Coinscipher.com’s full crypto terms and their definition
Glossary
| Term | Definition |
| Address | A code used to send, receive, or store cryptocurrency. |
| Altcoin | Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. |
| Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) | Hardware used specifically for mining certain cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin. |
| Airdrop | A marketing campaign that distributes a specific cryptocurrency or token to an individual’s digital wallet, usually for free. |
| All-Time High (ATH) | Used to describe the highest price point that a particular cryptocurrency has achieved. |
| Bear Market | A market condition where the prices of cryptocurrencies are falling, encouraging selling. |
| Bitcoin | The first decentralized cryptocurrency, and currently the largest by market cap. |
| Blockchain | A type of distributed ledger that stores list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. |
| Bull Market | A market condition where the prices of cryptocurrencies are rising, encouraging buying. |
| Cold Storage | A method of storing cryptocurrencies offline to prevent hacking attempts. |
| Cryptocurrency | A type of digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. |
| Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) | An organization that is run by rules encoded in smart contracts on the blockchain. |
| Decentralized Application (Dapp) | An application that runs on a decentralized network, eliminating a central point of control. |
| Decentralized Finance (DeFi) | The use of blockchain technologies to replicate and improve upon traditional financial systems. |
| ERC-20 | A standard for creating tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. |
| Ethereum | An open-source, blockchain-based platform that enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications. It is also the name of a cryptocurrency (Ether) that fuels the Ethereum network. |
| Exchange | A platform used to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, such as other digital currencies or traditional fiat currencies. |
| Fiat | Traditional government-issued currency, such as USD, EUR, or JPY. |
| Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) | The urge to buy when the price of a cryptocurrency starts increasing rapidly. |
| Fork | A situation where a blockchain splits into two separate chains. |
| Gas | A measure of computational effort in Ethereum. |
| Halving | An event where the reward for mining new blocks is halved. |
| Hash | A cryptographic function that converts an input (or ‘message’) into a fixed-size string of bytes. |
| HODL | A term derived from a misspelling of “hold” that refers to buy-and-hold strategies in the context of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. |
| Hot Wallet | A wallet that is connected to the internet and capable of making immediate transactions. |
| Initial Coin Offering (ICO) | A type of crowd-funding using cryptocurrencies. |
| Immutable | A property of the blockchain, where data once written cannot be changed or removed. |
| Interoperability | The ability of different blockchain protocols to work and interact with each other. |
| Joy Of Missing Out (JOMO) | The pleasure derived from spending time ‘offline’ or from not following the herd to buy an asset that is increasing in price. |
| Know Your Customer (KYC) | A process of verifying the identity of customers by businesses. |
| Leverage | Using debt to amplify the potential returns of an investment. In cryptocurrency trading, it means using borrowed capital to open a trading position. |
| Lightning Network | A “second layer” payment protocol that operates on top of a blockchain (mostly Bitcoin). |
| Mining | The process of validating new transactions and recording them on the global ledger (blockchain). |
| Node | A computer that participatesin a blockchain network. Nodes contribute to the network’s functionality by validating and relaying transactions while maintaining a copy of the full blockchain. |
| Oracles | Third-party services that feed smart contracts with external information. They serve as bridges between blockchains and the outside world. |
| Peer-to-Peer (P2P) | A decentralized form of interaction between parties in a market. In a P2P network, two parties interact directly with each other. |
| Private Key | A cryptographic key that is used to access a user’s cryptocurrency. |
| Public Key | A cryptographic code that allows users to receive cryptocurrencies into their accounts. |
| Quantum Computing | A type of computation that harnesses the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks. It could potentially break the cryptographic security that underpins blockchain technology. |
| Rekt | A term borrowed from gaming that refers to someone suffering a severe financial loss. |
| Satoshi Nakamoto | The name used by the person or group of people who created Bitcoin. |
| Smart Contract | A self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement directly written into lines of code. |
| Token | In the context of blockchain, a token is a digital identity for something that can be owned. |
| Wallet | A digital tool that allows users to make electronic transactions. |
| Whale | An individual or organization that holds a large amount of a cryptocurrency. |
| Yield Farming | A practice in DeFi that involves lending out cryptocurrencies in exchange for interest and fees. |
| Zero-Knowledge Proof | A cryptographic technique which allows one party (the prover) to prove to another party (the verifier) that they know a value x, without conveying any information apart from the fact that they know the value x. |
| Block Reward | The reward given to a miner after successfully hashing (or solving) a transaction block. |
| Consensus Mechanism | The method by which a blockchain network reaches agreement on the state of the ledger. Examples include Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS). |
| Cryptographic Hash Function | A function used in the encryption process that converts an input into a string of characters. |
| Decentralization | The process of distributing or dispersing functions, powers, people or things away from a central location or authority. |
| Digital Signature | A mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of a digital message or document. In cryptocurrencies, it’s used to provide proof of ownership. |
| Double Spending | The risk that a digital currency can be spent twice. |
| Dust Transactions | In the context of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, dust refers to a very small amount of coins or tokens. |
| Genesis Block | The first block in any blockchain. |
| Hash Rate | The speed at which a compute is completing an operation in the Bitcoin code. |
| Layer 2 Solutions | Technologies or systems designed to help scale your blockchain application by handling transactions off the main Ethereum chain (layer 1). |
| Mempool | A mechanism used by a blockchain node to hold the transactions that are waiting to be picked up by miners. |
| Nonce | A nonce (“number only used once”) in a blockchain context is a number added to a hashed block, that, when rehashed, meets the difficulty level restrictions. |
| Pump and Dump | A fraudulent practice where the price of a cryptocurrency is artificially inflated (“pumped”) to attract unsuspecting buyers, after which the price is suddenly allowed to fall (“dumped”). |
| Sharding | A method used to increase the number of transactions a blockchain can process at one time. |
| SegWit (Segregated Witness) | The process where the block size limit on a blockchain is increased by removing signature data from Bitcoin transactions. |
| Tx | Short for transaction. |
| UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) | A specific output in a transaction that the user can spend. |
| Validator | In Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains, validators are nodes that are chosen to create a new block in the network. |
| Volatility | Refers to the price changes of a financial asset, such as a cryptocurrency, over time. |
| Watchlist | A feature on many trading platforms that allows users to monitor selected cryptocurrencies. |
| XBT | An abbreviation for Bitcoin, commonly used on financial trading platforms. |
| 51% Attack | A potential attack on the network where a single entity or group gains control of the majority of the network’s mining power. |