A working glossary of the crypto terms we use most often. Click any term in an article to jump here. Definitions are intentionally short — 2 to 4 sentences each, with cross-links where useful. If a term is missing, let us know.
Jump to letter: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · L · M · N · O · P · R · S · T · U · V · W · Y · Z · #
A
ATH
All-time high — the highest price a coin has ever traded at. Often a psychological resistance level on the chart, and a reference point you will see used constantly in market commentary.
ATL
All-time low — the lowest price a coin has ever traded at since inception or since available data begins. Less referenced than the ATH but useful as a reminder of how far some coins have fallen from peak.
Active addresses
The number of unique wallet addresses that participated in transactions on a blockchain in a given day. A rough usage indicator. Rising active addresses suggests organic network growth; falling can suggest declining utility.
Airdrop
A free distribution of tokens to wallets that meet certain criteria, usually past usage of a protocol. Airdrops are a marketing tactic and a way to bootstrap ownership beyond founders and investors. Tax treatment varies by jurisdiction — see your tax considerations.
AMM
Automated market maker — a smart contract that holds pools of two tokens and lets users trade against them according to a deterministic formula. DEXs like Uniswap use this design instead of order books. Liquidity providers earn a share of trading fees.
B
Base case
Our prediction model’s middle scenario — what we forecast if recent momentum and volatility continue at trend. See how our predictions work for the exact derivation.
Bear case
The downside scenario in our predictions: −1.5σ × √(horizon) from the base case. Roughly the 7th-percentile outcome under our assumptions.
Bull case
The upside scenario in our predictions: +1.5σ × √(horizon) from the base case. Roughly the 93rd-percentile outcome under our assumptions.
Block
A bundle of transactions that gets appended to a blockchain as a single unit. Each block references the hash of the previous one, which is what creates the chain. New blocks arrive every ~10 minutes on Bitcoin and every ~12 seconds on Ethereum.
Block reward
The newly issued coins paid to the miner or validator who produces a block, plus the transaction fees from the included transactions. The subsidy portion drops on Bitcoin via halvings and is fixed by issuance rules on most proof-of-stake chains.
Block time
The target interval between blocks. Bitcoin targets 10 minutes. Ethereum targets 12 seconds. Block time directly affects how fast transactions confirm and how throughput-limited the chain is at its base layer.
Bridge (cross-chain)
A protocol that lets you move tokens or messages from one blockchain to another. Bridges have been the single largest source of crypto theft historically — multiple incidents have lost over $300 million each. Prefer native bridges where possible.
BTC dominance
The share of total crypto market capitalisation held by Bitcoin. Used as a regime indicator: rising dominance often signals risk-off; falling dominance often signals an “altseason”. See reading market signals.
Burn
Sending tokens to an address with no known private key, removing them from circulating supply permanently. Some protocols (Ethereum post-EIP-1559) burn a portion of fees programmatically; some teams burn manually to reduce supply.
C
Candle / OHLC
A chart representation of price action over a fixed interval, showing Open, High, Low, and Close (OHLC). Green/white candles indicate Close above Open; red/black indicate Close below Open. The wicks show the extremes within the interval.
CEX
Centralised exchange — an exchange operated by a company that custodies user funds and matches trades on its own server (Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, Bybit). Convenient and liquid; exposes users to counterparty risk.
Circulating supply
The number of coins of an asset currently available on the market. Distinct from maximum supply (the protocol cap) and total supply (what has been issued, including locked tokens).
Cold storage
Holding crypto on a device that is never connected to the internet — typically a hardware wallet (Ledger, Trezor) or an air-gapped offline computer. The gold standard for amounts you do not need to touch frequently.
Cosmos / Tendermint
An interoperable network of sovereign blockchains connected by the IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) protocol. The Cosmos SDK and the Tendermint consensus engine are the underlying tooling. Chains include Osmosis, Cosmos Hub, dYdX (v4), and many others.
D
DeFi
Decentralised finance — financial services (lending, trading, derivatives, stablecoins) built on public blockchains without traditional intermediaries. Contrast with TradFi. Dominated by Ethereum and its L2s but present on most major chains.
DEX
Decentralised exchange — a protocol on a public blockchain that lets users trade tokens without a centralised intermediary. Uniswap is the largest. Trades occur via smart contracts; users custody their own funds.
Drift
In our prediction model: the expected average daily log return for a coin, computed from blended momentum, sentiment, and mean-reversion inputs. See how predictions work for the exact weights.
E
ERC-20
The Ethereum standard for fungible tokens. Any token implementing this interface is interchangeable with itself — your USDC is the same as my USDC. The standard that made the explosion of token issuance on Ethereum possible.
ERC-721
The Ethereum standard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Each token has a unique ID and ownership is tracked individually. Used for digital art, ENS names, gaming items, ticketing experiments.
ETF
Exchange-traded fund. A tradable security that holds an underlying asset. Spot Bitcoin ETFs were approved in the US in January 2024, allowing exposure to BTC through a regular brokerage account. Spot Ethereum ETFs followed in July 2024.
EVM
Ethereum Virtual Machine — the runtime that executes smart contracts on Ethereum and on every EVM-compatible chain (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, Avalanche C-chain, BNB Chain, etc.). EVM compatibility is why most DeFi tools work across many networks.
F
Fear & Greed Index
A daily 0–100 composite from alternative.me measuring crypto market sentiment. 0 = extreme fear, 100 = extreme greed. We use it as a small contrarian sentiment overlay in our drift estimation. See reading market signals.
FOMC
Federal Open Market Committee — the US Federal Reserve body that sets monetary policy. FOMC meetings (8 per year) often produce significant intraday volatility in crypto, since interest-rate expectations affect dollar liquidity globally.
Funding rate
The premium that perpetual futures longs pay shorts (or vice versa) on derivatives exchanges, typically every 8 hours. Positive funding = leveraged longs are crowded. Negative funding = leveraged shorts are crowded. See reading market signals.
G
Gas
The fee paid for computation on Ethereum and EVM-compatible chains. Measured in gas units; the price per unit is denominated in gwei. Total gas cost = gas units used × gas price. Higher network congestion drives gas prices up.
GBM (geometric Brownian motion)
A standard model for asset price evolution that combines a drift term and a volatility term. Our prediction model uses GBM to project price across horizons. See how predictions work for the exact formula.
Gwei
One billionth of an ETH — the unit gas prices are usually denominated in. If gas is 30 gwei and your transaction uses 21,000 gas units, the fee is 630,000 gwei = 0.00063 ETH.
H
Halving
The roughly four-year (every 210,000 blocks) event on Bitcoin when the block reward paid to miners is cut in half. Halvings have happened in 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024; the next is expected in 2028. See what is Bitcoin.
Hashrate
The total computing power dedicated to mining a proof-of-work blockchain. Measured in hashes per second. Bitcoin’s hashrate is reported in exahashes (10¹⁸) per second. Rising hashrate indicates more miners committing to the network.
HD wallet
Hierarchical deterministic wallet — a wallet that generates all of its addresses and private keys from a single master seed phrase. The standard (BIP-32, BIP-39) used by most modern wallets including Ledger, MetaMask, and Trezor.
Hot wallet
A wallet that stores private keys on a device connected to the internet (phone, desktop). More convenient than cold storage but exposes keys to online attacks. Best for amounts you actively transact.
I
Implied volatility
Volatility expectations derived from options prices. Distinct from realised volatility which looks backward at past returns. Implied vol on BTC and ETH is tradable on Deribit and a useful sentiment indicator.
L
L1 / L2 / L3
Layer 1 is the base blockchain (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana). Layer 2 is a scaling network built on top of an L1, inheriting its security (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base). Layer 3 is rarer — usually an application-specific chain built on top of an L2.
Layer 2
A scaling solution built on top of a base blockchain (commonly Ethereum). Layer 2s batch transactions and inherit base-layer security. Examples: Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync. See our Layer 2 coverage.
Liquidation
The forced closure of a leveraged position when its margin falls below the maintenance threshold. The exchange closes the position automatically at market, usually with a fee. Liquidations clustered at similar prices cause cascades.
Liquidity
The depth of buy and sell orders at and near current price. A liquid market lets you trade size without moving the price much. A thin market has gaps. Liquidity matters more than headline price for actually executing trades. See trading basics.
Long
A position that profits when price goes up. The default position when you buy spot. On perpetuals, a long is opened by buying the contract.
M
Market cap
Circulating supply × current price. The standard measure of a coin’s market size. FDV (fully diluted valuation) is the same calculation but uses total supply rather than circulating, often a much higher number.
Market cap, fully diluted (FDV)
Maximum supply × current price — what the market cap would be if every token that will ever exist were already in circulation. Useful for spotting coins where dilution risk is high (large vesting unlocks ahead).
Maximum supply
The total number of coins that will ever exist for a given asset. Hard-capped for some (Bitcoin: 21M). Uncapped for some (ETH, though net issuance is often negative after the burn). Determines long-term inflation profile.
Mean reversion
The tendency for prices to return toward a longer-term average. Used as a damping factor in our medium and long-horizon forecasts. See how predictions work.
Mempool
The waiting room where pending transactions sit before being included in a block. Public mempools are visible to anyone, which is what makes frontrunning and sandwich attacks possible. Some networks offer private mempools as a mitigation.
Merkle tree
A cryptographic data structure that lets you prove a piece of data is part of a larger set without revealing the rest. Bitcoin uses Merkle trees to commit to all transactions in a block compactly; many other protocols use them for similar verification.
MEV
Maximal extractable value — the profit a block producer can capture by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block they propose. Manifests as frontrunning, sandwich attacks, and arbitrage. A significant tax on naive on-chain trading.
Mint
The creation of new tokens. Stablecoins are minted when fiat enters the system. NFTs are minted when an artist or collection issues a new token. The opposite of burn.
Mining
The process by which proof-of-work blockchains add new blocks. Miners compete to solve a computational puzzle; the winner gets the block reward. Used by Bitcoin and a shrinking number of other chains.
N
NFT
Non-fungible token — a token where each unit is unique and ownership is tracked individually, typically using the ERC-721 standard. Used for digital art, naming systems (ENS), gaming items, and ownership records.
Node
A computer running the software for a particular blockchain, maintaining a copy of the ledger and validating transactions. Full nodes verify everything from genesis. Light nodes verify only what is relevant to them.
O
Oracle (on-chain)
A service that brings off-chain data (asset prices, weather, sports results) into smart contracts. Chainlink is the dominant oracle network. Oracle manipulation has been the root cause of many DeFi exploits.
Open interest (OI)
The total notional value of outstanding derivative contracts (usually perpetuals). Rising OI alongside rising price means new positions are opening; falling OI means positions are closing. See reading market signals.
Order book
The live list of buy and sell orders at every price level on an exchange. The current price is the most recent trade. Reading the book tells you actual available liquidity, which can differ meaningfully from the headline price.
P
Perpetual / perp / perpetual futures
A derivative contract that mirrors spot price but never expires. Anchored to spot via a funding rate. The dominant crypto derivative. See trading basics.
PoS (Proof-of-Stake)
A consensus mechanism where block producers (validators) are chosen based on the amount of cryptocurrency they have staked as collateral. Used by Ethereum (since the Merge), Solana, Cardano, Polkadot, Cosmos chains, and many others.
PoW (Proof-of-Work)
A consensus mechanism where miners compete to solve a computational puzzle to produce blocks. Used by Bitcoin, Litecoin, and a shrinking number of other chains. Energy-intensive but battle-tested.
Private key
A 256-bit secret number that controls a crypto wallet. Whoever has the private key can spend the coins. Lose it and the coins are permanently inaccessible. Share it and the coins are stolen. Treat it like the most important password you will ever have.
Public key
The counterpart to the private key. Used to derive your wallet address and to verify signatures. Safe to share publicly — knowing someone’s public key does not let you spend their funds.
R
Realised volatility
The standard deviation of historical returns over a window. Backward-looking, in contrast to implied volatility which is forward-looking. Our prediction model uses 7-day hourly realised vol as its sigma input.
Rebase token
A token whose circulating supply periodically adjusts so that each holder’s percentage of total supply stays constant. The number of tokens in your wallet changes; your share does not. Mostly defunct as a category; used briefly by Ampleforth and a few others.
Restaking / re-staking
Using already-staked ETH as collateral for additional services beyond Ethereum’s consensus (oracles, bridges, data availability). EigenLayer popularised the concept. Adds yield but also adds slashing risk surface.
Rollup (Optimistic / ZK)
A type of L2 that batches transactions off-chain and posts proofs to L1. Optimistic rollups assume validity by default and only compute proofs if challenged. ZK rollups use cryptographic proofs (SNARKs/STARKs) that guarantee correctness without challenges.
RWA (Real-World Assets)
Tokenised representations of off-chain assets — Treasury bills, real estate, private credit, commodities. A growing category as on-chain capital looks for yield outside of native crypto sources. BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenised treasuries fund is the most-cited example.
S
Sandwich attack
A form of MEV where a bot places a trade just before yours (frontrun), lets your trade move the price, then closes its position just after yours (backrun). Profitable on illiquid DEX trades where the bot can extract the price impact of your trade.
Seed phrase
A 12 or 24-word phrase that encodes the master private key for an HD wallet. Anyone with the seed phrase has full access to the wallet. Store it offline, in two distant locations, on metal if possible.
Sharpe ratio
Risk-adjusted return — average return divided by standard deviation of returns. A standard metric for evaluating portfolios. Bitcoin’s long-run Sharpe is competitive with major equity indices despite its higher volatility.
Short
A position that profits when price goes down. Opened on perpetuals by selling the contract first and buying back later. Has theoretically unlimited downside if price keeps rising.
Sigma (σ)
Standard deviation — a measure of how spread out returns are. Higher σ = more volatile. The volatility parameter in our GBM price model. See how predictions work.
Slippage
The gap between expected fill price and actual fill price on a trade. Caused by spread plus order book depth. Major issue on thin books or large orders. See trading basics for the math.
Spot
The market for actual delivery of the asset, as opposed to derivatives. Buying spot BTC means owning real Bitcoin you can withdraw. Contrast with perpetuals and dated futures.
Stablecoin
A cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value, usually pegged to the US dollar. Fiat-backed stablecoins (USDT, USDC) hold dollar-denominated reserves. Algorithmic stablecoins use on-chain mechanisms; TerraUSD’s 2022 collapse is the cautionary tale.
Staking
Locking up tokens as collateral to help secure a proof-of-stake network in exchange for yield. Ethereum requires 32 ETH per validator; pooled staking via Lido or Rocket Pool removes the minimum. See what is Ethereum.
Slashing
The penalty applied to a staked validator that misbehaves — proposes conflicting blocks, equivocates, or repeatedly goes offline. A portion (or all) of the stake is destroyed. The cryptoeconomic enforcement that keeps PoS networks honest.
T
Tendermint
A Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus engine that powers Cosmos chains. Combined with the Cosmos SDK, it enables sovereign application-specific blockchains with fast finality. See Cosmos / Tendermint.
Token vs coin
Loose usage but a real distinction. A coin typically refers to the native asset of a blockchain (BTC, ETH, SOL). A token is issued on top of a blockchain (USDC, UNI, LINK) and lives within someone else’s smart contract or token standard.
TradFi
Traditional finance — banks, brokers, exchanges, regulated funds. Contrast with DeFi. The boundary is blurring as ETFs, stablecoins, and tokenised treasuries bring TradFi institutions on-chain.
U
Unlock schedule
The pre-defined timeline by which tokens allocated to teams, investors, or treasuries become transferable. Large unlocks can be meaningful supply events; sites like TokenUnlocks track them across major coins.
V
Validator
A node that participates in proof-of-stake consensus by proposing blocks and attesting to blocks proposed by others. Earns rewards for correct behaviour; risks slashing for misbehaviour.
Vesting
The gradual release of locked tokens to a recipient over time. Team tokens commonly vest over 3 to 4 years with a 1-year cliff. Designed to align team incentives with long-term project success. Closely related to unlock schedule.
Volatility
How much a coin’s price moves up and down. See realised volatility for historical measurement and implied volatility for forward-looking estimates from options.
VWAP
Volume-weighted average price — the average price paid for an asset over a window, weighted by trade size. Used as an execution benchmark by institutional traders. Often a useful intraday reference level.
W
Whale
A holder of an unusually large amount of an asset. Definitions vary; we typically use >$1M in a single wallet for major-cap coins. Whale movements get tracked obsessively by some, though the predictive value is much lower than the noise. See reading market signals.
Whitepaper
The original technical document explaining a protocol’s design. Bitcoin’s whitepaper (Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008, 9 pages) is the canonical example. Quality varies wildly; many modern whitepapers are marketing dressed up as technical writing.
Y
Yield farming
Moving capital between DeFi protocols to capture the highest available yields. Combines basic lending/staking yields with token rewards that protocols pay to attract liquidity. High maintenance and exposes you to multiple smart contract risks at once.
Z
ZK proof
Zero-knowledge proof — a cryptographic technique that lets one party prove a statement is true without revealing the underlying data. The basis for ZK rollups and for privacy-preserving protocols like Zcash and Aztec.
#
51% attack
An attack on a proof-of-work blockchain by an entity that controls more than half the hashrate. In theory, lets them double-spend recent transactions or censor blocks. Has happened to small chains (Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin Gold) but is economically infeasible against Bitcoin.
ERC-1155
An Ethereum token standard that supports both fungible and non-fungible tokens within a single contract. Useful for gaming and applications that issue many related tokens at once.
Missing a term you would like defined? Email us — we add to this glossary as we go.