Crypto Glossary
66 crypto terms in plain English, with extra attention to the words scammers rely on you not knowing.
A
- Address
- A public identifier you share to receive crypto, derived from your public key. Safe to share; always double-check it in full before sending.
- Address poisoning
- A scam where tiny transfers from look-alike addresses pollute your history so you copy the wrong address next time.Read: Address Poisoning Attacks: The Copy-Paste Trap Draining Wallets
- Airdrop
- Free tokens distributed to wallets, often to reward early users. Fake airdrop sites are a leading phishing method.Read: Fake Airdrops: How Scammers Use Free Tokens to Drain Wallets
- All-time high (ATH)
- The highest price an asset has ever traded at.
- Altcoin
- Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.Read: Altcoin Season: What It Means and How It's Measured
- AML
- Anti-money-laundering rules that require regulated services to monitor and report suspicious transactions.Read: KYC and AML in Crypto Explained
- Approval
- Permission you sign for a smart contract to move a token from your wallet. Unlimited approvals to malicious contracts are a common way wallets get drained.Read: How to Revoke Token Approvals on Ethereum and Other EVM Chains
- Audit
- An independent review of a smart contract's code for vulnerabilities. It reduces risk but is not a guarantee of safety.
B
- Bear market
- A prolonged period of falling prices, commonly defined as a 20%+ drop from recent highs.Read: Bull and Bear Markets in Crypto
- Blockchain
- A shared ledger of transactions grouped into blocks, each linked to the one before, maintained by a network rather than one company.Read: What Is a Blockchain and How Does It Work?
- Bridge
- A protocol that moves assets between blockchains. Bridges hold large pools of funds and have been the target of many of the largest hacks.
- Bull market
- A prolonged period of rising prices and optimism.Read: Bull and Bear Markets in Crypto
C
- Circulating supply
- The number of coins currently available to trade, excluding locked or unreleased tokens.Read: Market Cap vs Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV): What Investors Miss
- Cold wallet
- A wallet whose keys never touch an internet-connected device, such as a hardware wallet.Read: Hot Wallets vs Cold Wallets
- Consensus mechanism
- The method a network uses to agree on valid transactions, such as proof of work or proof of stake.Read: Proof of Stake Explained
- Custodial
- A service that holds your private keys for you, like most exchanges. Convenient, but you depend on the custodian's solvency and honesty.Read: Custodial vs Non-Custodial Wallets
D
- DAO
- Decentralized autonomous organization — a group governed by token-holder votes executed through smart contracts.
- DeFi
- Decentralized finance: lending, trading and other financial services run by smart contracts instead of intermediaries.Read: What Is DeFi? Decentralized Finance Explained
- DEX
- Decentralized exchange — swaps tokens directly from your wallet via smart contracts.Read: How to Use a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) for the First Time
- Difficulty adjustment
- Bitcoin's automatic recalibration every 2,016 blocks to keep the average block time near 10 minutes.
- Dominance
- One asset's share of the total crypto market cap, most often quoted for Bitcoin.Read: What Is Bitcoin Dominance and Why It Matters
- Drainer
- Malicious code, usually on a fake mint or airdrop site, that tricks you into signing approvals that empty your wallet.Read: Wallet Drainers: How Malicious Approvals Steal Your Crypto
- DYOR
- “Do your own research” — check claims yourself rather than relying on promoters.Read: How to Research a Crypto Project Before Investing: A Step-by-Step Framework
E
- ETF
- Exchange-traded fund. Spot crypto ETFs hold the actual coins and trade on stock exchanges.
- Exit scam
- When a project's team disappears with investors' funds, often after a token sale.Read: Rug Pulls Explained: How They Work and How to Avoid Them
F
- FDVAlso: Fully diluted valuation
- Fully diluted valuation — price multiplied by maximum supply. Shows the valuation if every token were already circulating.Read: Market Cap vs Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV): What Investors Miss
- Fear & Greed Index
- A 0–100 sentiment score combining volatility, momentum, social activity and other inputs.
- Fiat
- Government-issued currency such as USD, EUR or SEK.
G
- Gas
- The fee paid to process a transaction on networks like Ethereum, priced by network demand.
H
- Halving
- The event every 210,000 Bitcoin blocks that cuts the mining reward in half.Read: Post-Halving Price History: What Happened After Each Bitcoin Halving
- Hardware wallet
- A dedicated device that stores private keys offline and signs transactions without exposing them.Read: Hardware Wallets Explained
- Honeypot
- A scam token that lets you buy but blocks or heavily taxes selling.Read: Honeypot Tokens: Why You Can Buy but Never Sell
- Hot wallet
- A wallet connected to the internet, like a browser extension or mobile app. Convenient for small amounts.Read: Hot Wallets vs Cold Wallets
K
- KYC
- Know your customer — identity checks required by regulated platforms.Read: KYC and AML in Crypto Explained
L
- Layer 1
- A base blockchain like Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana.Read: What Are Layer 1 and Layer 2 Blockchains?
- Layer 2
- A network built on top of a Layer 1 to make transactions faster and cheaper, such as rollups on Ethereum.Read: What Are Layer 1 and Layer 2 Blockchains?
- Liquidity
- How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price.Read: Liquidity Pools: How They Work
- Liquidity lock
- Locking a token's DEX liquidity in a time-locked contract so the team can't pull it suddenly (a rug pull).Read: Liquidity Locks: What They Are and How to Verify Them
M
- Market cap
- Price multiplied by circulating supply.Read: Market Cap vs Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV): What Investors Miss
- Memecoin
- A token driven mainly by community and internet culture rather than utility. Extremely volatile.
- Mempool
- The waiting area for transactions that have been broadcast but not yet included in a block.
- Mining
- Securing a proof-of-work blockchain by spending computing power to produce blocks in exchange for rewards.Read: What Is Bitcoin Mining?
- Multisig
- A wallet that needs several keys to approve a transaction, reducing single-point-of-failure risk.
N
- NFT
- Non-fungible token — a unique on-chain token, often representing art, collectibles or membership.Read: How NFT Marketplaces Work
- Non-custodial
- You hold your own keys. No one can freeze your funds — and no one can recover them if you lose the keys.Read: Custodial vs Non-Custodial Wallets
O
- Oracle
- A service that feeds outside data, like prices, to smart contracts. Manipulated oracles have caused major DeFi exploits.
P
- Phishing
- Fake sites, messages or ads impersonating real services to steal logins, seed phrases or signatures.Read: Crypto Phishing Sites: How to Recognize a Fake Exchange or Wallet Page
- Pig butchering
- A long-con scam where a fake friend or romantic contact slowly persuades the victim to invest on a fraudulent platform.Read: Pig Butchering Scams: How Romance and Investment Fraud Combine
- Ponzi scheme
- A fraud paying earlier investors with money from new ones, collapsing when inflows slow.Read: Ponzi and Pyramid Schemes Disguised as Crypto Investments
- Private key
- The secret that controls a crypto address. Whoever has it controls the funds.
- Proof of reserves
- An exchange's cryptographic or audited demonstration that it holds customers' assets.
- Proof of stake
- A consensus mechanism where validators lock up coins as collateral to produce blocks.Read: Proof of Stake Explained
- Proof of work
- A consensus mechanism where miners compete with computing power to produce blocks, used by Bitcoin.Read: Proof of Work Explained
- Pump and dump
- Coordinated buying and hype to inflate a price so organizers can sell to latecomers.Read: Pump-and-Dump Schemes in Crypto: How to Recognize Them
R
- Rug pull
- When developers abandon a project and take investors' funds, often by draining liquidity.Read: Rug Pulls Explained: How They Work and How to Avoid Them
S
- Seed phraseAlso: Recovery phrase, Mnemonic
- 12 or 24 words that back up and restore a wallet. Never share it or type it into a website.Read: How to Back Up a Seed Phrase the Right Way
- Slippage
- The difference between the expected and executed price of a trade, larger in thin markets.Read: Spreads and Slippage Explained
- Smart contract
- Code on a blockchain that runs automatically when its conditions are met.
- Stablecoin
- A token designed to track a stable value, usually the US dollar.Read: Stablecoins Explained: Fiat-Backed, Crypto-Backed and Algorithmic
- Staking
- Locking coins to help secure a proof-of-stake network in exchange for rewards.
T
- Token unlock
- A scheduled release of previously locked tokens to teams or investors, which can add selling pressure.Read: Tokenomics Explained: What to Check in a Token's Supply and Distribution
- TVL
- Total value locked — the value of assets deposited in a DeFi protocol.Read: What Is DeFi? Decentralized Finance Explained
V
- Volatility
- How sharply and frequently a price moves.
W
- Wash trading
- Trading with yourself to fake volume and activity.
- Whale
- An address or entity holding enough of an asset to move its price.
- Whitepaper
- A document describing a project's technology, goals and token design.Read: How to Read a Crypto Whitepaper Critically
Verification confirms only the specific evidence and data points stated. It is not an endorsement or guarantee of investment safety. Always DYOR.