Crypto slang & acronyms

As you explore more of the crypto universe, you will undoubtedly come across many terms that seem like they don’t make sense. The crypto community is a passionate, and a lot of times weird, group of people constantly coming up with different lingo and abbreviations, so this guide should help to understand what people are talking about.

4

The former Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, tweeted the digit 4 at the start of 2023 and explained that his goal was to keep things simple and spend more time on fewer things. Three of the “4” were “do’s”, consisting of education, compliance, product & service, and 1 “don’t” which was to ignore FUD, fake news, and attacks.

Airdrops

Refers to the distribution of free coins or NFTs to a group of wallet addresses as part of a marketing or community-building strategy. They are popular by companies looking to increase awareness and reward early adopters of a project to encourage continued usage of their platform.

Ape/Apeing

Refers to when someone buys a crypto or NFT without doing their research on it.

Altcoins

Short for alternative coin. This refers to basically all crypto coins that are not Bitcoin.

Alt season

This term refers to the time where seemingly all altcoins are increasing in value, while the Bitcoin price might be slowing or even slightly falling.

Bag holder

Term used to describe someone that holds onto their crypto coins too long and becomes stuck in a project that signficantly decreases in value.

Bridge

Bridges are a way to establish a connection between two different blockchain networks, such as Ethereum and Solana, to allow the transfer of assets between them. It involves the swapping of ETH for a “wrapped” ETH that is based on Solana.

BTD

“Buy the dip” – term used to tell people they should be buying when values are falling instead of fearing it will go down further. The idea is that the price will hopefully bounce back in the future.

“Can the devs do something?”

This is a phrase used when a crypto/cryptos are falling in value, and people are jokingly begging a project’s developers to help the project increase in value again.

CEX/DEX

Abbreviations for Centralized Exchange (think Coinbase, Binance, Gemini), and Decentralized Exchange (think Uniswap, Thorchain)

CT

Abbreviation referring to Crypto Twitter, which describes the crypto community as a whole on X (formerly Twitter).

DApp

Stands for Decentralized Applications, and they are software programs that run on a network controlled by users and free from control of a single authority. There is no permission to use them. Uniswap is one example of a DApp as the Decentralized Exchange allows users to trade directly with each other without requiring permission or an intermediary, like a bank.

DEX aggregator

A service that connects many different Decentralized Exchanges in one spot. This allows you to find the best swap for your money, whether it goes through THORChain, Chainflip, Uniswap, or others and helps ensure you receive the most crypto back as possible.

Examples include THORSwap, ShapeShift, 1inch, THORWallet, Defispot, El Dorado

Diamond hands

Term used to describe someone that holds their crypto no matter how volatile the price of the crypto is. They are in it for the long run, for better or for worse.

DYOR

Stands for “Do your own research” in reference to telling people I have my opinion on something, but don’t take my word for it and you need to research it yourself to form your own opinion.

Flippening

A term used to describe one crypto overtaking another crypto in market cap (total value). Specifically, this term was coined when people begain to opine that Ethereum could eventually “flip” Bitcoin in market cap.

FOMO

Fear Of Missing Out. This is used in crypto to describe someone that is not invested in something while the price is going up, so they buy at highs because they are too afraid that it might go “to the moon.”

FUD

Stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. This refers to any negative opinions, perception, or news related to cryptocurrency not based on fact.

Gas

Refers to the fees charged for a transaction. Used mostly when talking about Ethereum due to it higher transaction costs, especially when the network is under significant use.

GM

Stands or Good Morning, used to promote positivity with other members of the crypto community.

Halving

The reduction of mining rewards (by half) that occurs on the Bitcoin blockchain. This happens roughly every 4 years, and 210,000 blocks. See our full writeup here.

Have fun staying poor (HFSP)

A derogatory term people use against others who, for example, choose not to invest in or don’t believe in Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, so as to tell them they will be poor/continue to be poor.

HODL

Simply means hold. It comes from a typo on a crypto forum back in 2013 when someone indicated they are not selling their Bitcoin and meant to say they were holding vs. selling. The typo is now common among people indicating they are not selling.

Immutable

Unable to be changed. This is used in reference to the source code of crypto and smart contracts because in a decentralized protocol, there is no central authority that can move the goal posts and change terms.

Liquidity Providers

A pool of digital assets/crypto that enables a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) to facilitate a trade. Users deposit and lock up their crypto into the pool to have the opportunity to earn rewards in the form of shared transaction fees that the DEX receives. If an exchange has a significant amount of assets in the pool, it allows a trader to receive better pricing on their trade. On the other hand, if there is not a lot of liquidity, you could receive less in return on your trade, called Slippage. Liquidity pools are essential to the success of a DEX.

Liquidity Pools require the pairing of multiple tokens equally, such as ETH & USDC, for providing liquidity. If you deposit a single asset into the pool (called single-sided), like ETH for example, half will be sold for USDC to get to a 50-50 balance in this example of a pairing.

Market cap

This is short for market capitalization, referring to the total value of a cryptocurrency and is calculated by multiplying the coin’s current price by the total number of coins.

Memecoin

A memecoin is a coin that is built based on a popular meme. There is typically no use case for them other than to provide entertainment and an avenue for people to gamble that the value may go up. Examples of memecoins are Dogecoin, Shina Inu coin, Pepe coin, and countless others.

Mining

Refers to the proof-of-work process Bitcoin uses to verify transactions.

Moon/ to the moon

A term/phrase used to describe a stock or crypto that is greatly increasing in value, or that one believes (or hopes) it will in the future.

NFTs

Stands for Non-fungible Tokens. This has been popularized by crypto as NFTs have special codes built within them making them unique, 1 of 1 digital assets. Typically used for digital artwork, but could have many future use cases such as event tickets, property rights, and more.

NGMI

Abbreviation for “Not gonna make it.” This term is used as a prediction of failure in the future as a result of a poor decision.

No-coiner

Negative term used towards someone that doesn’t own any crypto, and likely doesn’t believe in crypto.

Paper hands

Term used to describe someone that can’t stomach the violent swings in crypto prices and sells when things are looking bad.

Private keys

Similar to your Secret Recovery Phrase, your private keys are an entryway to your crypto funds. It is an alphanumeric password/code and are used to authorize transactions. Like your Secret Recover Phrase, do NOT give this out to anyone as it will give them access to your funds. Keep this code in a safe spot offline, preferably typed on a piece of paper.

Pump & dump

This term is used when a person of influence buys a specific crypto before telling anyone, then begins to “shill” (see below for Shill meaning) it to their following, and then sells it as the price is increasing, which eventually causes it to crash in value leaving their followers with big losses.

Rekt

Slang way of saying wrecked. Used when a trader or investor suffers a severe financial loss.

Rug pull/ rugged

Similar to pump & dump, this term is used to describe a project where a major holder of the crypto, usually the creators, decides to cash out and sell all of their project’s crypto (that they own) and diminish the value of the crypto, while also likely stopping their work on the project leaving investors “holding the bag.”

Sats

This is short for Satoshis, which is the smallest unit of Bitcoin. There are 100 million satoshis in 1 Bitcoin, so 1 sat is .00000001 BTC. Named after the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Secret Recovery Phrase

This is your crypto wallet’s recovery password, typically 12 or 24 words. No matter if you lose access to your wallet or misplace your pin or password, you will still be able to access your funds if you know your recovery phrase in the exact order as when you set up your wallet. NEVER trust anyone with your recovery phrase!!

Shill

When you see people constantly talking about a specific crypto or NFT (that they likely have a vested interest in doing so) in hopes to generate interest and increase the coin’s price, this is called “shilling” a crypto or project.

Slippage

Slippage refers to the difference between the bid and ask prices on a Decentralized Exchange (DEX). If a liquidity pool doesn’t have a lot of liquidity, you could receive less value than you are paying for in a trade compared to market prices.

ex: You want to swap $100 of USDC (stable coin) for $100 of ETH, but the liquidity pool doesn’t have enough or a lot of liquidity. You swap your $100 for only $95 worth of ETH, so you realized a 5% slippage cost in your transaction.

Smart contracts

Smart contracts are coded agreements that auto execute instructions in the event that proper conditions are met. There is no 3rd party to approve or disapprove, it simply just happens based on the coded agreement that is written into the blockchain, making them secure and trustless, and unable to be changed over time.

Staking

In the simplest terms, staking refers to the mechanism that allows you to lock your crypto (in a smart contract) into a protocol as collateral, which is used to secure a blockchain and validate transactions on the blockchain. In return for staking your crypto, you are rewarded by receiving additional coins.

Unlike yield farming, you only need to stake one crypto to earn rewards and it requires very little effort. However, staking may involve a lock-up period where you don’t have access to your crypto.

ex: When Ethereum switched to proof-of-stake, they no longer required computational power to validate transactions. Now, you can stake your ETH coins and participate in the validation of transactions and receive ETH back as a reward. Compared to traditional markets, this is similar to buying a bond and earning interest. A type of passive income.

Swaps

Different term for trades. The process of transferring one crypto for another crypto.

Token

Interchangeable with coin, crypto, crypto asset, etc.

WAGMI

“We’re all gonna make it” – used when someone or a group of people believes they are in good position to greatly increase the value of their holdings in the future.

Whale

This term is used to describe someone that holds a significant amount of a certain crypto or even cash, one that could significantly influence the price of a coin by buying or selling.

“When Lambo”

Term used mostly jokingly as a way of asking when a crypto price will increase, so as to be able to afford a Lamborghini.

Wrapped assets

Blockchains are not interoperable by design. Assets built on Ethereum are not able to transfer or be used on the Bitcoin network. One way to get around this is to use “wrapped” assets, which involves the swapping of one asset (for example Bitcoin) for wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) built on the Ethereum network.

Yield farming

Yield farming is the process of providing liquidity to a Decentralized Exchange (or other DeFi protocols). This is similar to staking in that you are providing your crypto to a protocol to generate rewards, but instead of securing a network, your funds are added to a Liquidity Pool to assist with trades that occur on the DEX. You essentially receive an IOU through a smart contract, and you receive a portion of the transaction fees that the protocol receives as a reward as part of a revenue share.

Aside from being more complicated, here are a couple differences from staking:

1. Yield farming requires pairing of multiple tokens equally, such as ETH & USDC, for providing liquidity. Because of this, the value of your crypto could fall if ETH decreases in value, because your pairing needs to keep a 50-50 ratio and could sell your ETH to add more USDC or vice versa.
2. Unlike staking, you typically have access to your funds any time, although it could take a little bit of time to remove your assets from the liquidity pool.