A

Address – Usually refering to the address of your crypto currency wallet or the place on the exchange where you should send your coins to trade them. It looks like a string of random numbers and letters.

Airdrop – A give away of coins often used by startups to distribute their tokens

Algorithm – In crypto world, the underlying system to solve a problem like in mining

ATH – Short for All-Time-High, refering to the highest price of a coin ever reached up to this point

Altcoin – Every coin beside Bitcoin

AML – Short for Anti-Money Laundering – Necessary to comply with regulations

ASIC devise – Application specific intergrated circuit – use for mining coins

Atomic Swap – An exchange of two different coins without an intermediary like an exchange

Attack – There are many attacks possible, like 51% attack where a user holds at least 51% of a certain coins overall supply and is therefore capable of manipulating the blockchain

B

Bear market – A market that shows a negative trend. A bearish trader is therefore someone who bets on falling prices

Bull market – A market that shows a positive trend. A bullish trader is therefore someone who bets on raising prices

Bid-Ask Spread – The difference in buy and sell price

Bitcoin – The first ever crypto currency coin invented by Satoshi Nakamoto (not Craig Wright) in a whitepaper from 2008.

Block – Single unit of a blockchain. It contains data of transactions in an encrypted manner

Blockchain – The decentralized ledger that contains the blocks in a chronological order

BUIDL – Coming from HODL – a term that baically says to stay down and build your product (like for startups)

C

Centralized – A method of control from one single point of angle within a system

Coin – A digital asset that can be exchanged for other coins or fiat money

Cryptocurrency – A digital currency build as a manner of exchange of value

Cryptography – The system used to decentralize and decrypt information

Custody – Means to hold an asset for a client, or ownership of the said assets

D

Decentralized -An asset or a system that can not be altered from one single point

DAPP – Distributed Application – An application running on multiple places instead of a single one

DAO – Distributed Autonomous Organization – An organization that is decentralized with coded rules, laying on various places

Decentralized Exchange – Or DEX, is a crypto exchange that do not hold custody of their clients coins. User trade directly from their wallets

Decentralized Finance – Or DeFi are fintech systems that are build in a decentralized manner on top of blockchain networks

Decryption – The act of making data unintelligible

DYOR – Short for: Do your own Research

Double Spending – A coin that is spended twice usually happens in an 51% attack

E

Ethereum – After Bitcoin maybe the most important blockchain invention. It made blockchain technology usable outside the fintech space

ERC-20 standard – ERC stands for Ethereum request for Comment and the ERC20 has become the technical standard for most altcoins available today

ERC 721 standard – The standard for non-fungible tokens used for e.g. pieces of art

Exchange – A place where you can trade your coins

F

FATF – Short for Finance Action Task Force – Is an intergovernmental organisation to combat global money laundering and terrorist financing

FOMO – Short for Fear Of Missing Out – The fear of missing a good opportunity to invest in a digital asset

FUD – Short for Fear Uncertainty Despair – Usually refered to a marketing strategy like creating artificial scarcity

Fiat money – Money that a government defined as local tender

Forex market – The market for “FOreign currency EXchange” – the fiat money trading place (NOT for crypto currencies!)

G

Gas – The underlying price system for transactions on the Ethereum blockchain

Gas Limit – The maximum price of Gas users are willing to pay for a transaction

Genesis Block – The very first block of a blockchain, also refered to Block 0 or Block 1

Gwei – Refers to a small denomination of the etherium coin. It´s used as a measure for the Gas prices

H

HODL – Mispronounced for HOLD – used to tell people to do not sell their coins at a given moment

I

ICO – Initial Coin Offering – A fundraising method using a startups native coin to get sold on the market

IEO – Initial Exchange Offering – A fundraising method where the startups native coin got sold first on an exchange

IPO – Initial Public Offering – When a company issues shares on an asset exchange the first time

Interoperability – Possibility for cross-blockchain communication. Most famously Polkadot project

IPFS – InterPlantery File System – An open source project for to store data immutable on the blockchain

K

KYC – Short for Know Your Customer – Another regulatory issue that needs to be addressed by Centralized Crypto Exchanges – Data of the customer needs to be shared with the Exchange

L

Latency – Time between submitting an order and fulfillment

Ledger – A “book” where financial transactions get tracked and recorded

Lightning Network – A second layer on top of a blockchain enablinig faster transactions

Liquidity – Market depth of an asset. How easy is it to buy and sell an asset

M

Market Order – Buy or Sell order at the prive at this very moment

Maximum Supply – Number of coins in circulation of a given blockchain – e.g. Bitcoin 21Million BTC

Mining – Verification of transactions on a blockchain. Miners get rewards for the verifications

Mining Farm – Conglomerate of crypto miners for the common good of making more profit

Moon – or to moon, a term used to describe a strong upwards market so the price will reach the moon

N

Node – A participant of the blockchain network that supports the security and integrity of the system

Non-fungible Token – A token that is unique and can be used e.g. to tokenize pieces of art or memorabilia

O

OECD – Short for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – An international organisation to foster worlds economy and develop global regulations and standards

Off-chain – Mostly used in the context of transaction that happen outside the blockchain but get integrated later in time

P

Paper Wallet – A piece of physical paper that contains the address of the owners wallets keys

Peer to Peer or (P2P) – A direct connection between 2 computers or wallets

Phishing – A method of criminal folks trying to obtain the users data and therefore unauthorized access to their account

Private Key / Public Key – Both are necessary to estabkish a save and encrypted connection between two addresses

PoS – Short for “Proof of Stake”, a method used e.g. by the Ethereum blockchain to quickly validate transactions

PoW – Short for Proof of Work, a method used e.g. by the Bitcoin blockchain which is slower than PoS but with the same useage of validating transactions

R

Ransom Ware – A malicious code that ruins the computers data from the distance if the victim doesn´t pay a ransom

S

Satoshi Nakamoto – Enigmatic creator of Bitcoin, not Craig Wright . Person behind it is unknown till today

Satoshi – Is the smallest unit of a Bitcoin, 1 Satoshi is equal to 0,000000001 Bitcoin

SAFU – Secure Asset Fund for Users – Term invented by CZ from Binance to state that the users money is safe

SEC – Short for Security and Exchange commission – Is a (supposedly) independent organisation in the US that is responsible for trade and security regulation and laws

SegWit – Short for Segregated Witness, a method where transaction signatures get seperated from the actual Bitcoin transaction. Used to fit more transactions into one block

Smart Contract – Think of it as a piece of executable code, a tiny software triggered by an event in the blockchain

StableCoin – A coin pegged to a stable value like a fiat currency, e.g. 1Tehter = 1 USD

Staking – Process of gathering coins to have a higher chance to validate blocks and receive rewards in return. Often done in Staking Pools

T

Token – Not to be confused with coins, are digital units on a blockchain. They can hold value or not

Total Supply – Shows the number of available tokens of a given Blockchain project, as with Bitcoin the total supply is limited to 21 Million coins

TPS – Short for Transactions per Second, a measurement of speed of a blockchain or an exchange

V

Volatility – How fast and reliably can an asset be traded

Volume – Amount of traded assets on an exchange

W

Wallet – A place where to store your coins.

Wei – Smallest denomination in Ethereum, usually used in Gwei when it comes to transaction fee calculations

Wale – A person or institution that holds a huge number of a specific coin.

Z

Zero Knowledge Proofs – A zero-knowledge proof, sometimes also referred to as a ZK protocol is a verification method. Here more details

Zk-Snark – Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge” – an approach to zero knowledge proofs

A short video explaining terms pretty nicely