Altcoin – Any coin other than Bitcoin
ATH – All Time High
Bear Market – When the overall trend is a downward price
Block – A file containing information on transactions completed in a given time frame.
BTFD – Buy The F**king Dip
Bull Market – When the overall trend is an upward price
Cold Storage/Cold Wallet – Offline storage i.e. not connected to the internet
DAO – Decentralised Autonomous Organisation
DApps – Decentralised Applications
DEFI – Decentralized Finance
DEX – Decentralised Exchange e.g. Uniswap
DYOR – Do Your Own Research
ERC-20 – Tokens designed to solely run on the Ethereum platform
Fiat – “Normal Money”, legal tender backed by a central government
FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out
FORK – When a blockchain or software splits into two versions e.g. Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash
FUD – Fear, uncertainty and doubt
GAS – Network fees when transferring cryptos
Halving – An event in which the total rewards per block is halved for miners.
HODL – To hold long term
Hot Wallet – A crypto wallet that is connected to the internet, either on a mobile or desktop
ICO – Initial Coin Offering, a type of crowd funding using cryptocurrencies as a means of raising capital for start up companies.
KYC – Know Your Customer, checks that crypto exchanges and trading platforms must complete to verify their customers identity.
Mining – A process where blocks are added to a blockchain, verifying transactions. Miners are paid in bitcoin or altcoins for this work, creating newly minted coins.
NFT – Non-Fungible Token
Private Key – The private key lets you prove ownership or spend crypto associated with your public address. Usually takes the form of a 12 or 24 word mnemonic phrase.
Public Key – Is like your bank account number. Consists of a long alpha numeric code. This is the address you share with people for them to send crypto to.
Proof-of-Stake – A blockchain consensus mechanism involving choosing the creator of the next block based on staked coins or tokens.
Proof-of-Work – A blockchain consensus mechanism involving solving of computationally intensive puzzles to validate transactions and create new blocks.
Sats – Satoshis, 1 Sat = 0.00000001 BTC, 100 Million Satoshis = 1 Bitcoin
Seed Phrase – 12 or 24 words generated when creating a new wallet. To be kept secret and only used if you need to recover the wallet.
Stablecoin – A cryptocurrency pegged to something like the US dollar, so it has low volatility and maintains a stable value.
Staking – Putting your coins/tokens in a proof-of-stake system to help validate the blockchain and receive rewards.
Technical Analysis (TA) – Evaluating a coin/token by analysing market activity such as price and volume. Charts and other tools are used to identify patterns to assist in making investment decisions.
Wallet – A cryptocurrency wallet is a secure digital wallet used to store, send and receive digital currencies.
Whale – Someone who owns an extra large amount of a crypto. usually enough to manipulate the market.
Yield Farming – Earning interest by investing crypto in Defi markets.