The Definitive Dictionary of Cryptocurrency Terms
It seems every week a new term rolls out on cryptocurrency jargon, where is a list of terms to help you navigate this waters.
51% Attack
When a group of miners on a blockchain controls over half of the network, they theoretically are able to obstruct other miners from completing blocks because they possess the majority of computing power, which could allow the controlling stake to dominate the creation of new blocks (and therefore cash).
Address
A code used to store/send/receive bitcoins and other cryptocurrency consisting of 26-35 alphanumeric characters. It is also the public key in the pair of keys used by bitcoin holders to digitally sign transactions.
Airdrop (see guide)
The term airdrop is sometimes used to describe the process of distributing tokens after the network of an ICO or fork goes live.
Algorithm
a set of mathematical instructions or rules that need to be followed in problem solving.
Altcoin
Any form of digital cryptocurrency that isn’t Bitcoin, an alternative coin.
Ex: Ethereum, Steem, Litecoin.
AML
Anti-Money Laundering laws are a series of regulations designed to prevent money being converted from criminal activity to what appear to be legitimate assets.
Angel Investor
A wealthy individual who provides startup businesses with capital in exchange for debt or equity in the business.
ASIC
A computer processing chip that is designed to perform 1 function and 1 function only. Most modern computers have multi-thread CPU’s that allow the computer to complete a range of tasks all at the same time, whereas an ASIC computer focusses only on 1 function. In the crypto space, an ASIC computer is used to mine Bitcoin.
ASIC Miner
An application-specific integrated circuit machine designed specifically for mining cryptocurrencies.
ATH
All-Time-High. We’ve gotten a lot of these the past couple months.
Arbitrage
Taking advantage of a difference in price of the same commodity on two different exchanges. Often mentioned when it comes to comparing ETH prices on Korean exchanges against US exchanges.
B
Bagholder
Someone still holding an altcoin after a pump and dump crash. Can also just refer to someone holding a coin that is sinking in value with few future prospects.
Bear Trap
This is a manipulation of a stock or commodity by investors. Traders who “set” the bear trap do so by selling stock until it fools other investors into thinking its upward trend in value has stopped, or is dropping. Those who fall into the bear trap will often sell at that time, fearing a further drop in value. At that point, the investors who set the trap will buy at the low price and will release the trap—which is essentially a false bear market. Once the bear trap is released, the value will even out, or even climb.
Bear market
A market that is in a downtrend (prices are going down) The term relates to the direction that a bear attacks. (Bears attack by swiping downwards with their claws.)
Bearish
An expectation that price is going to decrease.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is decentralized and distributed software that allows for trustless peer-to-peer global financial transactions and record keeping. It can be described as a blockchain based smart contract system with a native cryptocurrency token.
Block
Blocks are files where data pertaining to a coin network is permanently recorded. A block records some or all of the most recent coin transactions that have not yet entered any prior blocks. Thus a block is like a page of a ledger or record book. Each time a block is ‘completed’, it gives way to the next block in the blockchain. A block is thus a permanent store of records which, once written, cannot be altered or removed.
Block Explorer
a search engine for a cryptocurrency, block explorers allow you to query transactions, addresses and other information.
Block Height
Blocks are added to the blockchain sequentially. The current block number is called the block height.
Block Size
Block size describes the amount of data that can be added to a given block on the blockchain. Bigger blocks allow for more transactions to be stored in blocks, but as a trade-off, more hash power is required to mine a block. This makes transactions faster, but one can argue centralizes mining. In crypto, almost everything is “a trade-off,” just like IRL (In Real Life).
Block Reward
A reward that is given to a miner after successfully hashing a transaction block.
Blockchain (see guide)
Blockchains are distributed ledgers, secured by cryptography. They are essentially public databases that everyone can access and read, but the data can only be updated by the data owners. Instead of the data residing on a single centralized server, the data is copied across thousands and thousands of computers worldwide.
Bollinger Band
A margin around the price of a crypto that helps indicate when a coin is overbought or oversold.
Bots
Almost all exchanges let users program or use a pre-programmed software that can interact with crypto platforms via an API. One type of software, a type that can execute trades on exchanges, is called a “trading bot” (often referred to as simply a “bot”). It may seem like cheating, and in certain hands, it can sure feel like it, but bots are important in many ways too. They can help implement strategies like trailing stop losses for you, and they can help “make markets” (all those little buys and sells that prevent wide spreads in a given market are generally “market maker” / “accumulation” bots). Like people, bots aren’t good or bad, they are neutral and depend on the ethics of the user.
Bull Market
A market that is in an uptrend. (Prices are going up) The term relates to the direction in which a bull attacks (horns low to the ground, a bull strikes upwards)
Bullish
An expectation that price is going to increase.
Buying the Dip
If you are going to average into a coin, can’t do better than buying the dip (especially in a bull market, in a stagnant market, or at what you think might be the end of a bear market). This means buying when the price goes down. For building a long-term position, it works much better than buying when the price goes up. It also helps the market as you are part of the force stopping the dip instead of part of the force causing the run-up.
Also known as BTFD! – Buy the F*cking Dip.
C
Cap
A number that multiplies the amount of existing tokens for a currency by that currency’s price per coin – providing an overview of that token or currency’s market health or resistance to volatility.
Circulating supply
An approximation of the number of coins or tokens that are circulating in the public market.
Cold Storage
The process of moving crypto-currency ‘offline’, as a way of safekeeping your crypto-currency from hacking. There are a variety of ways to do this, but some methods most commonly used:
—Printing out the QR code of a software wallet and storing it somewhere safe, such as a safety deposit box.
—Moving the files of a software wallet onto a USB drive and storing it somewhere safe.
—Using a hardware wallet.
Confirmation
When a cryptocurrency transaction takes place, the blockchain confirms the transaction’s validity. The confirmation is done by “miners”. It is always advised that you wait for at least 6 confirmations to avoid double spending.
Consensus
Consensus is achieved when all participants of the network agree on the validity of the transactions, ensuring that databases are exact copies of each other.
Correction
After hitting an all-time high, a coin will enter a period of correction where it steadies out at a given price before rising again (ideally, sometimes a correction simply spurs on a “bear market”). In cryptocurrency coins often hit all-time highs and then enter correction periods.
Cryptography
A branch of mathematics and computer science that is behind the invention of cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrency
The term for a digital currency that makes use of encryption for generating new units and verifying the transferring of funds.
D
DAO
Decentralized Autonomous Organization. An investor-directed venture capital fund built on the Ethereum network that was hacked in June 2016. The hack stole about a third of the DAO’s funds and led to Ethereum being hard-forked the following month. The DAO is often cited as one of Ethereum’s biggest stumbles thus far.
Dapp
Decentralized Application. This refers to an application that uses an Ethereum smart contract as it’s back-end code.
DCA
Dollar cost averaging. Instead of going all in at once, one might want to dollar cost average into a volatile asset like a cryptocurrency to buy the average price over time to create a long position.
DDoS
A distributed denial of service attack uses large numbers of computers under an attacker’s control to drain the resource of a central target.
Decentralized
A state where there is no central control, power or function, or in reference to infrastructure, no central point of failure.
Deterministic wallet
A relatively new kind of wallet that makes recovery possible – essentially a deterministic wallet generates keys from a ‘seed’ – this seed can later be used to restore all addresses and private keys from your wallet in case of a failure. Bitcoin Magazine has a good technical explanation here.
Digital Asset
Not every cryptocurrency is meant to be a currency. If it is a digital store of value, it can be called a digital asset (both Cryptokitties and Ether are digital assets, but only Ether is a cryptocurrency token). Digital assets can be fungible or non-fungible. Cryptokitties are represented by non-fungible tokens (meaning unique tokens that can’t be replaced and still retain value; sort of like hand crafted one-off artworks) unlike Ether which is fungible tokens (all Ethers are equally valuable, there is no specific unique Ether that is worth more or less than other Ethers; like how dollars work).
Difficulty
A measure of the amount of computing power required to solve the hash of a block. This is what increases to counteract increasing network hashrate in order to maintain a 10 minute confirmation time; re-adjusts every 2016 blocks.
DILDO
Long green or red candles
Distributed consensus
Collective agreement by various computers in a network and allows it to work in a decentralized, P2P manner without the need of central authority to deter dishonest network participants.
Double Spending
The act of spending the same bitcoins twice. The blockchain plus bitcoin mining exist to confirm all transactions and to prevent such fraud.
DUMP / DUMPING
When a price of cryptocurrency is decreasing fast. Major sell off.
Dust Transaction
Transactions so small that they are considered “spam” by the network. They are not relayed to stop people accidentally or deliberately clogging the blockchain.
DYOR
Do Your Own Research. Listening to the person on the internet is step 1, step 2 is doing your own research and making your own investment choices. A Reddit thread is not your fiduciary. For example, I have no specific certification that qualifies me to write a list of crypto acronyms. If you did your DD (Due Diligence), you would know that.
E
EEA
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. A coalition of startups and corporations trying to figure out the best way to use this dang thing.
ERC-20
A type of token standard for Ethereum which ensures the tokens perform in a predictable way. This allows the tokens to be easily exchangeable and able to work immediately with decentralized applications that also use the ERC-20 standard. Most tokens released through ICO’s are compliant with the ERC-20 standard.
Escrow
The act of holding funds or assets in a third-party account to protect them during an asynchronous transaction.
ETF
Acronym for “Exchange Traded Fund”. These are investment funds traded on stock markets that track the price index of an underlying asset.
Exchange (see guide)
Websites where you can buy and sell crypto-currencies.
EW
Elliot Wave. A pattern that the price movement of assets tends to make. Used in technical analysis.
F
Faucet
A technique used when first launching an altcoin. A set number of coins are pre-mined, and given away for free, to encourage people to take interest in the coin and begin mining it themselves.
Fiat
Any form of physical paper currency. Regulated and Centralized.
Fibonacci
Fibonacci brought modern mathematics to the west in many ways. He also popularized a set of ratios that are commonly used in trading to find support and resistance levels (Fibonacci retracement levels); they pair nicely with EW.
Flippening
A potential future event wherein Ethereum’s market cap surpasses Bitcoin’s market cap, making Ethereum the most ‘valuable’ crypto-currency. This site shows the progress of the Flippening in real-time: http://www.flippening.watch/
FOMO
Fear of Missing out. The overwhelming sensation that you need to get on the train when the price of something starts to skyrocket.
Fork
A situation where a blockchain splits into two separate chains. Forks generally happen in the crypto-world when new ‘governance rules’ are built into the blockchain’s code.
FUD
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
FUDster
Someone that is spreading FUD.
G
Gas (see guide)
A measurement of how much processing is required by the ethereum network to process a transaction. Simple transactions, like sending ether to another address, typically do not require much gas. More complex transactions, like deploying a smart contract, require more gas.
Gas limit
A term used in the Ethereum platform that refers to the maximum amount of units of gas the user is willing to spend on a transaction. The transaction must have enough gas to cover the computational resources needed to execute the code. All unused gas is refunded at the end of the transaction.
Gas price
The amount of ether to be spent for each gas unit on a transaction. The initiator of a transaction chooses and pays the gas price of the transaction. Transactions with higher gas prices are prioritized by the network.
Genesis Block
The first block in the blockchain.
Gwei
Another denomination of ether. Gas prices are most often measured in Gwei. 1 Ether = 1000000000 Gwei. (109)
Other denominations of ether are Finney and Szabo, check the full denomination chart: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/253/the-ether-denominations-are-called-finney-szabo-and-wei-what-who-are-these-na
H
Halving: It is the 50% reduction in block reward after a certain number of blocks are mined. In Bitcoin, the halving happens after every 210,000 blocks.
Hard cap
The maximum amount that an ICO will be raising. If an ICO reaches its hard cap, they will stop collecting any more funds.
Hardfork (see guide)
An alteration to the block structure of a coin or token.
It can be done to change the difficulty rules for mining, to add new features or layers, or pretty much anything.
Hash
A hash algorithm turns an arbitrarily-large amount of data into a fixed-length hash. The same hash will always result from the same data, but modifying the data by even one bit will completely change the hash. Like all computer data, hashes are large numbers, and are usually written as hexadecimal.
BitCoin uses the SHA-256 hash algorithm to generate verifiably “random” numbers in a way that requires a predictable amount of CPU effort. Generating a SHA-256 hash with a value less than the current target solves a block and wins you some coins.
Hash Rate
Hash Rate or Hash Power is the measuring unit of the power Bitcoin network is consuming to be continuously functional.
Hodl
Long ago, someone on a bitcoin forum got drunk and made a post with this typo in the place of ‘hold’. A meme was born. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0
Hot wallet
A wallet that is connected to the internet.
I
ICO (see guide)
An Initial Coin Offering, A way for a new cryptocurrency project to raise money for their project by offering a select amount of coins for sale to the public at base price. Somewhat similar to an IPO in the non-crypto world.
Inputs
This is a reference to an output of a previous transaction. Inputs to an address are added up, and this amount determines the amount a wallet can spend in outputs.
J
K
Keys (Cryptographic Keys)
Cryptocurrency is largely based on public-key cryptography. The concept is that one key can be known publicly (the public key) and the other can’t (the private key). The public key is encrypted from and linked to a private key that can’t be known. In cryptocurrency, your public address is a hash of your public key. It lets people send you crypto. Meanwhile, your public key is a hash of your private key. Your private key lets you access the crypto associated with a public address. To resume, a public address is the public account number people can send coins to; it a has a public key, which is a hash of a private key. Meanwhile, the private key is like a unique personal password that lets you access an associated address in your wallet and send coins from it by creating a signature (a signature essentially an encrypted version of your private key). Never share your private keys, as they are the root of all the information needed to access one’s crypto!
KYC
Acronym for “Know Your Customer”, used to describe a series of laws and regulations which require businesses to know the identity of their customers.
L
Laundry
Also known as a “mixing service”, they combine funds from various users and redistribute them, making tracing the bitcoins back to their original source very difficult by mixing their “taint”.
Laddering
Setting incremental buy or sell orders.
Lambo
What we’re all going to buy when we’re rich. Obligatory: https://imgur.com/uKKwhcf
Leverage
Often used to describe trading with borrowed capital (margin) in order to increase the potential return of an investment. Trading with “borrowed” bitcoins/money.
Lightning Network (see guide)
A low latency, off chain P2P system for making micropayments of cryptocurrencies. It offers features such as instant payments, scalability, low cost and cross-chain functionality. Participants do not have to make individual transactions public on the blockchain and security is enforced by smart contracts.
Limit order / limit buy / limit sell
Orders placed by traders to buy or sell a crypto-currency when the price meets a certain amount. They can be thought of as ‘for-sale’ signs. These orders are what are bought and sold against when traders place market orders.
Liquidity
The availability of an asset to be bought and sold easily, without affecting its market price.
Longing
Taking a long position is the opposite of a short. When a trader or investor goes long, they hope to profit from a price increase.
M
MA / EMA / MACD
Moving Averages (MA) track help people understand the trend of a coin over time. Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) shows the relationship between two moving averages of prices. The MACD is calculated by subtracting the 26-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) from the 12-day EMA. When these lines cross, they can tell us about the general trend of the asset. We would be looking for Death Crosses and Golden Crosses.
Maker/Taker
Maker fees are fees associated with limit orders. Taker fees are fees associated with market orders. This only applies to exchanges that use a Maker/Taker model and is only relevant when one fee type is lower than the other. GDAX is an example of an exchange where this matters. On GDAX maker orders have no fees, but taker orders do.
Margin trading
The act of ‘magnifying’ the intensity of your trades by risking your existing coins. (NOTE: Very risky, only for experienced traders and only on certain exchanges even then)
Market order / market buy / market sell
A simple purchase or sale on an exchange at the current price. Market buys purchase the cheapest ETH available on the order book, and market sells fill the most expensive buy order on the books.
Market Cap
The total value held in a cryptocurrency. It is calculated by multiplying the total supply of coins by the current price of an individual unit.
Maximum supply
An approximation of the maximum number of coins or tokens that will ever exist for a cryptocurrency or crypto asset.
MEW
MyEtherWallet. A free site that can generate ethereum software wallets for you.
Miner
A computer participating in any cryptocurrency network performing proof of work. This is usually done to receive block rewards.
Mining
The process of trying to ‘solve’ the next block. It requires obscene amounts of computer processing power to do effectively, but is rewarded with coins.
Mining Difficulty
This number determines how difficult it is to hash a new block. It is related to the maximum allowed number in a given numerical portion of a transaction block’s hash. The lower the number, the more difficult it is to produce a hash value that fits it.
Mining Contract
A method of investing in bitcoin mining hardware, allowing anyone to rent out a pre-specified amount of hashing power, for an agreed amount of time. The mining service takes care of hardware maintenance, hosting and electricity costs, making it simpler for investors.
Mining Pool
A group of miners who have decided to combine their computing power for mining. This allows rewards to be distributed more consistently between participants in the pool.
Mining rig
A computer especially designed for processing proof-of-work blockchains, like Ethereum. They often consist of multiple high-end graphic processors (GPUs) to maximize their processing power.
Minting
The process of rewarding users in proof of stake coins. New coins are minted as the reward for verifying transactions in a block.
Mooning / Moon
In the crypto-world, this does not mean exposing your buttocks. It is referring to a price going up astronomical levels.
Multisig
or multisignature refers to having more than one signature to approve a transaction. This form of security is beneficial for a company receiving money into their BTC wallet. If a company wants to keep it so that one employee doesn’t have sole access to a transaction, multisig allows for a transaction to be verified by two separate employees before it’s complete.
N
Node
A computer that possesses a copy of the blockchain and is working to maintain it.
Nonce
A random number used once when a miner attempts to hash a transaction block. The parameters of these numbers are set by the “difficulty”.
O
Off Blockchain Transactions
Exchanges of value which occur off the blockchain between trusted parties. These occur because they are quicker and do not bloat the blockchain.
Orphaned Block
A valid block which is discarded by the network after the blockchain has “forked” and then re-achieved consensus on a single blockchain again. This usually happens after two miners simultaneously solve a block, temporarily resulting in two valid blocks in the blockchain.
Open Source
The practice of sharing the source code for a piece of computer software, allowing it to be distributed and altered by anyone.
OTC exchange
Stands for “Over the Counter”. These exchanges are places where trading is done directly between the two parties involved in the transaction, allowing traders to escape some of the limitations set by trading on formalised exchanges.
Output
The part of the transaction which contains instructions for the sending of bitcoin.
P
Paper wallet
A form of “cold storage” where the private keys are printed onto a piece of paper and stored offline.
Peercoin
The first cryptocurrency to implement “Proof Of Stake” alongside Proof Of Work.
P2P
It means peer to peer or person to person.
Pre-sale
A sale that takes place before an ICO is made available to the general public to participate.
Private Key
A private key is a secret, alphanumeric password/number used to spend/send your Coins/Tokens to another address. It represents the full access to your wallet, you should NEVER share it or keep it in an insecure place.
Public Key/Bitcoin address
This is another alphanumeric address/number which is derived from private keys and is used to publicly receive Coins/Tokens.
Proof of Burn
This is a method of “burning” one Proof of Work cryptocurrency in order to receive a different cryptocurrency. This is a form of “bootstrapping” one cryptocurrency off another, and is done by sending coins to a verifiable unspendable address.
Proof of Existence
A service provided through the blockchain that allows anyone to anonymously and securely store a proof of existence for any document they choose online. This allows people to prove that a document existed at a certain point in time and demonstrate their ownership of it, without fear of that proof being taken from them.
Proof of Stake (see guide)
An alternative to proof of work, in which your exiting stake in a currency is used to calculate the amount of that currency that you can mine.
Proof of Work (see guide)
A system that ties mining capability to computational power.
Pump and Dump
The recurring cycle of an altcoin getting a ton of attention, leading to a fast price increase, and then of course followed by a huge crash.
Q
QR Code
A two-dimensional graphical block containing a monochromatic pattern representing a sequence of data.
Generally used to identify Wallet Addresses and transactions.
R
Raiden Network
An upcoming protocol change to Ethereum that will enable high-speed transfers across the network. It is similar in some aspects to Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. The name, I assume, comes from the Mortal Kombat character named Raiden that can shoot lightning.
Recovery phrase/seed keyword
Random 12, 18, 24 words that are used to derive numerous pairs of private and public keys. Using these seeds, you can restore your wallet in any other supported seed key wallet.
REKT
When you have a bad loss
Remittance
A sum of money being sent, usually internationally, as a payment or gift.
ROI
Return on Investment. The percentage of how much money has been made compared to an initial investment. (i.e., 100% ROI means someone doubled their money).
RSI
The relative strength index (RSI) is a momentum indicator that compares the magnitude of recent gains and losses over a specified period to measure speed and change of price movements. It is smart to enter a coin when it has a low RSI.
S
Satoshi
A Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin. It is named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. Each BTC is divisible until the 1/10^8 part. A unit of Satoshi is equal to 0.00000001 bitcoin.
Satoshi Nakamoto
The anonymous creator of Bitcoin.
Scamcoin
Coins created as get rich quick schemes by their developers. These coins usually have certain properties, such as being clones of an existing coin and being pre-mined.
Seed
The private key used in a “deterministic wallet”
Sidechain
These are theroetical, independent blockchains which are “two way pegged” to the Bitcoin blockchain. These can have their own unique features and can have bitcoins sent to and from them.
Signature
Is the mathematical operation that lets someone prove their sole ownership over their wallet, coin, data or on. An example is how a Bitcoin wallet may have a public address, but only a private key can verify with the whole network that a signature matches and a transaction is valid. These are only known to the owner and are basically mathematically impossible to uncover.
Segregated Witness (SegWit)
The process where the block size limit on a blockchain is increased by removing digital signature data and moving it to the end of a transaction to free up capacity. Transactions are essentially split (or ‘segregated’), into two segments: the original data segment and the signature (or ‘witness’) segment.
SHA-256
The hash that bitcoin uses for mining and the generation of addresses, originally developed by the American National Security Agency.
Sharding
A scaling solution for blockchains. Typically, every node in a blockchain network houses a complete copy of the blockchain. Sharding is a method that allows nodes to have partial copies of the complete blockchain in order to increase overall network performance and consensus speeds.
Shilling / pumping
Someone essentially advertising another crypto-currency. If a coin is promised to cure cancer or be the second coming of Jesus, it’s being shilled.
SHITCOIN
It is a coin without any proven value, low price, bad project.
Shorting
Selling a cryptocurrency In hopes of buying it at a lower price at a later time to gain profit.
On Exchanges that have margin trading is borrowing some cryptocurrency to sell and buy back at a lower price, thus ending up with more cryptocurency, in the end the amount borrowed is returned and the rest is profit.
Smart contract (see guide)
Code that is deployed onto the Ethereum blockchain, often directly interacting with how money flows. Not my quote, but: “A normal transaction allows you to send money from A to B. Smart contracts allow you to send money from A to B, on the condition that C happens.”
Snapshot Block
Forks occur at specific block heights. The block height you have to be in a coin by to qualify for a fork is called a snapshot block. It is the block at which a snapshot of the ledger will be taken to determine the balances of the ledger of the fork.
Soft cap
Generally refers to the minimum amount that an initial coin offering (ICO) needs to raise. If the ICO is unable to raise that amount, it may be cancelled and the collected funds returned to participants.
Solidity
One of the most popular languages that smart contracts can be written in. Has some similarities to Javascript.
Speculator
An individual who speculates on the price of bitcoin or any other form of asset. Aiming to make profits by buying and selling at different prices.
Stable coin
A crypto-currency with extremely low volatility that can be used to trade against the overall market. Ex: Tether
Spoofing
When a person or people with a lot of money and coins buy and sell to themselves in a set range to create the illusion of volume.
Stop Loss
If a certain price is hit, a market order will be triggered. If you are going short in a coin that is on a run, you should consider setting a stop loss (or laddering stop losses).
SWING
Zig zag price movement (Upwards and downwards)
T
TA
Trend Analysis or Technical Analysis. Refers to the process of examining current charts in order to predict which way the market will move next.
Taint
A measure of correlation between two addresses, this is used in attempts to track a coin’s history.
Tank
The opposite of “mooning.” When there is a crash in a crypto, it is said to be “tanking.”
Testnet
An alternative blockchain on which developers can test and experiment with changes to a cryptocurrency without the risk of damaging or interfering with the real blockchain.
Ticker Symbols
Every coin has a trading symbol or ticker symbol. For Ripple, it is XRP, for Bitcoin BTC, for Litecoin LTC, for Ether (ETH), etc. People often refer to coins by their ticker symbol and not their name.
Timestamp
A proof that a piece of data existed at a certain point in time. For Bitcoin this is the cryptographic proof of when transactions have taken place.
To The Moon
Refers to price moving to astronomical heights.
Tokens
Refers to the ‘currency’ of projects built on the ethereum network that have raised money via issuing their own tokens.
Tokenization
If you just sent unencrypted data across the internet it would not be secure. So instead of doing that information is tokenized. It is encrypted and turned into a string of data. That string can then be sent and stored. Data sent between wallets and stored on the blockchain is tokenized. This is why the term cryptocurrency tokens are used.
Total supply
The total number of coins or tokens that are in existence, including those circulating in the public market and those that are locked or reserved.
Transaction Block
A group of transactions that are collected and hashed on the Bitcoin network by being added to the blockchain.
Transaction ID
Another alphanumeric string through which you can publicly see the transfer details (amount sent, sending/receiving bitcoin address, as well as the date of transfer) on the bitcoin blockchain.
Transaction fees
Bitcoin transaction incentives that the miners receive for mining block via bitcoins, which is actually a small fee that the bitcoin users pay in order to complete BTC transactions.
TX
A transaction number. This allows you to track a transaction. If you are freaking out because your transaction is taking too long, you probably just have to wait longer. Try tracking the TX.
U
Unconfirmed Transaction
A bitcoin transaction that has been relayed to nodes in the Bitcoin network but has not yet been incorporated into a block. Also known as “Zero Confirmation transaction”.
V
VC / Venture Capitalist
Can refer to an individual or organisation that provide initial funding for start-up business ventures that cannot access public funding. This money is known as “seed funding”, and is usually exchanged for equity in the start-up.
Volatility
The measurement of price movements over time for a traded financial asset.
W
Wall (Sell wall / Buy wall)
Using a depth chart, traders can see the current limit buy and sell points. The graphical representation on the depth chart looks like
Wallet (see guide)
A digital or physical address in which cryptocurrency can be stored/sent/received. Accessible through a private key.
Weak Hands
When too many new investors (in a given coin) invest in a coin the coin can be said to be “in weak hands.” Long-term investors who have built a position in a coin they love tend to HODL when the going gets rough, new investors with weak hands tend to get “weak knees,” and panic sell in a correction.
Wei
The smallest denomination of ether. 1 Ether = 1000000000000000000 Wei (1018)
Whales
Whales are cryptocurrency investors with many coins or dollars. These investors can help move markets, or they can help stop markets from moving. When you see a 250 BTC buy wall or sell wall, that is a Whale. When the price goes down quickly and it makes you sad, or it shoots up and liquidates your short position, you can curse your semi-mythic nemeses “whales.”
Whitelist
A list of registered and approved participants that are given exclusive access to contribute to an ICO or a pre-sale.
Whitepaper
A documentation describing a new cryptocurrency project in detail, usually associated with ICO’s.
Wire Transfer
An electronic method of transferring money from one party to another.
Z
Zerocoin
A project aimed at implementing true anonymity into the Bitcoin network.
Zero Confirmation transaction
A bitcoin transaction that has been relayed to nodes in the Bitcoin network but has not yet been incorporated into a block. Also known as “unconfirmed transactions”.