Check out the list of cryptocurrency keywords, acronyms and terms with meanings and descriptions in detail.
| Terms | Description of terms in cryptography |
| 51% Attack | The 51% operation is called when a single person retains more than 50% computing power on a blockchain. As it also means giving him complete control over everything including mining, transactions, coins and he can affect the coin negatively however he wants. |
| Address, Cryptocurrency | Every crypto coin comes with a unique address on a blockchain and that’s how it gets identified. It’s the address which stores the coin data and also changes if that’s traded or the ownership changes. All these crypto addresses are different from one another and come with different 30ish characters each. |
| Airdrop, Coin | Airdrop is a marketing technique through which a cryptocurrency is distributed among the interested people. To popularize a coin the creator airdrops/distributes coins for free or for small tasks to make it accessible to those who don’t have it or have very little and among general communities. |
| Algorithm, Blockchain | A pattern of mathematical instructions used by a software to perform operations. |
| ATH or All Time High | ATH is the acronym for “All Time High.” The highest price ever achieved by a cryptocurrency. |
| ATL or All Time Low | ATL is the acronym for “All Time Low.” The lowest price ever achieved by a cryptocurrency. |
| AltCoins | There is only cryptocurrency which was created first time and all others that were developed afterwards are altcoins or alternate coins including Ethereum, XRP, Tether etc. |
| AML | AML stands for “Anti-Money Laundering” |
| Anti-Money Laundering | The process or laws of barring individuals or organizations from using cryptocurrencies to launder fiat currencies. |
| Arbitrage, Crypto Exchange | All the crypto exchanges set their own price points for the same coins. Some people buy a certain coin from one exchange and sell it to the other for some profit. This process is called arbitrage. |
| ASIC | ASIC stands for “Application Specific Integrated Circuit” |
| ASIC or Application Specific Integrated Circuit | The hardware, designed and manufactured especially to solve crypto hashes. They are similar to a CPU or a GPU. These ASIC units are much faster and efficient than any other peripheral. |
| Atomic Swap | The exchange of different coins for one another without buying or selling. |
| Bag | The state of having a large amount of crypto units |
| Bear/Bearish in Crypto | The state of negative price movement in a cryptocurrency or a coin with negative price point |
| Bear Trap | A trade exercise in which a group of investors manipulates the coin price by selling all their crypto coins of the same network at same time. This makes the common traders think that the price is going down further and they would sell their stock impulsively. The first group who sold their coin units would buy back which would be much cheaper than before and make a huge profit. |
| Bitcoin | The decentralized first ever digital currency created in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto and others. |
| Block | A small single unit of blockchain which stores historical cryptocurrency data until it’s full. These records are permanent to be viewed and verified at any time in the future. |
| Block Explorer | Block Explorer is a tool to monitor and watch blockchain live analysis information including total coin supply, network hash rate and growth etc. |
| Block Height | Block height shows the number of connected blocks. The height tells you how many blocks are there. For example the first block at height ‘0’ means genesis block. |
| Block Reward | Block Reward is given to the miners who are part of the blockchain to verify hashes and transactions. In the return new coins are generated and the portion of those coins is given to the miners as rewards. |
| Blockchain | A blockchain is a cryptographic ledger of all the transactions conducted on a particular coin network. Each computer on the network is connected through a digital signature. Once a block capacity is reached the new blocks are added to the network and the whole blockchain data is stored on all these computers and all the computers must bear the same copy of data. Since there is not a single master computer to control the phenomena, it is called ‘decentralized.’ |
| BTFD | BTFD stands for “Buy The F$%king Dip” in cryptography. |
| Bull/Bullish | Bull represents a higher coin price movement on the market. |
| Burning, Coin | When a coin on any blockchain network is made unspendable to increase its market value by reducing the supply it’s called ‘coin burning.’ |
| Buy the F$%king Dip | Telling others that a certain coin has gone down and can be purchased on cheap rates |
| Buy Wall in Cryptography | When a big limit order is placed to buy to moderate the whole coin supply it is called ‘Buy Wall.’ It is done mostly to maintain the currency value of a coin. |
| CAP, Coin Market | CAP stands for market capitalization |
| Central Ledger | When an organization controls all the financial transactions. The most common example of Central Ledger is bank operations. |
| Chain Linking | Each separate blockchain represents a separate coin or the digital record of all the transactions. While Chain Linking is the process of recording transactions on two different blockchains that require linking together when transferring one cryptocurrency to another. |
| Cipher | Cipher is the name of an algorithm that encrypts/decrypts data. |
| Circulating Supply, Coin | The number of coins available on the market for trading publicly excluding locked, reserved or burned coins. |
| Cold Storage | The term used to define Paper Wallet |
| Confirmed | When a cryptocurrency transaction takes place and is recorded it is called ‘confirmed.’ |
| Consensus, Blockchain Algorithm | When all Nodes on a single cryptocurrency network ensure the validity of a transaction on a blockchain, it is called ‘Consensus.’ |
| Consensus Process | When the cryptocurrency transactions are made they are recorded on the blockchain ledger for which the Nodes are responsible to verify them. It’s called ‘Consensus Process.’ |
| Consortium blockchain | A blockchain that is privately owned but remains transparent. |
| Cryptocurrency | The encrypted digital information that can act as real money but operate independent of any central entity like a bank rather use a set of mathematical instructions to regulate the transactions and keep them transparent. |
| Cryptographic Hash Function | The node functions to convert a set of data/transactions into encrypted strings which are fixed that gets registered on a blockchain and controlled through a hashing algorithm. |
| Cryptography | The method to encrypt/decrypt data |
| DAO | DAO stands for “Decentralized Autonomous Organization” |
| dApp | Stands for “Decentralized Application” |
| Decentralized Applications | All those computer programs/applications which use a blockchain to store information, open-source, perform independently without being controlled by a central entity and give rewards or take fees for its usage are known as Decentralized Applications. |
| DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations | All those networks or organizations that perform through computer programs only and controlled by many computers rather than a single central organization are called Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. |
| Decryption | The process of converting encrypted code into readable text. |
| Deflation | The decline in the demand for a crypto currency that affects its value |
| Depth Chart | This graph plots the requests to buy (known as bids) and the requests to sell (known as asks) on a chart. Because you can put a limit order on your buy or sell transaction, the depth chart shows the crossover point at which the market is most likely to accept a transaction in a timely fashion. It also shows if there are any significant buy walls or sell walls in play. |
| Deterministic Wallet | Deterministic wallet is created from a single seed by producing many keys so that the key can be retrieved from the genesis seed. It does not require to create new keys every time making transactions, instead the different patterns are used from the seed which are far more transparent, easily usable and storable. |
| Difficulty, Mining | Difficulty in cryptography means the cost of mining at a point in time. The mining difficulty is inversely proportional to the number of transactions and divided by the power of the Nodes trying to be confirmed at a single time. The mining difficulty also affects the transaction fee. |
| Digital Commodity | A commodity or intangible valuable asset which requires electronic transfer |
| Digital Currency | A term used to address digital assets or commodities |
| Digital Signature | A digital signature is generated through public encryption. They are used to confirm the document transfer electronically and to ensure their authenticity. |
| Distributed Ledger in Cryptocurrency | When a record is stored on more than one location to be accessed by different entities it is called Distributed Ledger. While in cryptography distributed ledger means holding blockchain on different Nodes that can be checked at the same time. |
| Double Spend | When someone tries to send cryptocurrency to more than one wallet it is called Double Spend in cryptography. |
| Dump | The term Dump in cryptography means to sell most of the cryptocurrency or coins simultaneously |
| Dumping, Coin | When most of the coin owners dump their coins at once |
| Dust Transaction | When most of the people on a blockchain start conducting small transactions at will to slow the network such transactions are termed as Dust Transactions. |
| DYOR | DYOR stands for “Do Your Own Research”. |
| Encryption | The conversion of simple text to difficult one through a cipher that requires decryption before reading is called Encryption. |
| ERC | ERC stands for “Ethereum request for comments” |
| ERC-20 | ERC-20 is the standard to create Ethereum tokens which are bound to comply and adhere to that. |
| Escrow | A source that holds the funds between two parties during a transaction. |
| Ethereum | Ethereum is the second most popular crypto currency in the world. It’s different from BTC in two major ways as it being open source allows developers to create dApps and Smart Contracts. |
| EVM | Stands for Ethereum Virtual Machine. |
| Ethereum Virtual Machine | A software program that allows programmers to create dApps. It is the environment where all Ethereum accounts and contracts are stored. |
| Exchange | A place or a platform that allows people dealing in crypto currencies to exchange them to fiat or vice versa for a small fee. |
| FA | FA stands for “Fundamental Analysis”. |
| Faucet | A platform that gives a small amount of crypto currency free to the people to join pools etc. |
| Fiat | The common currency recognized by the governments such as USD, GBP, Eur etc is referred as fiat. |
| FOMO | Stands for “Fear of Missing Out” |
| Fork | A fork is another version of a crypto coin. They are forked from an existing crypto currency and exist on the same blockchain network. There are two types of forks: hard and soft. |
| Frictionless | The system or process is termed as frictionless in crypto when the fees for transactions or trading restraints are absent. |
| FUD | FUD stands for “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt”. |
| Full Node | Full Nodes are programs that validate cryptocurrency transactions and blocks and also receive information from other Full Nodes to validate them |
| Fundamental Analysis | Attaching value to a coin by considering all the possible factors financial by nature including market is termed as financial analysis. |
| Futures Contract | A future contract between the parties to be fulfilled in future if a coin reaches a certain value. However it is not the same as a limit order. |
| Gas, Ethereum Network | The cost of an operation on the Ethereum network is termed as “Gas” the same way as we need gasoline to run a car. |
| Gas Limit, Ethereum | While conceding an Ethereum transaction the users are to set a gas limit. If the transaction costs more than that it will not concede if the gas cost is less then the remaining amount will be returned once the transaction has completed. |
| Gas Price, Ethereum | The amount of ETH to be paid to the miners for the transactions on Ethereum is called Gas Price |
| Genesis Block | The foundation block on a blockchain is called Genesis Block. |
| Group Mining | Another term used to address crypto mining pools. |
| Gwei | Gwei is the term used to describe the cost of Gas in Ethereum. |
| Halving | Halving is a term used to describe Bitcoin mining rewards distribution into two halves. It also halves the BTC inflation rate and the rate at which the new BTC enters the market. |
| Hard Cap, Coin | The creators of a cryptocurrency set a hard cap during an ICO which is the maximum amount and once that is reached they will stop offering the coin. |
| Hard Fork | A change in the Blockchain protocol or upgrade that affects the previous transactions and requires all the Nodes to upgrade in order to validate the transactions. |
| Hardware Wallet | When a peripheral device is used to keep crypto coins safe in the encrypted format is termed as Hardware Wallet in cryptography. |
| Hash | The processing power on a blockchain network that attempts to find new blocks by creating a new block and testing it against the blockchain network. |
| Hash Rate, Blockchain | The measurement of computation power of a blockchain network which determines the hashes a computer rig can produce. The hash rate of a computer is measured in kH/s, MH/s, GH/s, TH/s, PH/s or EH/s. It depends upon the hashes per second being produced. 1,000 kH/s = 1 MH/s, 1,000 MH/s = 1 GH/s etc. |
| Hashing Power | The hash computation power that a computer requires or uses to solve hashing algorithms. |
| HODL | HODL stands for “Hold on For Dear Life” |
| ICO | ICO stands for “Initial Coin Offering” |
| Initial Coin Offering | Every new blockchain network offers the first batch of cryptocurrency to be purchased to raise funds to meet its expenses. This is called ICO or Initial Coin Offering. |
| JOMO | JOMO stands for “Joy of Missing Out” in blockchain |
| KYC | KYC stands for “Know Your Customer”, which creates a distributed ledger and helps others to verify according to the prescribed rules. |
| LAMBO in Blockchain | LAMBO stands for Lamborghini. A reference is made to someone who gets rich |
| Ledger, Blockchain | A record keeping of transactions on a blockchain network. It cannot be altered; only new financial events can be logged into it. |
| Leverage, Cryptocurrency | Borrowing funds on the existing amount in crypto to reduce losses and increase profits. |
| Lightning Network, Blockchain | A lightning network in blockchain means the fastest peer-to-peer network that quickly verifies public/private transactions, with no latency, costs less and is accessible on the various networks. |
| Limit Order/Limit Buy/Limit Sell, Cryptocurrency | Limit Order/Limit Buy/Limit Sell in cryptocurrency jargons is used to address the limitations exercised by the blockchain creator to issue a limit order on supply, price or purchasing. So when the cryptocurrency transactions are made the systems will make sure these limitations are meted out. |
| Liquidity, Cryptocurrency | The ease and availability of a crypto coin to trade or convert without affecting its market value |
| Locktime, Crypto Coin | A particular time when a crypto coin transaction gets registered on a blockchain is termed as crypto coin locktime. |
| Long | When any crypto owner holds a large sum of coins and keeps it for future value is termed as going Long. |
| MACD | MACD stands for “Moving Average Convergence Divergence” |
| Margin Bear Position | This is the position you are taking if you are going “short”. When someone goes short on a cryptocurrency the position is termed as Margin Bear Position. |
| Margin Bull Position | When someone goes long on a cryptocurrency the position is termed as Margin Bull Position |
| Market Capitalization, Crypto Coin | Market Capitalization of a coin is the number of total coins multiplied by their price. The formula is: Market Cap.= Coin Supply x Coin Price |
| Margin Trading | A trading tactic used by the expert crypto traders to risk the whole amount of cryptocurrency to amplify their trade. They use crypto exchange leverage to buy more coins than they can afford to. |
| Market Order | The buying/selling of a crypto coin like Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin etc. instantly without considering the price threshold |
| MCAP | MCAP stands for “Market Capitalization” |
| Mining, Cryptocurrency | The computation power donated by the person to the blockchain to solve crypto challenges and verify transactions. In return the miner gets rewarded with some amount of that coin. |
| Mining Contract | When a miner rents out all the mining crypto mining hardware for a period of time and bears the expenses for everything. But the renter just pays the rent, not the maintenance. There are many miners that earn a good deal of money. |
| Mining Pool | The miners join their computation power together over a single network and get rewarded for the amount of resources they allocate. The crypto mining pools give miners easy access to get rewarded as compared to solo mining. The reward could be small but consistent |
| Moon | In cryptocurrency Moon is used to describe that a certain coin like Chia, XRP, Bitcoin or any other coin’s price is increasing. For example Chia is mooning, or Chia to the moon etc. |
| Moving Average Convergence Divergence | The expert financial analysis of a coin’s value to determine and predict its future value. Many crypto experts determine the price index of a cryptocurrency and then send signals to the customers. |
| MSB | MSB stands for “Money Services Business”. |
| Multipool Mining | The multiple mining as the phrase says it all is the mining with multiple pools for multiple coins at the same time. The miners get rewarded according to the amount of computation power they donate to the network. |
| Multi-Signature (Multi-Sig) Wallets | When more than one user is required to give their private keys to verify an event is termed in cryptography as Multisig. It is considered a more authentic and less vulnerable method of security as a single login requires code authentication from two or more than two different sources. |
| Network, Blockchain/Cryptocurrency | A blockchain or cryptocurrency network means all the nodes contributing to a single source for all the operations. |
| Node | Every single computer on the same blockchain network is termed as a Node. |
| Nonce | A number generated after hashing a transaction is called Nonce |
| OCO | OCO stands for “One Cancels the Other Order” |
| One Cancels the Other Order | OCO or One Cancels the Other Order is when two conditional orders are placed. As one gets approved the other gets rejected automatically. This type of events in cryptocurrency happen during a limit order. |
| Oracles | All the blockchains work on storing data within the network. It’s only through an oracle program that the data is made accessible to the outside world or entities. The oracles are used on the Ethereum network. |
| Overbought | When a huge sum of a cryptocurrency is bought it gives rise to its price and predicts a price hike for a long time. For example, if Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk purchases a large sum of Chia coins, the price is going to rise. |
| Oversold | The sale of a crypto coin for a long period of time without any price hike is called Oversold in cryptography. The buyers will remain concerned about the value of it, in the long term. |
| Paper Wallet/Cold Storage | The tangible document where you store your private keys is called a paper wallet. The paper wallet is also called cold storage in cryptography. |
| P2P | P2P stands for “Peer to Peer” |
| Peer to Peer | When two or more computers are connected together to form a network is called P2P or peer-to-peer. |
| PND | PND stands for “Pump And Dump” |
| Pre-Sale | A period before an ICO goes public when private investors or community members are able to buy the cryptocurrency. |
| Private Key | A series of codes and letters generated to access a digital wallet. It is the password of your wallet that you can use to access your wallet for withdrawals or trade of cryptocurrencies. Private keys are case-sensitive that require security |
| Proof of Authority (PoA) | The consensus mechanism to deliver fastest transactions through a consensus algorithm is called PoA or proof of authority. It is opposite of Proof of Work that validates transactions through multiple Nodes, PoA requires specific Nodes to validate transactions. The most common example is VeChain that uses PoA |
| Proof of Stake (PoS) | Another alternative to proof of work, this caps the reward given to miners for providing their computational power to the network at that miner’s investment in the cryptocurrency. So if a miner holds three coins, they can only earn three coins. The system encourages miners to stick with a certain blockchain rather than converting their rewards to an alternate cryptocurrency. |
| Proof of Work (PoW) | The cryptocurrency miners show proof of work by donating their computing power to the Blockchain network and approve transactions. This is called Proof of Work. While hashing a transaction an identity gets added before hashing any block that proves that the effort has been made. |
| Protocols, Blockchain Network | A set of coded principles that permits data across a blockchain network. |
| Public blockchain | When a blockchain is made public for anyone to access it is called a Public Blockchain. |
| Public Key | A public key is a series of numbers used to receive cryptocurrency payments also called a wallet address. |
| Pump, Cryptocurrency | The increase in value of a cryptocurrency is termed as Pump. |
| Pump and Dump | The practice of buying a large sum of a cryptocurrency and then luring common people into buying it through ads or influencers, then selling once the price rises is called Pump and Dump. The pump and dump schemes in the crypto world are considered scams. |
| REKT, Cryptocurrency | REKT stands for “wrecked” in cryptography. A terrible loss is termed as REKT. |
| Ring Signature in Cryptography | A verifiable digital signature that allows any one from a group of approved Nodes or users to verify a transaction. This whole group has the keys which validates that authentication to do so. |
| RSI | RSI stands for “Relative Strength Index”. |
| Satoshi Nakamoto | A fake name used by the Bitcoin developers to name BTC after it. |
| SATS | SATS stands for Satoshi Nakamoto, a dummy name used by the Bitcoin developers to create it. It is the smallest unit of BTC i-e 0.00000001 BTC. |
| Scrypt | Scrypt is an algorithm designed to develop the strongest crypto keys. It is so slow to perform that it requires a huge RAM power for hashing. It was designed by Colin Percival to generate keys. |
| Seed | The phrases or the origin point where the wallet IDs are generated from. It’s the genesis for wallets. They are the series of mnemonic codes etc. so that when someone loses the wallet address he gets the wallet back. |
| SEGWIT | SEGWIT stands for “Segregated Witness” |
| Segregated Witness | An event on the Blockchain network when the digital signature details are segregated from the transaction details. As a result more information about the transactions gets stored on a single block and improves the processing on the overall network. |
| Selfish Mining, Cryptocurrency | An event in cryptocurrency mining when a miner finds a new block but does not want to share those details with the rest of the network is called selfish mining. It is termed as selfish because the rest of the network or miners keep burning their resources on the old block while the selfish miner is getting a streak against them. |
| Sell Wall | Sell Wall is an event in the cryptocurrency when a certain value has been achieved and the large limit order has become effective. It can bar the cryptocurrency from rising more than that to keep the market stable. |
| SHA-256 | It is the hashing algorithm name used by Bitcoin and is used by many other altcoins. |
| Sharding Blockchain | The method of breaking the blockchain records so that each Node does not require the whole copy of that history. It sounds weird to some people but actually is a very healthy practice because if the blockchain network grows larger and every full Node requires the whole blockchain history the network becomes extremely slow. |
| Shit Coin | All those altcoins created just for fun or scam people with no future value are termed as shit coins. |
| Short Cryptocurrency | The crypto investors borrow a certain amount of crypto coins and sell at the current market value. As soon as these coins’ market value drops they rebuy them at much lower price to repay them and also make a lot of profit. |
| Smart Contracts in Cryptocurrency | A smart contract is a program required to automate the agreement events so that a fast process can save a lot of time and energy without involving a third party. It is stored on a blockchain and runs successfully if all the predefined conditions are met. |
| Soft Fork | A fork is when a blockchain undergoes a divergence and previous valid transactions become void. While a soft fork considers transactions still valid while running the old protocol. |
| Software Wallet | A wallet that is stored on your hard drive which allows the private keys to store in the software files. Only the owner can use it to send/receive cryptocurrency. |
| Solidity | The Ethereum blockchain is developed with Solidity, a programming language which is more like JavaScript. You can create smart contracts with it and export the data as bytecode. The EVM uses it to perform all the Ethereum functions. |
| TA | TA stands for “Technical Analysis” |
| Technical Analysis | Technical Analysis is a term used to describe the deep analysis of a cryptocurrency while looking at its data and previous performance to predict its future performance. |
| Test Net | All the new protocol or any updates to a cryptocurrency are tested on Test Net to keep the value associated with it unaffected. Test Net is a test platform for crypto developers. |
| Timestamp in Cryptography | The time when a transaction or an event log took place is called Timestamp in cryptography. |
| Token | A crypto coin is built on a new blockchain while a token is developed on an existing blockchain. They use the existing blockchain and often created to serve a purpose. Litecoin and Shiba Inu are token currencies. |
| Tokenless Ledger | A distributed crypto ledger which does not require a native coin to operate in. |
| TOR | TOR stands for “Terms of Reference”. |
| Transaction | The value of cryptocurrency moved from one entity to another on a blockchain network. |
| Transaction Fee | The miners or the coin exchange receive a small portion of the fee for verifying transactions depending on the severity of difficulty over the whole network capability on a specific time. |
| Unconfirmed | When a transaction is not added to the blockchain but is proposed its status remains unconfirmed till it’s not confirmed by the blockchain which checks there is no other transaction pending for the same coin. |
| Unspent Transaction Output | The crypto amount is considered ‘unspent transaction output’ and is stored in a blockchain which is sent to an organization only other than anywhere else. |
| UTXO | Acronym for “Unspent Transaction Output”. |
| Volatility | The frequent changes in the price of a cryptocurrency is termed as volatility. All the crypto currencies experience frequent volatility as compared to other properties. |
| Wallet, Crypto | A unique address code is allotted to each blockchain participant a miner or a trader where he can receive/send funds. The wallet address comes with a set of numbers related to private keys that are about the ownership and the balance itself. |
| Whale | An investor who purchases hefty amounts of crypto coins to manipulate the market for profits is known as Whale |
| Whitelist | The whitelist contains details about the parties involved in purchasing cryptocurrency under pre-sale conditions before an ICO takes place. |
| White Paper | All cryptocurrencies are explained through White Papers. They define the purpose of the cryptocurrency, core information about its values, purpose and plans to succeed in future. This way everybody including the investors get motivated to invest in it. |
| Zero Confirmation Transaction | The phrase used to define unconfirmed transactions |
