Crypto glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms you’ll meet across our news and guides. Hover any highlighted word inside an article to see its meaning without losing your place.
Airdrop
A distribution of free tokens to wallets, often to reward early users or bootstrap a community.
All-time high (ATH)
The highest price an asset has ever reached.
Altcoin
Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin — short for "alternative coin".
Automated market maker (AMM)
A type of decentralized exchange that prices trades with a formula against a liquidity pool instead of matching buyers and sellers in an order book.
Bear market
A sustained period of falling prices and pessimism.
Bitcoin
The first and largest cryptocurrency (BTC), launched in 2009 as a peer-to-peer digital money secured by proof-of-work mining.
Bitcoin dominance
Bitcoin share of the total crypto market capitalization — a quick read on how concentrated the market is in BTC versus altcoins.
Bitcoin halving
A scheduled event (roughly every four years) that cuts the new bitcoin issued to miners in half, slowing the supply growth.
Blockchain
A shared, append-only ledger maintained across many computers, where transactions are grouped into linked "blocks" that are very hard to alter after the fact.
Bridge
A tool that moves tokens or data between two different blockchains; bridges have historically been a common target for large hacks.
Bull market
A sustained period of rising prices and optimism.
Candlestick
A chart symbol showing an asset’s open, high, low and close over a time period — the basic building block of price charts.
CBDC
Central Bank Digital Currency — a digital form of national money issued and controlled by a central bank (not a cryptocurrency).
Centralized exchange (CEX)
A company-run platform (e.g. Coinbase, Binance) where you buy and sell crypto; it custodies your funds and matches orders for you.
Circulating supply
The number of tokens currently available and trading in the market, excluding locked, reserved or unissued tokens.
Cold wallet
A wallet kept offline (often a hardware device), making keys far harder for online attackers to steal.
DAO
Decentralized Autonomous Organization — a group that coordinates and votes on decisions through smart contracts and tokens rather than a traditional company.
DApp
Decentralized application — software that runs on a blockchain through smart contracts instead of being hosted on a single company server.
Decentralized exchange (DEX)
A trading platform that swaps tokens directly via smart contracts, with no company holding your funds (e.g. Uniswap).
DeFi
Decentralized Finance — financial services (lending, trading, earning yield) run by smart contracts instead of banks or brokers.
Derivatives
Contracts whose value is based on the price of an underlying asset (for example futures or options), used to speculate or hedge without holding the asset itself.
Dollar-cost averaging (DCA)
Investing a fixed amount at regular intervals regardless of price, to smooth out the effect of volatility over time.
Ethereum
A programmable blockchain (ETH) that runs smart contracts, powering most DeFi, NFTs and tokens.
Fear & Greed Index
A 0 to 100 gauge of overall market sentiment, from extreme fear to extreme greed, based on signals like volatility and momentum.
Fiat currency
Government-issued money like the US dollar or euro, not backed by a commodity.
FOMO
Fear Of Missing Out — the urge to buy because a price is rising fast, often leading to buying near the top.
Fork
A change to the rules of a blockchain. A soft fork stays backward-compatible; a hard fork splits the chain and can create a new coin.
FUD
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt — negative narratives (true or not) that can drive people to sell.
Fully diluted valuation (FDV)
What a project market cap would be if every token that will ever exist were already in circulation.
Gas fees
The fee paid to process a transaction on a blockchain like Ethereum; it rises and falls with network demand.
HODL
Crypto slang for holding an asset long-term through ups and downs instead of trading it (from a misspelled "hold").
Hot wallet
A crypto wallet that stays connected to the internet (app, exchange or browser wallets) — convenient for spending but more exposed to hacks than cold storage.
ICO
Initial Coin Offering — an early fundraising method where a project sells new tokens to the public, often before any product exists.
Impermanent loss
The paper loss a liquidity provider can face when the pooled token prices move apart, compared with simply holding them.
KYC
Know Your Customer — identity checks that regulated exchanges require before you can trade.
Layer 2
A network built on top of a base blockchain (like Ethereum) to make transactions faster and cheaper while inheriting its security.
Leverage
Borrowing to trade a position larger than your own funds, which magnifies both gains and losses.
Liquidation
When a leveraged position is force-closed because losses have eaten through the trader’s collateral.
Liquidity
How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price much. Deep liquidity means large trades cause little slippage.
Liquidity pool
A shared pot of two or more tokens that traders swap against on a decentralized exchange; suppliers earn a share of the trading fees.
Market capitalization
The total value of a coin’s circulating supply: current price multiplied by the number of coins in circulation.
Market cycle
The repeating pattern of accumulation, rising prices, peak, decline and bottoming that markets tend to move through.
Memecoin
A token driven mostly by internet culture and hype rather than technology or fundamentals; typically very volatile.
Mining
Using computing power to validate transactions and secure a proof-of-work blockchain, in exchange for newly issued coins and fees.
NFT
Non-Fungible Token — a unique, one-of-a-kind token used to represent ownership of a specific item such as art or collectibles.
Node
A computer that runs a blockchain and keeps a full copy of the ledger, helping relay and verify transactions.
Oracle
A service that feeds real-world data such as prices into a blockchain so smart contracts can act on information they cannot fetch themselves.
Order book
The live list of buy and sell orders for an asset on an exchange, showing the prices and sizes people are willing to trade at.
Private key
The secret code that proves ownership of crypto and authorizes spending it. Anyone with the private key controls the funds.
Proof of stake
A consensus method where validators lock up (stake) coins for the right to add blocks, using far less energy than mining.
Proof of work
A consensus method where computers compete to solve hard puzzles to add blocks — secure but energy-intensive (used by Bitcoin).
Rug pull
A scam where the team behind a project abandons it and runs off with investor funds, often by draining liquidity.
Seed phrase
A list of 12–24 words that can restore an entire wallet. Whoever has it controls the funds, so it must be kept offline and private.
Self-custody
Holding your own private keys (e.g. in a personal wallet) instead of trusting an exchange or company to hold your crypto for you.
Slippage
The difference between the price you expect on a trade and the price you actually get, common in fast-moving or low-liquidity markets.
Smart contract
Self-executing code on a blockchain that automatically runs its rules when conditions are met, with no middleman.
Spot trading
Buying or selling the actual asset for immediate delivery at the current price — unlike derivatives such as futures.
Stablecoin
A token designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged 1:1 to a currency like the US dollar (e.g. USDT, USDC).
Staking
Locking up coins to help secure a proof-of-stake network, typically earning rewards in return.
Stop-loss
An order that automatically sells once the price falls to a set level, used to cap a potential loss.
Token
A digital asset created on top of an existing blockchain (e.g. ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum), as opposed to a network’s own native coin.
Token burn
Permanently removing tokens from circulation by sending them to an unusable address, often to reduce supply.
Tokenomics
The economics of a token: its supply, how new units are created or burned, how it is distributed, and what it is used for.
Total value locked (TVL)
The total value of crypto deposited in a DeFi protocol — a rough gauge of how much it is being used.
Validator
A participant in a proof-of-stake network that stakes coins to propose and confirm blocks, earning rewards and risking penalties for misbehavior.
Volatility
How sharply and quickly a price moves up and down. Crypto is known for high volatility.
Wallet
Software or hardware that stores the private keys used to access and move your crypto. The wallet holds keys, not the coins themselves.
Whale
An individual or entity holding a very large amount of a coin, big enough that their trades can move the market.
Yield farming
Moving crypto between DeFi protocols to earn rewards, interest or fees — often higher risk, and returns can change quickly.
Educational information only — nothing here is financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile; do your own research.