Crypto glossary

111 crypto terms in plain English. Where we have a full explainer or a live data page, the term links to it.

#

51% attack: An attack in which one party controls most of a blockchain's mining power or stake and uses it to reorder or reverse recent transactions. It is very expensive on large networks like bitcoin.

A

Address: A string of characters, derived from a public key, that identifies where crypto can be sent. Sharing an address is safe; sharing the private key behind it is not.
Airdrop: A free distribution of tokens to wallet holders or early users, often used to launch a token or reward early activity.
All-time high (ATH): The highest price an asset has ever traded at.
Altcoin: Any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin.
Altcoin season: A stretch when most large altcoins outperform bitcoin. Our altcoin season index measures it daily. See the data →
AML / KYC: Anti-money laundering and know your customer rules that require exchanges and other regulated firms to verify who their users are and monitor for illicit activity.
AMM (automated market maker): A decentralized exchange design where trades happen against pools of tokens priced by a formula rather than an order book. Uniswap popularized it.
APY / APR: Annual percentage yield includes compounding; annual percentage rate does not. Crypto yields are often quoted in APY, which makes them look higher.

B

Basis trade: Buying spot bitcoin or a spot ETF while shorting futures to earn the price gap between them, a popular strategy for hedge funds.
Bear market: A sustained period of falling prices, often defined as a drop of 20% or more from a peak.
Bitcoin dominance: Bitcoin's share of the total crypto market capitalization. Rising dominance usually means money is moving into bitcoin and out of altcoins. See the data →
Bitcoin ETF: An exchange-traded fund that holds bitcoin, letting investors buy exposure through a regular brokerage account. US spot bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024. Read the guide →
Block: A batch of transactions added to a blockchain at once. Bitcoin produces a block about every 10 minutes. See the data →
Block reward: The new coins a miner or validator earns for producing a block. Bitcoin's block reward halves every 210,000 blocks. See the data →
Blockchain: A shared, append-only ledger kept in sync across many computers, where each block of records is cryptographically linked to the one before it.
Bridge: Software that moves tokens or messages between blockchains. Bridges have been among the most frequently hacked parts of crypto.
Bull market: A sustained period of rising prices and optimism.
Burn: Permanently removing tokens from circulation by sending them to an address no one controls, which reduces supply.

C

CBDC: A central bank digital currency, a digital form of a country's money issued directly by its central bank.
CEX (centralized exchange): A crypto exchange run by a company that holds customer funds, such as Coinbase or Binance.
Circulating supply: The number of tokens currently available to trade, excluding locked, unvested or burned tokens.
Cold wallet: A wallet whose private keys are kept offline, such as a hardware device, to reduce the risk of hacks. Read the guide →
Consensus mechanism: The rules a blockchain uses to agree on which transactions are valid, such as proof of work or proof of stake.
Custody: Holding crypto on behalf of someone else. Institutional custodians keep private keys in secure, often insured, systems. Read the guide →

D

DAO: A decentralized autonomous organization, a group that governs a protocol or treasury through token-holder votes executed by smart contracts. Read the guide →
dApp: A decentralized application that runs on a blockchain through smart contracts rather than a company's servers.
DeFi: Decentralized finance: lending, trading, derivatives and other financial services built on blockchains without traditional intermediaries.
DePIN: Decentralized physical infrastructure networks, which use token rewards to build real-world networks such as wireless coverage, storage or mapping. Read the guide →
DEX (decentralized exchange): An exchange where users trade directly from their own wallets through smart contracts, without handing funds to a company.
Difficulty adjustment: Bitcoin's automatic reset of how hard it is to mine a block, every 2,016 blocks, so blocks keep arriving about every 10 minutes. See the data →
Digital asset treasury (DAT): A public company that holds crypto such as bitcoin or ether as a core balance sheet asset, often raising money specifically to buy more. Read the guide →

F

Fear and greed index: A 0 to 100 score of crypto market mood built from volatility, momentum, social media and other inputs. See the data →
Fiat: Government-issued money such as the US dollar or euro.
Flash loan: A loan in DeFi that is borrowed and repaid within a single transaction, with no collateral. Often used for arbitrage and, sometimes, exploits.
Fork: A change to a blockchain's rules. A soft fork is backward compatible; a hard fork is not and can split a chain in two.
FUD: Fear, uncertainty and doubt: negative information or rumors that push prices down.
Fully diluted valuation (FDV): A token's price multiplied by its maximum supply, including tokens not yet unlocked. A large gap between FDV and market cap signals future supply. See the data →
Funding rate: Periodic payments between long and short traders on perpetual futures that keep the contract price close to spot. Positive funding means longs pay shorts. Read the guide →

G

Gas: The fee paid to process a transaction or smart contract on a blockchain such as Ethereum.
Genesis block: The first block of a blockchain. Bitcoin's was mined on January 3, 2009.
Governance token: A token that gives holders the right to vote on how a protocol is run. Read the guide →

H

Halving: The event, every 210,000 blocks or about four years, when bitcoin's block reward is cut in half, slowing new supply. See the data →
Hardware wallet: A physical device that stores private keys offline and signs transactions without exposing them to the internet.
Hashrate: The total computing power securing a proof-of-work network like bitcoin. See the data →
HODL: Crypto slang for holding an asset long term rather than trading it, from a misspelled 2013 forum post.
Hot wallet: A wallet connected to the internet, convenient for frequent use but more exposed to hacks than a cold wallet.
Howey test: The US Supreme Court test used to decide whether something is an investment contract, and therefore a security. Read the guide →

I

ICO: An initial coin offering, a token sale to the public used to fund a project, popular in 2017.
Impermanent loss: The shortfall a liquidity provider can suffer versus simply holding the tokens, when the prices of the pooled tokens move apart.
Interoperability: The ability of different blockchains to exchange data and value with each other.

L

Layer 1: A base blockchain such as bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana that settles its own transactions.
Layer 2: A network built on top of a layer 1 that processes transactions more cheaply and settles back to the base chain. Read the guide →
Leverage: Borrowing to increase the size of a trade. It magnifies gains and losses and can lead to liquidation.
Lightning Network: A layer 2 payment network for bitcoin that allows fast, cheap transactions off the main chain.
Liquid staking: Staking through a protocol that gives you a tradable token representing your staked assets, such as stETH. Read the guide →
Liquidation: The forced closing of a leveraged position when losses eat through the trader's collateral. See the data →
Liquidity: How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price.
Liquidity pool: A pot of tokens locked in a smart contract that traders swap against on a decentralized exchange.

M

Mainnet: The live, production version of a blockchain where tokens have real value, as opposed to a testnet.
Market cap: Price multiplied by circulating supply, the standard measure of a crypto asset's size. See the data →
Market structure: In crypto policy, the rules for which regulator oversees which tokens, exchanges and brokers. The CLARITY Act is the main US market structure bill. Read the guide →
Memecoin: A token driven mainly by internet culture and community rather than a product or cash flow, such as DOGE.
Mempool: The waiting room of unconfirmed transactions before miners include them in a block. See the data →
MEV: Maximal extractable value, the profit block producers or bots can make by reordering, inserting or censoring transactions.
MiCA: The European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, which licenses crypto service providers and stablecoin issuers across the EU.
Miner: A participant in a proof-of-work network who uses computing power to produce blocks and earn rewards. See the data →
Mining pool: A group of miners who combine hashrate and share rewards so income is steadier. See the data →
mNAV: The ratio of a crypto treasury company's market value to the value of the crypto it holds. Above 1 means the stock trades at a premium to its holdings. Read the guide →
Multisig: A wallet that needs signatures from several keys to move funds, reducing the risk of a single point of failure.

N

NFT: A non-fungible token, a unique on-chain token that represents ownership of a digital or physical item.
Node: A computer that runs a blockchain's software, keeps a copy of the ledger and checks the rules.

O

Off-ramp / on-ramp: Services that convert crypto to cash (off-ramp) or cash to crypto (on-ramp).
On-chain: Recorded directly on a blockchain, as opposed to on an exchange's internal books.
Open interest: The total value of outstanding futures or options contracts that have not been closed. See the data →
Oracle: A service that feeds outside data, such as prices, into smart contracts. Chainlink is the largest.

P

Perpetual futures (perps): Futures contracts with no expiry date, kept close to the spot price through funding payments. The most traded product in crypto. Read the guide →
Private key: The secret number that controls a crypto wallet. Whoever has it controls the funds.
Proof of reserves: An audit-style check showing that an exchange or custodian holds enough assets to cover customer balances.
Proof of stake: A consensus mechanism where validators lock up tokens as collateral to produce blocks, instead of using computing power. Read the guide →
Proof of work: A consensus mechanism where miners compete with computing power to produce blocks. Bitcoin uses it.
Public key: The shareable counterpart of a private key, used to derive addresses and verify signatures.

R

Real-world assets (RWA): Traditional assets such as Treasury bills, credit, real estate or stocks represented as tokens on a blockchain. Read the guide →
Restaking: Reusing already staked tokens to help secure additional services in exchange for extra rewards and extra risk.
Rollup: A type of layer 2 that bundles many transactions and posts the data back to the base chain. Optimistic and zero-knowledge rollups are the two main types. Read the guide →
Rug pull: A scam in which a project's creators drain its funds or liquidity and disappear.

S

Satoshi (sat): The smallest unit of bitcoin, one hundred millionth of a BTC. See the data →
Seed phrase: A list of 12 or 24 words that can restore a wallet's private keys. Anyone who sees it can take the funds.
Self-custody: Holding your own private keys rather than leaving crypto with an exchange. Read the guide →
Slippage: The difference between the expected price of a trade and the price it actually fills at.
Smart contract: Code on a blockchain that runs automatically when its conditions are met.
Solana: A high-throughput layer 1 blockchain known for low fees and fast confirmation. Read the guide →
Spot: Buying or selling an asset for immediate delivery, as opposed to futures or options.
Stablecoin: A token designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar, backed by cash and short-term Treasuries or other reserves. USDT and USDC are the largest. Read the guide →
Staking: Locking tokens to help secure a proof-of-stake network in exchange for rewards. Read the guide →
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve: A US government stockpile of bitcoin, set up by executive order in 2025 and funded mainly with seized coins.

T

Testnet: A practice version of a blockchain where tokens have no value, used to test upgrades and apps.
Token: A digital asset issued on an existing blockchain, as opposed to a chain's native coin.
Token unlock: The scheduled release of tokens that were locked for team members, investors or a foundation. Large unlocks can add selling pressure. See the data →
Tokenization: Representing ownership of an asset as a token on a blockchain. Read the guide →
Tokenomics: The economics of a token: supply, distribution, emissions, unlock schedule and how value accrues to holders. See the data →
TVL (total value locked): The value of assets deposited in a DeFi protocol or blockchain, a rough measure of its size.

V

Validator: A participant in a proof-of-stake network who stakes tokens and helps produce and verify blocks.
Vesting: A schedule that releases tokens gradually over time, often after a cliff, to align teams and investors with a project's long-term success. See the data →
Volatility: How much and how quickly an asset's price moves.

W

Wallet: Software or hardware that stores the keys needed to hold and send crypto.
Whale: An individual or entity holding a very large amount of a crypto asset.
Whitepaper: A document that describes a crypto project's technology, purpose and token design.
Wrapped token: A token that represents another asset on a different blockchain, such as WBTC, which represents bitcoin on Ethereum.

Y

Yield farming: Moving crypto between DeFi protocols to earn the highest available rewards.

Z

Zero-knowledge proof: A cryptographic method for proving a statement is true without revealing the underlying data. It powers zk-rollups and privacy tools.

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