Crypto Glossary
The language of crypto, explained in plain English. 302 definitions covering blockchain, trading, DeFi, NFTs, and the slang — no hype, just what each term actually means.
A
A change that lets crypto wallets behave like programmable smart contracts, removing the rigid rules of traditional key-based accounts.
A person or entity that meets income or wealth tests, letting them buy investments barred to the public.
A short string of letters and numbers that identifies where crypto can be sent on a blockchain.
A scam that seeds your history with a look-alike address, hoping you copy the wrong one later.
A free distribution of tokens to wallets, often to reward early users or bootstrap a new community.
A stablecoin that holds its peg through code and market incentives rather than holding cash reserves — a fragile design.
The highest price an asset has ever reached, a closely watched marker of a market's peak.
The lowest price an asset has ever traded at since it began trading on the market.
Information or an edge expected to produce returns ahead of the crowd, like an early tip.
Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin, a catch-all that spans serious networks and short-lived speculative tokens alike.
The laws and procedures meant to stop criminals from disguising illicit money as legitimate funds.
To buy a token impulsively and in size, usually without research and often near a hype peak.
A chip built for one job, like mining a specific coin far faster than general hardware.
Profiting from the same asset trading at different prices in two places by buying low and selling high.
A mining algorithm designed to deny specialized chips a big edge over everyday hardware.
The lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept for an asset on the order book.
A trustless exchange of two different coins across chains that either completes fully for both sides or not at all.
A pricing algorithm that lets a token pool quote and settle trades automatically, replacing the traditional order book of buyers and sellers.
B
An investor stuck holding a token that has collapsed in value, with little hope of recovery.
A prolonged stretch of falling prices and weak sentiment, usually marked by a drop of 20% or more.
A false downside breakdown that tricks sellers into shorting, then snaps back up against them.
Describes an expectation that a price will fall, or a position set up to gain when it does.
The highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay for an asset on the order book.
Bitcoin's share of the total crypto market capitalization, used to gauge where money is rotating.
A fund tracking bitcoin's price that trades on stock exchanges, letting investors gain exposure without holding the coin.
The first known real-world Bitcoin purchase: 10,000 BTC for two pizzas on May 22, 2010.
A batch of transactions bundled together, time-stamped, and cryptographically linked to the block before it.
A website that lets anyone search a blockchain's transactions, addresses, and blocks in readable form.
The number of blocks between a given block and the very first one, used to pinpoint its position.
New coins plus fees paid to whoever adds the next valid block, the main incentive securing the chain.
A shared digital ledger that records transactions in linked batches, copied across many computers and hard to alter.
Three lines that wrap price action, widening when volatility rises and pinching tight when markets go quiet.
A formula that sets a token's price from its supply, so each new mint costs more than the last.
An experimental token standard that issues fungible tokens on Bitcoin by embedding text data inside individual satoshis.
Price pushing decisively through a level it had been stuck below or above, often on rising volume.
A protocol that moves tokens or data between two separate blockchains that cannot otherwise talk to each other.
An acronym for 'buy the dip' (with an expletive), urging purchases when prices fall sharply.
A sustained period of rising prices, when buyers dominate and optimism pushes valuations higher across the market.
A false upside breakout that lures buyers in, then reverses and leaves them holding losses.
Describes an expectation that a price will rise, or a trader positioned to profit from gains.
Permanently removing tokens from circulation by sending them to an address no one can spend from, shrinking supply.
A system's ability to keep agreeing on the truth even when some participants fail or actively lie.
C
A chart symbol showing an asset's open, close, high, and low for a given time period.
Crypto services run by companies that hold your funds and keys, much like a bank or traditional broker.
A digital form of a country's official currency, issued and controlled directly by its central bank.
A company that runs an order book, holds your funds, and matches buyers with sellers for a fee.
The number of coins actually available and trading in the market, excluding locked, reserved, or unreleased tokens.
The native asset of its own blockchain, used to pay fees and secure the network, unlike a token built on top.
Keeping crypto keys completely offline for long-term safekeeping, out of reach of malware and remote attackers.
A wallet whose keys are generated and stored offline, cutting off the remote attacks that target connected devices.
An asset locked to back a loan or leveraged position, sold off automatically if its value drops too far.
Backing a loan or minted stablecoin with deposited assets, usually worth more than the debt to absorb price swings.
The US regulator for commodity derivatives markets, which treats Bitcoin and Ether as commodities rather than securities.
The way DeFi protocols snap together like building blocks, so the output of one can plug straight into another.
Each new block added on top of the one holding your transaction, deepening it and making reversal far harder.
The rules a decentralized network follows to agree on one valid history without trusting any central party.
Describes activity that spans two or more separate blockchains, such as moving assets or messages between them.
A digital asset secured by cryptography and recorded on a blockchain, free of any central issuer.
The math of scrambling and verifying information so only intended parties can read or trust it.
A rounded bottom followed by a small dip that, on a breakout, often points to higher prices.
An account where a third party holds your private keys for you, like a bank holding deposits.
The safekeeping of crypto assets and the private keys that control them, often handled by a regulated third party.
A member of the 1990s movement that championed cryptography and privacy as tools against state and corporate control.
D
An organization governed by token holders voting on-chain, where rules and treasury live in smart contracts instead of a boardroom.
An application whose backend logic runs on a blockchain through smart contracts rather than a company's private servers.
The guarantee that the data behind a block or batch is published and retrievable, so anyone can verify or rebuild state.
A short-lived rally inside a larger downtrend that fades fast and gives way to more selling.
A bearish chart pattern that prints when a faster moving average drops below a slower one.
Spreading control and data across many independent participants so no single party can dictate or shut things down.
An on-chain venue where smart contracts let users swap tokens directly from their wallets, with no custodian.
Financial services run by code on public blockchains, letting people trade or borrow without a bank.
Short for degenerate gambler, a trader who chases high-risk bets with little regard for fundamentals.
A variant where coin holders vote for a small set of delegates who produce blocks on their behalf.
When an asset meant to track a fixed value, like a stablecoin's $1, slips away and won't snap back.
Financial contracts whose value comes from an underlying asset rather than from holding the asset itself.
A tool that splits an order across multiple decentralized exchanges to find the best swap price.
Slang for holding a position through heavy volatility and steep drawdowns without selling.
A cryptographic proof that a specific keyholder authorized a message, and that it hasn't been altered since.
A short-term drop in price, often viewed by buyers as a discount within a larger uptrend.
A ledger structure that links transactions in a branching web rather than a single chain of blocks.
The broad category of systems that keep a synchronized record across many sites with no central master copy.
Investing a fixed amount on a regular schedule, regardless of price, to smooth out volatile entries over time.
Spending the same crypto twice by getting two conflicting transactions accepted, the core problem blockchains were built to stop.
A rapid, heavy sell-off that drives price sharply lower, sometimes coordinated to catch other traders.
Sending tiny amounts of crypto to many addresses to track and unmask who controls them.
A standard disclaimer urging you to investigate a project yourself before risking any money on it.
E
The process of scrambling data with a key so only authorized parties can read it.
An Ethereum token standard that lets a single contract manage many token types at once, both fungible and unique.
The Ethereum standard that defines how fungible tokens behave, letting wallets and apps support them uniformly.
The Ethereum standard for non-fungible tokens, giving each one a unique identifier so no two are alike.
A naming system that maps human-readable names like alice.eth to wallet addresses and other on-chain records.
The runtime that executes smart contracts on Ethereum and many other chains, defining how their code runs.
A fund that trades on stock exchanges like a share, tracking an asset's price without holders owning it directly.
Buyers who purchase at high prices, letting earlier insiders sell out at a profit.
A project that collects user funds, operates long enough to build trust, then vanishes with the money.
F
A service that hands out tiny amounts of crypto for free, mainly to fund testing on test networks.
A sentiment gauge that scores the market's mood from extreme fear at zero to extreme greed at 100.
Government-issued money like the US dollar or euro, backed by state authority rather than gold or any commodity.
Horizontal levels drawn from a prior swing that mark where a pullback might pause before the trend resumes.
The point at which a confirmed transaction can no longer be reversed or pushed off the chain.
An intergovernmental body that sets global anti-money-laundering standards, including the crypto Travel Rule, for countries to adopt.
An uncollateralized loan that must be borrowed and repaid within a single blockchain transaction, or it never happens at all.
An exploit using an uncollateralized loan repaid in one transaction to manipulate prices and drain a protocol.
The lowest price at which any item in an NFT collection is currently listed for sale.
The urge to buy an asset because its price is climbing fast and you dread missing the gains.
A split in a blockchain's history or rules, whether a brief accident or a deliberate protocol change.
A challenge that lets anyone prove a rollup posted an invalid state update, triggering a rollback on the base chain.
Profiting by seeing a pending transaction and pushing your own ahead of it for guaranteed gain.
Negative or alarming information spread about a coin or project, sometimes accurate, often deployed to shake out holders.
A token's price multiplied by its maximum supply, valuing every coin that will ever exist.
Describes assets whose units are identical and interchangeable, so one unit holds exactly the same value as another.
Contracts to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a future date, often traded with leverage.
G
Blockchain games that fold DeFi mechanics into play, letting users own in-game assets as tokens and earn rewards.
A unit measuring the computational work an Ethereum operation requires, from a simple transfer to a complex contract call.
The total cost to run an Ethereum transaction, found by multiplying the gas used by the price per unit.
The maximum amount of gas a user allows a transaction to consume before it stops and fails.
The first block of a blockchain, hardcoded at the start with no block before it to reference.
Short for 'good morning,' a near-ritual greeting used to signal presence and goodwill in crypto communities.
A bullish chart signal that fires when a faster moving average climbs above a slower one.
A token that grants voting power over a protocol's decisions, from fee settings to treasury spending and upgrades.
A denomination of ether equal to one billionth, used to quote Ethereum gas prices in readable numbers.
H
The scheduled event that cuts the reward paid to bitcoin miners in half, tightening new supply.
A backward-incompatible rule change that forces every node to upgrade, sometimes splitting one chain into two.
A dedicated physical device that holds your private keys and signs transactions without exposing them to your computer.
A fixed-length fingerprint produced by running data through a one-way function; any change yields a completely different output.
The total computing power a proof-of-work network throws at mining, measured in hashes per second.
Taking an offsetting position to reduce the risk of loss on something you already hold.
Automated trading that uses speed and algorithms to execute huge numbers of orders in microseconds.
A long-term strategy of keeping coins through crashes and rallies instead of trying to time the market.
A token or contract rigged so buyers can purchase but never sell, trapping their funds by design.
A crypto wallet kept connected to the internet for fast access, trading the convenience against higher exposure to theft.
A US legal standard from a 1946 Supreme Court case used to decide whether an asset counts as a security.
I
A crowdfunding method where a project sells a new token to the public to raise capital.
The property that once data lands on a blockchain, no one can quietly alter or erase it.
The gap between leaving tokens in a liquidity pool and simply holding them, caused when the pooled prices drift apart.
A flaw letting an attacker create unlimited tokens beyond the supply cap, then dump them for real value.
A token launch held on a decentralized exchange, where buyers trade against a liquidity pool instead of a central seller.
A token sale run through a centralized exchange, which vets the project and sells tokens directly to its users.
The ability of different blockchains to exchange data and value without relying on a central intermediary.
A peer-to-peer protocol for storing and sharing files by their content hash rather than a server location.
J
K
Malware that secretly records every keystroke, capturing passwords and seed phrases as you type them.
The gap by which Bitcoin and other coins trade higher on South Korean exchanges than elsewhere.
The identity checks financial firms run to confirm who their customers are before opening accounts.
L
The base blockchain itself, where transactions settle and security lives, before any add-on networks built on top.
A separate network built on top of a base chain to process transactions faster and far more cheaply.
The base network layer that lets independent blockchains pass messages and spin up their own connected chains.
A DeFi platform where users deposit crypto to earn interest and others borrow against collateral, all managed by smart contracts.
Borrowed money used to control a larger position than your own capital would allow, amplifying gains and losses.
An acronym for 'let's go' (often saltier), shouted to celebrate momentum, launches, or a green candle.
A Bitcoin payment layer that moves small transfers off-chain through bidirectional channels, settling on-chain only at close.
An order to buy or sell only at a chosen price or better, which may not fill at all.
Staking tokens while receiving a tradable receipt token, so your capital keeps earning rewards without being locked up.
The forced closing of a leveraged position when losses drop its collateral below the required minimum.
How easily an asset can be bought or sold near its current price without moving that price much.
A pot of tokens locked in a smart contract that traders swap against, with prices set by a formula.
Someone who deposits token pairs into a pool, supplying the funds traders swap against in return for a share of fees.
A fixed period during which tokens can't be sold or moved, common for team and investor allocations.
A bet that an asset's price will rise, profiting as it climbs and losing as it falls.
M
Built from two moving averages, this indicator tracks the shifting gap between short- and long-term momentum.
The live blockchain where transactions carry real economic value and tokens trade for actual money.
The fee charged when your order adds liquidity to the book by resting until someone fills it.
Trading with borrowed funds, posting collateral to open positions larger than your account balance alone.
The total value of a coin's circulating supply, found by multiplying its price by the coins in circulation.
A drop of roughly 10% or more from a recent high, short of a full bear market.
An instruction to buy or sell immediately at the best price currently available in the market.
The European Union's unified rulebook for crypto-assets, phased in across member states during 2024 and 2025.
The hard ceiling on how many units of a coin can ever exist, fixed by the protocol's rules.
Profit that block producers can capture by choosing how to order or insert transactions within the blocks they build.
Someone who believes one chain, usually Bitcoin, will dominate and dismisses most other crypto assets.
A token built on a joke, trend, or mascot, with value driven almost entirely by hype rather than utility.
The waiting room where broadcast transactions sit before a miner or validator picks them for a block.
A single hash that fingerprints every transaction in a block, letting nodes verify data efficiently.
A structure that hashes transactions in pairs up to a single root, letting you verify one without all.
A vision of persistent, shared 3D virtual worlds where users own digital assets and identity across platforms.
A participant who spends computing power to solve proof-of-work puzzles and earn the right to add a block.
The process of competing with computing power to add new blocks and mint fresh coins under proof of work.
A group of miners combining computing power to win block rewards and split them by contribution.
The act of creating a new token or NFT and writing it onto a blockchain for the first time.
A design that splits a blockchain's core jobs across separate specialized layers instead of handling them all in one chain.
A line that averages price over a set period, smoothing noise to reveal the underlying trend.
A wallet setup that requires several private keys to approve a transaction instead of just one.
N
A blockchain token that represents ownership of a unique item, where no two units are interchangeable.
An acronym for 'not gonna make it,' aimed at those seen as making losing moves.
A computer running a blockchain's software, keeping a copy of the ledger and relaying transactions to peers.
A wallet where you alone hold the private keys, with no company able to freeze or recover your funds.
A throwaway number miners change over and over while hunting for a hash that meets the target.
O
A pair of linked orders where filling one of them automatically cancels the other immediately.
US Treasury sanctions, enforced by a watchdog office, that bar Americans from transacting with blacklisted people and addresses.
Transactions or data handled outside the blockchain, then sometimes settled on it later in batches.
Data or activity recorded directly on a blockchain, visible to anyone and validated by the network.
A rollup that assumes transaction batches are valid and lets anyone challenge fraud within a set dispute window.
A service that feeds outside data, like asset prices, into smart contracts, which otherwise cannot see anything beyond their own blockchain.
A live, ranked list of all outstanding buy and sell orders for an asset on an exchange.
A system for numbering individual satoshis so data can be inscribed onto them, creating NFT-like artifacts on Bitcoin.
A valid block that loses the race to extend the chain and gets discarded.
A private, negotiated trade between two parties that settles off the public order book.
P
A dismissive term for selling too early, dumping a position at the first sign of trouble.
A private key printed or written on paper, kept fully offline so no hacker can reach it remotely.
An independent blockchain that runs in parallel and leases security from the Polkadot relay chain through a connecting slot.
A closed blockchain where a known operator controls who may join and validate transactions.
A network anyone can join, use, or build on without asking a gatekeeper for approval.
A futures contract with no expiry date, kept aligned to spot price by recurring funding payments.
A scam that tricks you into revealing keys or signing a malicious transaction by posing as something you trust.
A game model that pays players in tradeable tokens or NFTs, turning hours of play into real income.
The full set of assets one person or fund holds, viewed together as a single position.
The market process by which buyers and sellers continuously settle on an asset's fair price.
The secret number that proves ownership of crypto and authorizes spending it; whoever holds it controls the funds.
A consensus method where a few approved validators secure the chain based on their known identity.
Solana's method of stamping a verifiable time order onto events before they reach consensus.
An audit method by which an exchange shows it holds enough assets to cover what customers are owed.
A consensus method where validators lock up coins as collateral instead of burning electricity to secure the chain.
A consensus method where miners burn computing power to earn the right to add blocks and deter cheating.
A key derived from your private key that others use to verify your signatures and that forms your address.
A system using a paired public and private key so anyone can verify a signature only the owner could make.
A scheme that inflates a coin's price with coordinated hype, then sells into the buying for profit.
R
Protocol returns paid from genuine revenue like trading fees, rather than from printing new tokens as rewards.
Off-chain assets like Treasury bonds or real estate represented as on-chain tokens, bringing traditional finance value into DeFi.
An exploit where a contract is called back mid-execution, draining funds before its balances update.
Crypto slang for getting financially destroyed, usually after a leveraged position blows up or a token collapses.
A momentum oscillator scaled 0 to 100 that gauges whether an asset has run too hot or too cold.
Reusing already-staked ETH to help secure other protocols, earning extra rewards while taking on additional slashing risk.
A scaling method that batches many transactions off-chain and posts a compressed proof or record to the base layer.
An interface that lets applications query a blockchain or submit transactions through a node, without running one themselves.
A scam where a project's creators drain its funds or dump their tokens, leaving investors with worthless holdings.
S
The smallest unit of bitcoin, equal to one hundred-millionth of a single coin.
The pseudonymous person or group who created Bitcoin and then disappeared, leaving the project to the community.
A network's capacity to handle more transactions and users without fees and delays spiking.
Vitalik Buterin's framing that blockchains trade off decentralization, security, and raw scale against each other.
The US federal agency that oversees securities markets and has become crypto's most prominent enforcement regulator.
A token representing a regulated investment — equity, debt, or a share of profits — and subject to securities law.
A list of 12 or 24 ordinary words that backs up a wallet and can restore all its keys.
Holding your own private keys directly, so no exchange or company stands between you and your crypto.
The rollup component that decides the order of incoming transactions and posts them as compressed batches to the base chain.
Splitting a blockchain into parallel partitions so they process transactions side by side instead of one at a time.
Aggressively promoting a coin to others, frequently for personal gain and often without disclosing the payment.
A bet that an asset's price will fall, made by selling borrowed coins to buy back cheaper.
Betting that a price will fall by selling an asset you don't own, then buying it back cheaper.
An independent blockchain that runs alongside a main chain and connects to it through a two-way bridge.
An attack that transfers your phone number to the attacker's SIM card to intercept calls and SMS codes.
A penalty that destroys part of a validator's staked coins for misbehavior or downtime.
The difference between the price you expected on a trade and the price it actually executed at.
Self-executing code on a blockchain that runs exactly as written when its conditions are met, with no party able to intervene.
A structured review of contract code that hunts for vulnerabilities before attackers find and exploit them.
Manipulating people rather than code, tricking them into handing over keys, codes, or access.
A backward-compatible rule tightening where upgraded nodes enforce stricter limits and old nodes still follow along.
The dominant programming language for writing smart contracts that run on Ethereum and other compatible virtual machines.
A non-transferable token bound permanently to one wallet, used to represent credentials or reputation on-chain.
The gap between the highest bid and the lowest ask, a basic measure of trading cost and liquidity.
A crypto token designed to hold a steady value, almost always pegged one-to-one with the US dollar.
Locking up tokens to help secure a proof-of-stake network and earn rewards, similar to interest on a deposit.
A scaling technique where participants transact off-chain through signed messages, posting only the opening and final balances on-chain.
A stop order that, once triggered, places a limit order instead of selling at market.
A standing instruction to sell once price falls to a set level, capping how much you lose.
Price levels where buying or selling has repeatedly stalled a move, marking floors and ceilings on a chart.
An attack where one actor spins up many fake identities to gain outsized influence over a network.
T
A standing order to sell once price rises to a target, locking in gains automatically.
The fee charged when your order removes liquidity by filling immediately against the book.
A sandbox copy of a blockchain where developers trial code using tokens that hold no value.
A 2016 exploit that drained millions from a flagship Ethereum project and forced a contentious hard fork.
A hypothetical moment when Ethereum's market capitalization overtakes Bitcoin's, becoming the largest crypto asset.
A recorded time marker proving when a block or transaction entered the blockchain's history.
An expression of hope or hype that a coin's price is about to rise dramatically.
A digital asset issued on top of an existing blockchain, usually through a smart contract rather than its own network.
The economic design of a token — its supply, distribution, and incentives — that shapes whether it can hold value.
Every token that currently exists, including locked and reserved coins but excluding any that have been burned.
The total worth of crypto deposited in a protocol or across DeFi, used as a rough gauge of size and trust.
Traditional finance, the established system of banks, exchanges, and regulators that crypto positions itself against.
The total value of an asset bought and sold over a period, usually measured across 24 hours.
A signed instruction that moves value or data on a blockchain, recorded permanently once miners or validators confirm it.
Paid to the network for processing a transfer, this charge rises and falls with how busy the chain is.
A measure of how many transactions a blockchain can confirm each second under load.
A FATF requirement that firms share sender and recipient details on crypto transfers above a set threshold.
A straight line linking a series of highs or lows to map the direction price is traveling.
A system where you rely on code and math instead of trusting a middleman.
A second login check beyond your password, usually a one-time code, that blocks attackers who steal credentials.
U
People without access to a bank account, a group crypto advocates often cite as a target for financial inclusion.
A token that grants access to a product or service rather than ownership, used to pay for usage inside a network.
Unspent transaction output — a discrete chunk of coin that a wallet must spend whole, like a bill in cash.
V
A participant in a proof-of-stake network that proposes and confirms blocks, putting staked coins at risk for honesty.
A cryptographic proof submitted with every rollup batch that mathematically guarantees the new state was computed correctly.
Software or a product announced with fanfare but never actually shipped, sometimes used to pump a token.
A smart contract that pools deposits and runs an automated strategy to generate yield, popularized by Yearn Finance.
A schedule that releases allocated tokens gradually over time, keeping founders and investors from selling everything at once.
The Russian-Canadian programmer who proposed Ethereum in 2013 and remains its most influential public figure.
A measure of how sharply and how often a price swings, in either direction, over time.
W
An acronym for 'we're all gonna make it,' a rallying cry of optimism among crypto communities.
A tool that stores the keys controlling your crypto and lets you send, receive, and sign transactions.
Malicious code that empties a wallet in one approval after tricking the owner into signing it.
Faking activity by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset to inflate volume or price.
Traders likely to sell quickly under pressure, often at a loss during dips or volatility.
A vision of an internet built on blockchains, where users own their assets and identity without central platforms.
A holder large enough that buying or selling their position can move a coin's price on its own.
A foundational document laying out a crypto project's technology and token design, modeled on Bitcoin's 2008 paper.
A token that represents another asset one-to-one on a different chain, letting it move where it natively cannot.
Y
Z
A cryptographic method that proves a statement is true without revealing the underlying data behind it.
A rollup that posts a cryptographic validity proof for every batch, giving near-instant finality on the base chain.
A compact cryptographic proof that confirms a statement is true while revealing nothing about the underlying data.
A zero-knowledge proof system that needs no trusted setup and stays secure against quantum attacks, at the cost of larger proofs.