Altcoins Guides

Altcoins

A brief history of Ethereum

What is cryptocurrency mining?

What is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency terms for beginners

Ethereum (ETH) for beginners

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for beginners

What is Ripple?

What is EOS?

A beginner’s guide to mining new altcoins

A beginner’s guide on how to mine Ethereum

What is Stellar cryptocurrency?

What is Litecoin?

A beginner’s guide to blockchain

What is Cardano?

What is Dash cryptocurrency?

The beginner’s guide to stablecoins

An introduction to Tether

Bitcoin vs. Altcoins: The differences you should know

Tezos for beginners

What is Skycoin?

TrueUSD: Can it be trusted?

Three reasons why blockchain games are on the rise

What is NEO cryptocurrency?

Five XRP wallets you should consider using

An introduction to the IOTA protocol

What is HIVE blockchain?

What is the DAI stablecoin?

What is Chainlink and why does it matter in the crypto world?

What is Flow – the developer-friendly blockchain?

What is Brave’s Basic Attention Token?

 What is Kusama – a canary network for Polkadot experiments? 

What is a non-fungible token (NFT)?

What is Polygon?

What is NEAR Protocol?

What is Klaytn and how does it work?

What is THORChain?

What is the FTX Token?

What is Axie Infinity?

What is Tron?

What is Terra?

What is Graph Protocol?

What is Algorand?

What is OMG network?

What is Zilliqa?

What is Avalanche?

What is Internet Computer?

What is Ethereum Classic?

What is VeChain?

What is Elrond?

What is Audius?

What is the USD coin?

What is a smart contract?

What is a Mining Pool?

What is Hash Rate?

What is Proof of Work?

Why does decentralisation of cryptocurrencies matter?

How to mine for cryptocurrencies

Understanding tokenomics

A beginner’s guide to data mining and cryptographic hash functions

What are the best strategies for mining cryptocurrency?

The best GPUs for cryptocurrency mining

Stablecoins: what are the risks and benefits?

The top five privacy cryptocurrencies

A guide to the Ripple product suite

The use of blockchain technology in digital advertising

Four projects leading the way in database sharding

How network nodes are used in cryptocurrency

Explore other guides

Beginner

Cryptocurrency terms for beginners

A comprehensive glossary of key cryptocurrency terms every beginner should know

The cryptocurrency sphere has seen rapid acceleration in growth since Bitcoin’s inception in 2009 . The cryptocurrency community has also grown exponentially, creating a tight-knit sub-culture that shares similar ideas on self sovereignty and the historical dominance of banking institutions. They often use their own cryptocurrency terms that could be confusing for a beginner.

As the space continues to expand, members of that community have taken it upon themselves to create a cryptic set of vocabulary and jargon in relation to crypto trading and investing. Below is a comprehensive guide to the key words and phrases used throughout the cryptocurrency community.

Glossary

Rekt – When a trader gets liquidated on a margin exchange like BitMEX or Deribit, or if they lose a substantial amount of funds on a specific trade. An example of this would be when a trader says: “I got rekt by placing a long order when Bitcoin was at $20,000.”

FOMO – The ‘fear of missing out’ is widespread in the crypto community. Traders will often buy a digital asset when it makes a substantial move to the upside, instead of waiting for the perfect setup. This is driven by the notion of ‘FOMO’ and typically will end up as a losing trade.

Hodl – The ‘Hodl’ meme originated from the Bitcointalk forum, where an enraged, and slightly worse for wear, trader left a rant about why he was holding his Bitcoin instead of selling. The alcohol-induced rant misspelt ‘Holding’ as ‘Hodling’, giving birth to a meme that is still prevalent five years later. When a trader now says they are ‘Hodling’ their coins/tokens, they mean they are holding without the intention of selling.

TATA is technical analysis and this can be applied to not only cryptocurrency markets but also legacy and major currency markets. Technical analysis is the analysis of a particular asset’s price-chart. Common methods of technical analysis are support, resistance and charting patterns.

FAFundamental analysis is a method of research into a business or ICO. For example, fundamental analysis would assess if a company’s team are reputable, if the company’s product is fit for the market and if there is a use-case in the real world.

Satoshi (sats) – Not only is Satoshi considered to be the ‘creator’ of Bitcoin, ‘Satoshi’ is also the term used for the smallest possible denomination of Bitcoin (0.00000001BTC). Instead of reading out each individual decimal point it has become easier to describe the price in Satoshi, or ‘sats’.

Bitcoin market dominance – This is calculated the % share of the overall crypto market cap taken up by Bitcoin. For example, if the total crypto market cap was $217 million and Bitcoin’s market cap was $113 million, Bitcoin’s market dominance would be at 52.3%. This is usually a good indicator to assess whether Bitcoin or Altcoins are looking potentially bullish or bearish.

Long/short – On margin exchanges like BitMEX and Deribit users have the choice of ‘going long’ or ‘going short’ on a particular asset. Going long is effectively betting that the asset will increase in price, while shorting is betting on the asset will move to the downside.

MoonWhen the crypto community describe a coin or token as ‘mooning’, it means the price is moving to the upside.

Shill – When someone ‘shills’ a project it means they are promoting it for their personal gain. For example, if a user had 10,000 EOS tokens they might share a message saying: “EOS is going to be a top 5 coin in 2019.” This would be a ‘shill’.

ATH ATH means all-time-high. For example Bitcoin’s all-time-high is $20,000.

We hope these cryptocurrency terms will help you to navigate the industry more easily. If you’re a beginner and still need a bit of help, or even if you’re a seasoned trader looking for new information, our definitive cryptocurrency guides have been created especially for you.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.