Check what it actually covers.

See also: Custody

Also: SEC

The US regulator of securities markets. After a wave of crypto enforcement cases, it has shifted toward writing crypto-specific rules and focusing enforcement on fraud. In a March 2026 release issued with the CFTC, it said most crypto assets are not themselves securities, though they can be sold as part of an investment contract. That is regulatory guidance, and a future administration could change it.

See also: Howey Test, Security Token Offering (STO)

Also: STO

A fundraising method that issues tokens legally treated as securities, such as shares or debt, with the regulatory compliance that entails. It is the regulated alternative to an ICO.

See also: Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Howey Test

Also: SegWit

A 2017 Bitcoin upgrade that moved signature data out of the main transaction body. It fit more transactions per block, fixed a flaw called transaction malleability, and paved the way for the Lightning Network.

See also: Soft Fork, Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)

Holding your own keys instead of leaving crypto with an exchange or other third party. The saying is "not your keys, not your coins."

See also: Non-Custodial, Private Key

A very large sell order, or cluster, that looks like a ceiling on the price. Like buy walls, they can be a bluff.

See also: Buy Wall, Order Book

The operator on a rollup that orders transactions and bundles them into batches. Many rollups still run a single sequencer, which is a centralization and censorship risk worth checking.

See also: Rollup, MEV

The cryptographic hash function Bitcoin uses for mining and for linking blocks. It turns any input into a fixed-length 256-bit fingerprint that is practically impossible to reverse.

See also: Hash, Bitcoin

Splitting a blockchain's data or workload into smaller pieces ("shards") that are processed in parallel, so the network can handle more at once. It is a scaling technique borrowed from database design.

See also: Layer 1, Blockchain Trilemma

Promoting an asset aggressively, often without disclosing a personal stake or payment. Treat paid or undisclosed promotion as a red flag.

See also: Pump and Dump Scheme

Also: Shit Coin

A derogatory term for a cryptocurrency seen as worthless or a scam. One person's shitcoin is sometimes another's early bet, so judge it by evidence.

See also: Memecoin, Rug Pull

Also: Side Chain

An independent blockchain linked to a main chain through a bridge. Unlike a rollup, it has its own validators and its own security, so it is only as safe as that separate network.

See also: Layer 2, Bridge

Also: SIM Swap

An attack in which a criminal convinces a mobile carrier to move your phone number to their SIM card, then uses it to intercept text codes and take over accounts. Authenticator apps or hardware keys are safer than SMS codes.

See also: Phishing

A penalty in Proof-of-Stake networks that destroys part of a validator's staked coins for provable misbehavior, such as signing two conflicting blocks. It is the "stake" in staking: the cost of cheating.

See also: Validator, Proof of Stake (PoS), Restaking

The gap between the price you expected and the price you actually got, caused by price moves or a trade being large relative to available liquidity. DEXs let you set a maximum slippage so a trade fails instead of filling at a bad price.

See also: Decentralized Exchange (DEX), Sandwich Attack, Liquidity

Also: Smart contracts

A program stored on a blockchain that runs automatically when its conditions are met, with no intermediary. Once deployed it generally can't be changed, so bugs can be costly: an independent audit is a baseline expectation, not a guarantee.

See also: Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Solidity, Oracle

Also: Audit

An independent review of a protocol's code looking for vulnerabilities. It improves confidence but doesn't guarantee safety, since audited protocols have still been hacked, and audits are a snapshot of the code at one point in time.

See also: Smart Contract, Bounty

The minimum amount a token sale needs to raise to proceed. If it falls short, a fair sale returns the money to contributors.

See also: Hard Cap, Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

A backward-compatible rule change: upgraded nodes enforce tighter rules, while older nodes still accept the blocks. SegWit and Taproot on Bitcoin were soft forks.

See also: Hard Fork, Segregated Witness (SegWit)

Also: SDK

A bundle of code libraries, tools, and documentation that helps developers build apps for a particular platform or blockchain.

See also: Application Programming Interface (API)

The most widely used programming language for writing smart contracts on Ethereum and EVM-compatible chains.

See also: Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Smart Contract

Someone who runs their own validator with their own hardware, rather than through an exchange or pool. On Ethereum this takes 32 ETH and keeps full control and rewards with the individual, along with the responsibility for uptime.

See also: Staking, Validator

Also: SBT

A token that cannot be transferred once it is issued to a wallet. It is proposed for credentials, memberships, and reputation, which shouldn't be bought or sold.

See also: Non-Fungible Token (NFT)

Also: Spot Crypto ETF

An ETF that holds actual bitcoin, not futures contracts. US spot Bitcoin ETFs began trading in January 2024, followed by spot ether ETFs in July 2024, and spot ETFs for other major coins have since followed. They made crypto accessible to institutions and retirement accounts.

See also: Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF), Custody

Also: Spot

The market for buying and selling the actual asset for immediate delivery, rather than a contract on its future price.

See also: Futures

A cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar. They are the main way people move dollars on-chain and the base currency of crypto trading and DeFi. How reliably one holds its peg depends on what backs it and who is accountable for it.

See also: Fiat-Backed Stablecoin, Crypto-Backed Stablecoin, Algorithmic Stablecoin, Depeg

Locking up cryptocurrency to help secure a Proof-of-Stake network in return for rewards. Rewards are not risk-free: tokens can be locked for a period, the price can fall, and validators can be slashed.

See also: Proof of Stake (PoS), Validator, Slashing

Also: Orphan Block

A valid block that lost the race to be added to the chain because another miner found a block at nearly the same moment. It is discarded, and its transactions return to the pool of waiting transactions.

See also: Reorg, Block

A way for two or more parties to transact many times off-chain, recording only the opening and final balance on the blockchain. The Lightning Network is built from payment channels of this kind.

See also: Layer 2, Lightning Network

Also: Stop Loss

An order that automatically sells when the price falls to a set level, to cap a loss. In fast markets it can fill below the stop price.

See also: Limit Order, Margin Call

Price levels where buyers tend to step in (support) or sellers tend to take over (resistance), based on where the price has turned before. They are guides rather than guarantees.

See also: Candlestick, Moving Average (MA)

Creating a large number of fake identities to gain outsized influence over a network or vote. Proof of Work and Proof of Stake make fake identities costly, which is part of their purpose.

See also: Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS)

The DAG-based ledger structure IOTA originally used, in which each new transaction confirmed earlier ones rather than waiting for miners to package blocks. IOTA replaced it in 2025 with IOTA Rebased, a smart-contract chain using delegated proof of stake and a different DAG-based consensus, so the Tangle is now mostly of historical interest.

See also: Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)

A 2021 Bitcoin upgrade that improved privacy and efficiency, and made complex transactions such as multisignature ones look like ordinary payments on the chain.

See also: Segregated Witness (SegWit), Soft Fork

A parallel copy of a blockchain used for testing, where the tokens have no value. Developers use it to try out code, and users can practice there without risk.

See also: Mainnet, Faucet

Ethereum's September 2022 switch from Proof of Work mining to Proof of Stake, which cut its energy use by more than 99 percent and ended new ether issuance to miners.

See also: Proof of Stake (PoS), Ethereum

Also: Ticker Symbol

The short code for a coin or token, such as BTC or ETH. Tickers aren't unique across projects, so counterfeit tokens often copy a real one, and you should always confirm the contract address.

See also: Token

Also: Coin vs. Token

A digital asset issued on top of an existing blockchain, often through a smart contract, rather than having its own blockchain. By common usage, a "coin" runs on its own chain (Bitcoin, ether), while a "token" lives on someone else's (USDC on Ethereum).

See also: ERC-20, Altcoin, Utility Token

Also: Token Allowance, Wallet Drainer

Permission you give a smart contract to spend a specific token from your wallet, sometimes granted just by signing a message rather than sending a transaction. Unlimited approvals are convenient and dangerous: if the contract is malicious or later compromised, it can empty that token from your wallet. Review and revoke old ones periodically, and read any signature request before you sign.

See also: Smart Contract, Phishing

Also: Burned Tokens, Burn

Permanently removing tokens from circulation by sending them to an address nobody controls. Projects burn tokens to reduce supply, which can support the price if demand stays constant but isn't a guarantee of one.

See also: Total Supply, Proof-of-Burn (PoB)

Also: TGE

The moment a project's tokens are created and first distributed or made tradable. It is the official starting gun for a token.

See also: Airdrop, Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

Also: Unlock

The date when previously locked tokens become tradable. Large unlocks can add sell pressure, so traders often watch unlock calendars.

See also: Vesting, Circulating Supply

Representing ownership of an asset, such as a bond, a fund share, or a property, as a token on a blockchain so it can be held, transferred, and settled digitally, often around the clock.

See also: Real-World Asset (RWA), Tokenized Fund

Also: Tokenized Treasury Fund

An investment fund, often holding short-term US Treasuries or money-market instruments, whose shares are issued as blockchain tokens. BlackRock's BUIDL fund is a well-known example. These products often limit who can buy them.

See also: Real-World Asset (RWA), Tokenization

The economics of a token: how many exist, who got them, how new ones are released, what they're used for, and what makes people want to hold them. Reading it carefully is among the best ways to separate durable projects from hype.

See also: Total Supply, Vesting, Token Burn

All the tokens that have been created so far, minus any that were burned. It includes tokens that are locked or not yet released.

See also: Circulating Supply, Hard Cap

Also: TVL, Total Value Locked

The total value of assets deposited in a DeFi protocol or across a whole chain. It is a popular gauge of size and trust, but it moves with token prices and can double-count assets that are reused.

See also: Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Liquidity Pool

Also: Bots

Software that trades automatically by rules. Bots do most of the volume on many venues. Beware of products that promise guaranteed bot profits, which are often scams.

See also: Arbitrage, MEV

Also: Volume

The amount of an asset traded over a period, usually 24 hours. High volume suggests interest and easier trading, but it can be inflated by wash trading, so treat it with care.

See also: Liquidity

Also: Tx

A signed instruction that moves value or calls a smart contract on a blockchain. Once included in a block it is recorded permanently and visible to everyone.

See also: Transaction Fee, Block, Mempool

Also: Network Fee

The payment users make to have their transaction processed, which goes to miners or validators. It is paid in the chain's native token and rises when the network is busy.

See also: Gas, Mempool

Also: TPS

How many transactions a network can process each second. Headline TPS numbers are often theoretical maxima, so look at what a chain does in real conditions and at what cost to decentralization.

See also: Blockchain Trilemma, Layer 2

A rule requiring financial institutions, including many crypto businesses, to pass sender and recipient information along with transfers above a threshold, so that regulators can trace funds.

See also: Anti-Money Laundering (AML)

Describes a system you can use without having to trust any particular person or company, because the rules are enforced by code and verified by the network. It does not mean risk-free: you trade trust in people for trust in the code.

See also: Decentralized, Consensus, Smart Contract

A system able to run any computation given enough time and resources. Ethereum's language is Turing-complete, which makes it flexible; gas limits stop programs from running forever.

See also: Smart Contract, Gas

Also: UTXO

How Bitcoin tracks ownership: instead of account balances, the network records chunks of coin that have been received but not yet spent. A wallet's balance is the sum of its UTXOs. Spending one consumes it and creates new ones, like paying with a bill and receiving change.

See also: Transaction, Wallet

Also: UTC, Coordinated Universal Time

The global time standard that crypto markets and data providers use so daily figures line up across countries. A "daily" candle or 24-hour volume usually runs on UTC.

See also: Trading Volume

A token designed to be used within a product or network, such as paying fees or unlocking features, rather than representing ownership of a company.

See also: Token, Governance Token

The share of deposited funds that borrowers have taken out of a lending pool. Interest rates typically rise as utilization climbs, to attract more deposits and discourage more borrowing.

See also: Lending Protocol, Reserve Factor

Also: Validators

A participant in a Proof-of-Stake network that proposes and verifies blocks. Validators put up collateral, earn rewards for honest work, and are penalized for misbehavior.

See also: Proof of Stake (PoS), Slashing, Node

A tax whose percentage can be changed by the token's creator after launch. This is a red flag, because the owner could raise the sell tax so high that holders effectively can't exit.

See also: Buy/Sell Tax

Also: VC, Venture Capital

Investors who fund early-stage companies in exchange for equity or tokens. Crypto VCs often receive tokens at low prices with vesting schedules, and unlocks of their holdings can affect prices.

See also: Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Vesting

Also: Lock-up, Vesting Schedule

A schedule that releases team, investor, or advisor tokens gradually instead of all at once. It is meant to keep insiders aligned with the project's long-term success.

See also: Token Unlock, Tokenomics

Also: vAMM

A pricing mechanism that uses an AMM's formula with virtual reserves, so traders can take leveraged positions on an asset's price without any real tokens in a pool.

See also: Automated Market Maker (AMM), Perpetual Futures

How much and how quickly a price moves up and down. Crypto is far more volatile than most traditional assets, so position size matters.

See also: Drawdown

Software or hardware that stores your private keys and lets you send and receive crypto. A wallet doesn't hold coins; the coins stay on the blockchain, and the wallet holds the keys that prove they are yours.

See also: Private Key, Wallet Address, Hot Wallet, Cold Wallet

Also: Address

A string of characters that works like an account number: anyone can send funds to it. It is derived from a public key. Always verify the whole address before sending, since blockchain transactions can't be undone.

See also: Public Key, Wallet, Block Explorer

Also: Wash Trading

Buying and selling the same asset to oneself to fake trading activity and make a token or exchange look more popular than it is. It inflates volume figures, which is why volume alone is a weak signal.

See also: Trading Volume

A saved list of assets you want to track without holding them.

See also: Portfolio

A vision of the internet in which users own their data, identities, and assets through blockchains, rather than platforms owning them. Critics argue much of it still depends on centralized services, so it is as much a goal as a reality.

See also: Decentralized Applications (dApps), Web3 Wallet

Also: Browser Wallet

A wallet, often a browser extension or mobile app, that connects to decentralized apps, letting you sign in, trade, and approve transactions without creating accounts. MetaMask and Phantom are common examples.

See also: Wallet, Decentralized Applications (dApps), Web3

The smallest unit of ether: one quintillionth (10^-18) of an ETH. Named after cryptographer Wei Dai.

See also: Gwei, Ether

Also: Whales

An individual or organization holding enough of an asset that one trade can move its price. Whale-tracking tools follow large wallets, though a big transfer isn't always a sale; it may just be a move between a holder's own accounts.

See also: Market Capitalization (Market Cap), Liquidity, Dump

Also: Allowlist

A list of approved addresses or people allowed to take part in a sale, mint, or feature, often chosen for early support or after passing verification.

See also: Pre-sale

A document in which a project explains what it is building, how it works, and how its token fits in. Bitcoin's was the original. Read it critically: a polished whitepaper proves nothing about whether a team can deliver.

See also: Protocol, Tokenomics

A token that represents another asset on a chain where the original does not natively exist, such as Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) on Ethereum. Its value depends on whoever holds or manages the underlying asset, so it carries that party's risk.

See also: Bridge, Token

An open payment standard, created by Coinbase in 2025 and now governed by the x402 Foundation under the Linux Foundation. It revives the long-dormant "402 Payment Required" web status code so a website or API can charge for each request, typically in a stablecoin, with no account or subscription. It is designed so software, including AI agents, can pay on its own.

See also: Stablecoin, Application Programming Interface (API)

Also: YTD

The performance from January 1 of the current year to now.

See also: Return on Investment (ROI)

Also: Liquidity Mining

Moving crypto between DeFi protocols to chase the highest returns, often paid in the protocol's own token. Headline yields can vanish quickly, and the incentive tokens may drop in value faster than they pay out.

See also: Liquidity Pool, APR and APY

Also: Zero-Conf, Unconfirmed Transaction

A transaction that has been broadcast but not yet included in any block. Accepting one is fast but carries the risk that it will be replaced or never confirmed.

See also: Block Confirmation, Mempool

Also: ZKP, ZK Proof

A method for proving a statement is true without revealing the underlying information, such as proving you are over 18 without showing your birthdate. In crypto it is used for privacy and for scaling.

See also: Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK), ZK Rollup

Also: zk-SNARK, zkSNARK

A common type of zero-knowledge proof that is very small and fast to verify. Zcash and many ZK rollups rely on them.

See also: Zero-Knowledge Proof, ZK Rollup

Also: Zero-Knowledge Rollup

A rollup that submits a cryptographic validity proof with each batch, so the base chain can confirm the results are correct without re-running them. It allows faster withdrawals than optimistic designs, at the cost of more complex technology.

See also: Rollup, Zero-Knowledge Proof

Also: Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning

Using zero-knowledge proofs to show that a machine-learning model produced a specific output, without revealing the model or the private data behind it. It lets a smart contract trust an AI result without trusting whoever ran it.

See also: Zero-Knowledge Proof, opML

An oracle that uses zero-knowledge proofs to demonstrate that the data it delivers, or the computation behind it, is correct, reducing the need to trust the operator.

See also: Oracle, Zero-Knowledge Proof