Cryptocurrency Terms

What is ATH (all time high)?

The highest price an asset, Bitcoin’s ATH, can reach is $ 19,800 (at the time of this writing). The ATH was reached on December 26, 2017. The opposite of ATH is ATL, an all-time low.

What are alternative coins (altcoins)?

In addition to the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, there are thousands of other digital cryptocurrencies that are also based on blockchain technology.

Each coin brings its uniqueness and innovation. The vast majority of altcoins are not recognized and have a relatively low daily trading volume and market capitalization. However, there are several examples of alternative coins like Ethereum and Ripple with adequate liquidity and trading against FIAT pairs. Over the years, of the thousands of altcoins, many have bled out of their value and simply vanished.

Who is a Bitcoin maximalist?

Such a person only and emphatically believes in Bitcoin. Usually the maximalist regards the other altcoins as unworthy and unnecessary or as “shitcoins”.

What is a block reward?

The compensation miners get when they successfully validate new transactions and record them on the blockchain.

What is blockchain?

Blockchain can be described as a huge information file that lists all the transactions that have ever been made. Blockchain is the heart of the Bitcoin network and acts as a kind of ledger.

What is a Central Crypto Exchange (CEX)?

A crypto exchange is an online trading platform on which cryptocurrencies and FIAT money can be traded. Central means that the exchange is operated by a specific entity that retains full control over it.

Most crypto exchanges only allow crypto to crypto trading. However, the larger ones also allow Crypto-to-FIAT trading. The most popular exchanges are Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, and BitFinex.

What is a DAO?

A DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, is an organization without central government that is usually run by shareholders and has transparent rules that are encoded in a computer program.

The famous DAO hack: In 2016, a hacker found a hole in the coding and used it to drain Ethereum. In just a few hours, over 3.6 million ETH were stolen, which was $ 70 million at the time. In response, ETH fell over 30% in just one day.

What are dApps?

dApps or decentralized applications are applications based on blockchain technology without a central operating authority.

What is DEX?

A DEX or decentralized exchange is an exchange that operates without a central authority – no company operates it. Some of the advantages of DEX over CEX reside in its security level – they’re harder to break, as are the regulations.

What is DeFi?

DeFi or Decentralized Finance is a new currency system built on public blockchains without the involvement of a centralized institution

What is a digital address?

A sequence of 27 to 34 letters and numbers. Each address is unique. Here is an example of a digital address: 135sti2R9ZooiGrFFRJxYGeDvF5Uvjj7JK.

Digital addresses represent wallets for cryptocurrencies. To send cryptocurrencies or funds, we need to use the recipient’s digital address.

What is a digital wallet?

A digital wallet is an application installed on a local computer (PC), mobile app, or remote server that makes it easy to store digital currency. Most digital wallets are used to store Bitcoin. A digital wallet uses both public addresses and private keys to hold its own money.

The safest digital wallets are those made of cooling paper or hardware wallets like Trezor and Ledger. More information on digital wallets.

What is FIAT?

Any currency supported by the state or country. Basically, it is all types of coins that we know and use on a daily basis (USD, Euro, CAD, etc.).

What is FOMO?

FOMO stands for “Fear Of Missing Out”, a term that describes the fear of not taking a profitable trading position.

What is FUD?

FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. It conveys bad news about crypto, which is constantly being circulated by the traditional press and aimed at mass panic. FUD can refer to Bitcoin regulatory issues, rumors of the ban on crypto, and more.

What is HODL?

HODL is a disorder of the English word “hold”. Hodlers believe in Bitcoin and hold onto it anytime, regardless of its price, in the long term, even forever. HODL was first used during the Crypto Bubble Pop in December 2013.

What is Halting?

A predetermined process that reduces half the rewards miners get for recording and reviewing transactions with the new blocks added to the blockchain. Bitcoin halving takes place every four years. The next halving will take place in summer 2020.

What is ICO?

An Initial Coin Offering is a fundraising method that crypto projects use to raise capital from the public. In contrast to traditional fundraising campaigns, the ICO investors are only eligible for the tokens and are not eligible for voting shareholders.

The ICO bubble lasted from October 2017 to March 2018; There have been hundreds of successful ICO fundraisers each of those months. The vast majority of these ICOs were of the ERC-20 type, based on the Ethereum blockchain.

Investing in ICOs are considered very risky. Many ICOs turned into crypto scams, completely erasing investors’ funds. The number of ICOs had dropped sharply in 2018, and in January 2019 Binance was the first exchange to conduct an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO).

What is IEO?

IEO stands for Initial Exchange Offering, a form of fundraising for the creation of a new token that is carried out by a crypto exchange.

The first IEO was GIFTO, which raised $ 30 million on Binance Exchange in 2018. IEOs became popular in the first half of 2019, shortly after the number of ICOs dropped dramatically.

Like ICOs, IEOs are considered a high-risk form of investment.

What is KYC?

KYC stands for “Know Your Customer”. This is a process by which regulations require users to provide identity information. This includes a passport scan, proof of address, and online webcam verification, among other things.

What is market capitalization?

Market capitalization, or capitalization, represents the current price of a single cryptocurrency multiplied by the total number of coins in the market (the supply in circulation). Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency with the highest market capitalization.

What is mining Who are the miners?

When mining, new bitcoins are created. Mining is done by miners who solve complicated equations. The miner who solves the fastest receives the reward (fee) for the transaction and adds it to the block.

On average, every 10 minutes, a new block is added to the gigantic distributed public ledger of pre-existing transactions, which is the blockchain.

Bitcoin mining could be done with a personal computer (PC) in the early years of cryptocurrency. Today, the mining effort is split between giant companies like China-based Bitmain.

Mining is not only limited to Bitcoin, but also to PoW (Proof-Of-Work) cryptocurrencies.

What is Bitcoin to the moon?

Moon is a term used to describe an asset that has increased in price significantly, as in “Bitcoin to the Moon!”

What is Proof-of-Stake (PoS)?

This consensus algorithm allows users to decide who will validate the next block based on the number of coins they have. The token holders lock these tokens to secure the network and receive rewards for doing so.

What is Proof-of-Work (PoW)?

The original consensus algorithm of the blockchain network. The algorithm is used to confirm transactions and add new blocks to the chain. Miners compete with each other for rewards for confirming transactions.

What is a private key? What are seeds?

Each public or digital address has a unique private key that is required to access the funds. Here is an example of a private key: 6AkL0TJAuKcucHGqWVfUIa4g1haE0ilcm7eWUDo..fd + PpzdCJf1s4WdsK.
A private key is usually represented more neatly by a starting phrase. The seed is a combination of 12 or 24 words.

What is Pump & Dump?

P&D artificially increases the price of an asset (“pump”) over a short period of time before it is sold even faster in bulk (“dump”) while the value before the pump falls to the price level.

The lower the trading volume and liquidity, the easier it is to pump and toss a coin. Hence, lower cap cryptocurrencies are usually chosen for P&D.

What is a satoshi?

Satoshi is the cent unit of Bitcoin. One satoshi is 0.00000001 of one bitcoin. It is named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin.

The reason for 8 decimal places is that Satoshi Nakamoto had planned to use Bitcoin as everyday currency, even if Bitcoin hits the price of over a million USD.

What is a shitcoin?

Shitcoin is a nickname for an altcoin with no working product and no actual value. Shitcoins are primarily used by bitcoin maximalists to describe most, if not all, altcoins except bitcoin.

What is total market capitalization?

Total market capitalization, or capitalization, is the combined market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies.

Who is a Bitcoin whale?

A person or organization that owns such a large amount of Bitcoin that they can single-handedly influence the price of Bitcoin by buying or selling in bulk.

What is whitepaper?

Whitepaper (or WP) is an authoritative report or guide designed to educate readers about the specifications of a newly created crypto project. This corresponds to a business plan in traditional finance. The WP is written by the project team and usually contains chapters that discuss the problem solved, the token, the team and the technical aspects of the project.