Glossary

Core crypto and trading terms in one place, defined in plain language.

69 terms A–Z

A

Address: A unique string of characters that acts like an account number on a blockchain — where you send and receive crypto. Anyone can see an address's transaction history, but not who owns it.
Airdrop: A free distribution of tokens to a group of wallet addresses, often used by new projects to build early awareness or reward existing users of a related protocol.
All-Time High (ATH): The highest price an asset has ever reached. Often used as a reference point for how far a price has pulled back from its peak.
Altcoin: Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Short for "alternative coin" — Ethereum, Solana, and thousands of others all fall under this label.

B

Bear market: A sustained period of falling prices and pessimistic sentiment across the market.
Blockchain: A public, shared ledger of transactions maintained by a network of computers rather than a single company — the underlying technology behind every cryptocurrency.
Bridge: A tool that moves tokens or data from one blockchain to another, since most blockchains can't natively talk to each other.
Bull market: A sustained period of rising prices and optimistic sentiment across the market.

C

CEX (Centralized Exchange): A company-run platform (like the exchanges reviewed on this site) where you trade crypto through a central order book, usually after completing identity verification.
Circulating supply: The number of coins or tokens of a given asset that are currently in public hands and actively tradable, as opposed to locked, reserved, or not yet issued.
Cold wallet: A wallet that keeps private keys completely offline, usually on a dedicated hardware device — see our wallets guide for the full hot vs cold breakdown.
Custodial: Describes a service (like an exchange account) where a third party holds your private keys on your behalf, rather than you controlling them directly.

D

DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging): Investing a fixed amount at regular intervals regardless of price, to smooth out the impact of volatility. See our full DCA guide.
DeFi (Decentralized Finance): Financial applications — lending, trading, borrowing — built on blockchains and run by code (smart contracts) instead of a bank or company.
DEX (Decentralized Exchange): A trading platform that runs on smart contracts and lets you trade directly from your own wallet, without a company holding your funds.
Diamond hands: Slang for holding onto an asset through significant price drops instead of selling in a panic. The opposite of "paper hands."

E

EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine): The software environment that runs smart contracts on Ethereum and any other chain built to be compatible with it (Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and others).

F

Fear & Greed Index: A composite score (0–100) that summarizes overall market sentiment, from "extreme fear" to "extreme greed," based on volatility, momentum, and other signals.
Fiat: Government-issued currency — USD, EUR, and similar — as opposed to cryptocurrency.
FOMO: "Fear of missing out" — the impulse to buy into a rising asset because of anxiety about missing further gains, often leading to poorly timed entries.
FUD: "Fear, uncertainty and doubt" — negative or alarming information (sometimes accurate, sometimes not) spread about an asset or project.
Funding rate: A periodic payment between long and short traders in perpetual futures markets that keeps the contract price anchored to the spot price. See our funding rate guide.

G

Gas fee: The fee paid to a blockchain's network to process a transaction or execute a smart contract, most commonly discussed on Ethereum and EVM chains.
Gwei: A small denomination of ETH (one billionth of one ETH) used to price gas fees on Ethereum.

H

Hardware wallet: A physical device that stores private keys completely offline for maximum security. See our best wallets comparison.
Hodl: Crypto slang for holding an asset long-term rather than trading it — originally a misspelling of "hold" that stuck.
Hot wallet: Any wallet connected to the internet — a browser extension, mobile app, or exchange account. Convenient, but a more common target for phishing than cold storage.

K

KYC (Know Your Customer): The identity verification process exchanges use to confirm who you are, typically required by regulation. See our KYC vs no-KYC guide.

L

Leverage: Borrowed capital that lets a trader open a position larger than their own deposit, amplifying both potential gains and losses. See our leverage guide.
Limit order: An order to buy or sell at a specific price or better, which sits on the order book until it's filled (or cancelled) rather than executing immediately.
Liquidation price: The price at which a leveraged position is forcibly closed because losses have eaten through the trader's margin. See our liquidation price guide.
Liquidity: How easily an asset can be bought or sold without significantly moving its price. High liquidity means tighter spreads and less slippage.
Long position: A trade that profits if the asset's price goes up — the standard direction for a regular spot purchase, and one of two directions available in futures trading.

M

MACD: "Moving Average Convergence Divergence" — a momentum indicator used in technical analysis to spot potential trend changes. See our TA basics guide.
Maker fee: The (usually lower) fee charged when your order adds liquidity to the order book instead of filling immediately — for example, a limit order that waits to be matched.
Margin: The trader's own funds put up as collateral to open a leveraged position.
Market cap: An asset's price multiplied by its circulating supply — a rough measure of its total value relative to other assets.
Market order: An order to buy or sell immediately at the best currently available price, rather than waiting at a set price like a limit order.
Mempool: The waiting area of pending, unconfirmed transactions on a blockchain before they're picked up and included in a block.

N

NFT (Non-Fungible Token): A blockchain-based token representing ownership of a unique item — digital art, a collectible, or an in-game asset — as opposed to interchangeable tokens like a coin.
No-KYC exchange: An exchange that allows trading with little or no identity verification, usually with lower withdrawal limits. See our KYC vs no-KYC guide.
Node: A computer that participates in a blockchain network by storing a copy of the ledger and, depending on the network, validating transactions.

O

Order book: The live list of open buy and sell orders for an asset on an exchange, showing the prices and sizes traders are willing to transact at.

P

P2P (Peer-to-Peer): Trading directly between two users, often used as a deposit method where regular banking access is limited. See our deposit methods guide.
Perpetual futures: A futures contract with no expiry date, kept in line with the spot price through periodic funding rate payments. See our spot vs futures guide.
Private key: The secret code that proves ownership of a wallet and authorizes it to move funds. Anyone who has it controls the funds — never share it.
Public key: The cryptographic counterpart to a private key, used to generate a wallet address that others can safely send funds to.
Pump and dump: A scheme where a group artificially inflates an asset's price through coordinated buying and hype, then sells at the peak, leaving later buyers with the loss. See our scams guide.

R

Rug pull: A scam where a project's creators abandon it and drain its funds or liquidity, leaving investors with worthless tokens. See our scams guide.
RSI (Relative Strength Index): A momentum indicator, scored 0–100, used to gauge whether an asset may be overbought or oversold. See our TA basics guide.

S

Satoshi: The smallest unit of Bitcoin — one hundred millionth of a single BTC — named after Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Seed phrase: A set of 12–24 words that can restore a wallet's private keys on a new device. Whoever has it controls the wallet — store it offline, never digitally.
Short position: A trade that profits if the asset's price goes down — available in futures and margin trading, unlike a regular spot purchase.
Slippage: The difference between an order's expected price and the price it actually fills at, usually caused by low liquidity or a fast-moving market.
Smart contract: Self-executing code deployed on a blockchain that automatically carries out an agreement's terms when its conditions are met, without a middleman.
Spot trading: Buying or selling an asset for immediate delivery at the current market price — the simplest, non-leveraged form of trading. See our spot vs futures guide.
Stablecoin: A cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged 1:1 to a fiat currency like the US dollar.
Staking: Locking up crypto to help secure a blockchain network (or a related protocol) in exchange for rewards, common on proof-of-stake chains.
Support & resistance: Price levels where an asset has historically tended to stop falling (support) or stop rising (resistance). See our TA basics guide.
Swing trading: A trading style that holds positions for days to weeks to capture medium-term price moves, between fast day trading and long-term holding.

T

Taker fee: The (usually higher) fee charged when your order removes liquidity from the order book by filling immediately — for example, a market order.
TA (Technical Analysis): Evaluating an asset by studying price charts and indicators (like RSI and MACD) rather than its underlying fundamentals. See our TA basics guide.
Token: A unit of value issued on top of an existing blockchain (rather than having its own chain), often used broadly to mean any cryptocurrency.
TVL (Total Value Locked): The total value of assets deposited in a DeFi protocol — a common (though imperfect) measure of its size and adoption.

V

Volatility: How much and how quickly an asset's price moves. Crypto is generally far more volatile than traditional assets like stocks.
Volume: The total amount of an asset traded over a given period, often used as a signal of interest or liquidity behind a price move.

W

Wallet: Software or hardware that stores the private keys needed to access and move crypto — see our full wallets guide.
Whale: A person or entity holding a large enough amount of an asset that their trades can noticeably move its price.
Whitepaper: A project's foundational document explaining its technology, purpose, and tokenomics — usually the first thing to read before researching a new asset.