An Entertaining (& Educational) Dictionary of Crypto & Blockchain Terminology

Once upon a time… December 18, 2013 to be exact, GameKyuubi’s girlfriend was at a lesbian bar. Why? Well, ummm, ask him.

Anyway, like many other nerds on a cold night, he was feeling sorry for himself, alone in front of his computer. Our beloved Bitcoin was dipping. While GameKyuubi’s lady was “hanging out with the girls”, (I’m not going to tell him what she was really doing) he found himself drinking whiskey and chatting online. #guilty

Feeling not so confident, he logged into Bitcointalk.org and posted some rather enjoyable content that continues to amuse, or annoy us to this very day. His post was titled “I AM HODLING”. He admittedly mistyped the title, but after multiple attempts to correct the error, in a intoxicated and emotional state, he gave up correctly spelling ‘hold’ and soldiered on through his post.

Obviously, it didn’t take long for fellow bitcoin-ers to jump on his post with comments, laughs, and creative memes. Early BTC miners and traders joined in support of GameK’s inebriated advice and commented they too were going to “HODL” right along with him. It was then, the first crypto slang was invented.

To celebrate “HODLING” on it’s 5th birthday, I’d like break down the meaning of other cryptocurrency slang and terms. Don’t worry, I’ll also be providing a solid reference guide to trading and technological terminology used in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world. Here goes nothing?

“Slang” Terms: some love, I’m not a fan #haters

The birthday boy and pioneer may go first.

HODL/HODLING: Hold/Holding

Example: “I’m HODLING until I’m dead!”

ATH: “All Time High”

Example: “BTC saw an ATH after “Big Bang Theory aired last year.”

Bagholder: A trader holding after a cryptocurrency has had a significant decrease in value.

Example: “What are you doing with Dogecoin, ya bagholder! It’s worthless!”

Bearish: Expectation price is going to DECREASE

Example: “Trade your NEO! I predict a bearish month!”

Bullish: Expectation price is going to INCREASE

Example: “I would invest in a large amount of XRP, pretty sure we are entering a bullish market”

BTFD: Buy at The F***ing Dip!

Example; “I told you jerks to BTFD! Why don’t you listen!?”

Cypherpunk: People who are into cryptography as a means of social change.

Example: “Jacob Appelbaum is a BA cypherpunk!”

DYOR: Do Your Own Research

Example: “You’re an idiot if you don’t DYOR!!!!”

Flippening: The change in value of an altcoin, where it would no longer be primarily based on the value of Bitcoin

Example: “Eth is lower than BCH! That’s flippening, bro!”

FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out

Example: “What are you guys all doing, you know because I suffer from serious FOMO, and I need to know.”

FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (one that spreads this negativity is termed a ‘fudster’)

Example: “Cryptocurrencies overall have had a decrease in price related to FUD.”

Lambo: Short for Lamborghini.

Example: “Alyze said, “Few using ‘lambo’ are actually owners of this incredibly costly vehicle.”

Moon: A large increase in value.

Example: “When moon?” You’ll see “Wen Moon!?” often, because spelling isn’t important when you’re losing money, obviously.

Nocoiner: A person that owns no cryptocurrencies.

Example: “What makes him think he can give financial advice?! Nocoiners can’t be taken seriously, these days!”

Noob: An insult or newer person to crypto/gaming.

Example: “You suck at trading, noob.”

OCD: Obsessive Cryptocurrency Disorder

Example: “My family didn’t invite me to Thanksgiving this year because I have OCD and they’re tired of me.”

Pump & Dump: Cycle of increase and decrease in prices.

Example: “Any shitty coins John Mcafee gets paid to shill is a Pump & Dump scheme.”

Rekt: wrecked

Example: “My portfolio is rekt, like a mofo!”

Source: SoulCotton.com

SAFU: Safe As “FU**.

Example: “Investing in crypto today and HODLING for 3 years, you’ll be SAFU!”

Shill: Annoying and unnecessary advertising

Example: “Why are you shilling your crappy coin on my telegram channel? Lame.”

Sh** Coin: Cryptocurrencies with no inherent value.

Example: “dogecoin is definitely a Sh** Coin.”

Spoofing: When a person/team buys and sells to themselves in a set range to create the illusion of volume.

Example: “Whales be spoofing today.”

This is Gentleman: A phrase to point out positively noted in cryptocurrency charts.

Example: “Today was a good trading day, my portfolio looks nice. This is Gentleman, folks, look for yourselves!”

Vaporware: An advertised technology not yet available. An idea, plan, or concept.

Example: “Dude! That sounds awesome! Where can I invest!? What do you mean it’s vaporware!?”

Whale: One that owns a massive amount of Cryptocurrency.

Example: “I wish I was a cool whale, like Tim Draper”

Trading Terminology; ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ has nothing on some of these crypto events…

Arbitrage: Taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets.
Bollinger Band: Statistical chart characterizing the prices and volatility over time.
Cryptocurrency “Crypto”: Digital assets designed to be used as a decentralized exchange for goods and services.
CMC: Coin Market Capitalization. Used to rank the size of a cryptocurrency. It’s calculated by multiplying the Price by the Circulating Supply.
Core: A position intended to hold for an extended amount of time.
DCA: Dollar cost averaging. Dividing sum desired to invest in intervals over time, hoping to reduce risk.
DEX: Decentralized EXchange. A P2P exchange.
EMA: Exponential Moving Average. Line based on price action over time.
EW: Elliot Wave. Patterns the price movement of assets tends to make.
Exchange; Websites you can buy, sell or trade cryptocurrencies.
FA: Fundamental Analysis. Examination of underlying factors affecting market prices.
Fiat: Government recognized currency
ICO: Initial Coin Offering. A fundraising avenue for cryptocurrencies.
IPO: Initial Public Offering. Where shares of a company are sold to investors.
ISO: Initial Securities Offering. Intended fundraising structured as securities using a Blockchain platform.
Laddering: Setting incremental buy or sell orders
Long: A profitable margin of trade when currency value increases.
MA: Moving Average. (Rolling/Running Average) Calculation to analyze data points in TA, found by using overall chart average of coin price. Forms a trend following indicator.
MACD: Moving Average Convergence/Divergence. A trading indicator used in technical analysis. (See TA)
Market Cap: (Market Capitalization) Circulating supply of tokens multiplied by current price.
Margin Trading: “leveraged trading”. If you don’t know what this is, don’t do it.
Market Order: Immediate or instant order at current market prices.
Panic Selling: Selling an asset out of fear.
Ponzi scheme: Investment scam involving payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors.

Source: gettingflak.com

Risk management: A plan to sell an asset.
RMC: Real money candle. An indicator there will be an increase in profitability.
Roadmap: Detailed map behind a coin for its future and stated confidence by team behind the project.
ROI: Return On Investment. Ration between the net profit and cost of investment.
RSI: Relative Strength Indicator. Measures the magnitude of recent price changes.
Satoshis (Sats): The smallest fraction of a Bitcoin is called a Satoshi. It represents one hundred millionths of a bitcoin.
Sell Wall/Buy Wall: The graphical representation of what current buy and sell orders are.
Short: A profitable margin of trade when the currency price decreases.
Stable Coin: Cryptocurrencies designed to minimize the effects of price volatility.
STO: Security Token Offering. Enables companies to create token value from an external tradable asset.
Stochastic Oscillator: Indicator finding the range between an asset’s high and low during a certain time period.
Stoploss: An automatic sell order.
TA: Technical Analysis. Methodology for predicting price fluctuations by study of past market data.
Taking profits: Selling an asset after the price has increased.
Ticker Symbols: Every coin has a trading symbol or ticker symbol. (Bitcoin = BTC, Ether = ETH)
Tokens: Cryptocurrencies residing on their own blockchain, representing an asset or utility.

Technology Terminology: Take two Aspirin and proceed…

Source: blockchain-trust.com or me last week at Chanukah Prayer, you’ll never know…

2FA: Two factor authentication. Method to confirm users’ identity by using a combination of two different factors.
Airdrop: Free distribution of virtual currency tokens.
ASIC: Application Specific Integrated Circuit. Specialized silicon chips which process SHA-256 algorithms in order to “mine” cryptocurrencies and also validate transactions. (See mining)
ASIC Miners: Machines used along with mining software to mine Cryptocurrencies. (See mining)
Block(s): Unalterable files of data on a ledger related to the network is permanently stored. Forever. (Not like your first 2 marriages. #opps)
Blockchain: A digital ledger where crypto transactions are recorded both chronologically and publicly.
Block height: Number of blocks preceding the genesis block (first mined block) on the chain.
Block reward: Payment allotted for solving the mathematical equation related to a block. (Hashing + Problem solved = Reward)
Central ledger: A record controlled by a singular network, agency or individual. (Evil banks are a good example of this)
Cold Storage: The process of moving crypto-currency ‘offline’
Crypto Assets: Not all cryptos are used as means of currency, therefor we have this term. Ie CryptoKitties, or non-fungible collectable tokens.
Cryptography: Science or art of encoding and decoding.
DAO: Decentralized Autonomous Organization. An organization where programmed rule-sets replace most centralized parts of a traditional company.
DApp: A decentralized application. Usually stored on a Blockchain and hosted on many distributed servers.
Decentralization: (often an overused buzzword”, by industry marketers) Design of a network that isn’t controlled by one party. Removal of third parties. (P2P)
DEX: Decentralized Exchanges.
Distributed: Stored in many locations.
Distributed/Shared ledger: Agreement of shared, replicable and synchronized data, spreading across multiple networks. (P2P, decentralization, open source)
DTL: Digital Ledger Technology. Class of technology behind distributed ledgers like blockchain.
Forging: Process in PoS blockchains where there’s no block reward for miners. Forgers keep transaction fees as a reward.
Fork: When blockchain permanently splits into two separate chains.

On Forks, Matthew Bardeleben adds;

Fork: A change in the protocol used by any particular blockchain. Similar to a software or application update. Will result in either;

A.) Soft Fork (Non-contentious): All participants adopt the new ‘chain’ of data.

B.) Hard Fork (Contentious): Participants divide, some adopting the new protocol while others retain the old, resulting in a ‘chain split’.

i.e. Both the original chain and the new chain continue to operate independently.

Gas: Transaction fee
Genesis Block: The first block in a blockchain.
Halving: When the block reward halfs, this means mining should become 50% more expensive.
Hard Fork: Change to a Blockchain protocol making previously invalid blocks/transactions valid. All users are required to upgrade.
Hard Wallet: A device that can securely store crypto-currency.
Hash Power: Rate a given piece of hardware can mine a coin.
Hashrate: Speed which a block is discovered and rate the related math problem is solved.
Lightening Network: Payment protocol operational on top of the blockchain capable of billions of transactions per second.
Main Net: Main network a blockchain lives on.
Masternodes: Nodes with voting rights.
Mempool: A pool of pending unconfirmed transactions, in line waiting to be confirmed/added to the blockchain by miners. Somewhat specific to BTC, as this pool can have different names on different networks.
MFA: Multi-factor authentication. Method of confirming identity by presenting two or more pieces of evidence to an authentication mechanism.
Mining: Running software to solve cryptographic puzzles resulting in rewards.
Mining rig: Computers specifically designed to process blockchain’s consisting. of multiple high-end graphic processors (GPU) to maximize processing power.

Source me.me

Multisig: Multisignature. Form of security requiring more than one signature to approve a transaction.
Node: A computer possessing a copy of a blockchain network while also producing validation to support transactions.
Open-source: Computer software where copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute content. (Wikipedia is a good example)
Paper wallet: Cryptocurrency wallet public/private keys printed on paper.
Private key: Private numbers allowing access to a cryptocurrency wallet.
Public key: Set of numbers/letters needed to send or receive cryptocurrency from an exchange/wallet.
PoC: Proof capacity is a consensus mechanism algorithm allowing mining devices in the network to use their available hard drive space to decide the mining rights. (Thank you, Tam Sanchez for this add via Twitter!)
PoS: Proof-of-Stake (no, crypto is not a piece of sh**, although my mother will argue with you…) The proposed future consensus algorithm. Where PoW requires the prover to perform a certain amount of computational work, PoS system requires one to show ownership of the stake. Done by those who hold coins. Basically, getting paid interest for holding coins.
PoW: Proof of Work. Mining done by those whom hold hash power, time, and energy to gain reward. Formulated as a measure to deter denial of service attacks. PoW for crypto transactions are referred to as a “nonce,” or number used only once.
Pre-mine: Act of developers mining blocks for themselves before taking a chain live.
Privacy coins: Purely anonymous cryptos. Allowing for private messages and transactions.
Protocol: Set of rules for a network.
Pseudo-anonymous: Most blockchain based ledgers are pseudo-anonymous. Every transaction is public, but identifying information about who made the transaction is private.
QR Code: Scannable “Barcode”. Used to cut down errors in crypto transactions.
Satoshi Nakamoto: A persona created by the person or people who created Bitcoin. (This goes under technology because Satoshi is probably a robot from the future. 😜)
Sharding: (not “sharting” I should clean up my autocorrect, I’m supposed to be a lady…) Horizontal partition of data in a blockchain.
Smart contract: Unalterable agreement stored with specific logic operations.
Snapshot Block: The block height required to be at to qualify for a fork. 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 fork: Backwards compatible crypto so the currency doesn’t split into a hard fork.
Soft Wallet: Storage for crypto-currency that exists purely as software files on a computer.
Test Net: Test Network where developers and users can test transactions.
Tokenization: Encrypted information 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.
Transaction: Exchanges & stored data added to a blockchain.
Transaction Fee: The fee or reward for mining.
Wallet: Software to store keys and create cryptocurrency transactions.
Wallet Address: Public portion of the two encrypted keys necessary to accept/verify a transaction.

**You gain more knowledge and practice by sending ETH to this one;**0xF32Cc9FBA17F389f734e7aACACDFb39ba7029c18 (What?! I wrote a dictionary for free. Have you seen how thin I am?! 😂)

@GameKyuubi concludes his drunk post with, “You only sell in a bear market if you are a good day trader or an illusioned noob. The people inbetween hold. In a zero-sum game such as this, traders can only take your money if you sell.”

No matter where you stand on his advice, DYOR! Invest wisely, my friends. Share education, encouragement and love to everyone you encounter. Lastly, don’t forget to laugh and breathe.