Crypto Glossary

Account abstraction is an Ethereum upgrade that allows smart contracts to function as user accounts.

An accredited investor is a regulatory designation for an individual or entity permitted to trade securities that are not registered with financial authorities.

A crypto airdrop is a popular marketing and distribution strategy used by blockchain startups to bootstrap new projects, reward early adopters, and build a vibrant community.

An algorithmic stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value, typically pegged to a fiat currency like the US dollar.

Altcoins, a portmanteau of alternative and coin, encompass the vast universe of cryptocurrencies existing outside of Bitcoin.

Anti-money laundering (AML) in the cryptocurrency sector refers to the comprehensive framework of laws, regulations, and technical procedures designed to prevent criminals from disguising illegally obtained digital assets as legitimate income.

An automated market maker (AMM) is a fundamental decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol that allows for the seamless, permissionless trading of digital assets.

An anchor investor is a high-profile, reputable institutional investor that commits a significant amount of capital to a fundraising round before it officially opens to the general public.

Annual Percentage Yield (APY) is a fundamental financial metric that measures the real rate of return on an investment or the interest earned on a savings balance over the course of one year.

Arbitrage in the cryptocurrency market is a trading strategy that involves the simultaneous purchase and sale of a digital asset across different markets or exchanges to profit from temporary price discrepancies.

Asset tokenization is a transformative process that represents the bridge between traditional finance and the decentralized digital economy.

An atomic swap is a smart contract-based mechanism that allows two parties to exchange different cryptocurrencies across separate blockchains without the need for a trusted intermediary or centralized exchange.

An attestation is a digitally signed statement made by one entity — be it a person, an organization, or an autonomous agent — verifying the truth of a claim about another party or system.

A bear market in crypto is a prolonged period of declining prices across cryptocurrency markets.

A benchmark rate — also known as a reference rate — is a standardized interest rate used to price loans, mortgages and other financial contracts.

Bitcoin (BTC) is the world's first decentralized cryptocurrency, introduced in 2008 by the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin dominance is the ratio of bitcoin’s market cap to that of the entire crypto market, expressed as a percentage.

A bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) is a regulated financial instrument that allows investors to gain exposure to BTC’s price movements through traditional brokerage accounts.

A bitcoin treasury is a corporate strategy that involves holding bitcoin (BTC) as a primary reserve asset on a company’s balance sheet.

A block is the basic unit of blockchain technology: the digital container inside which transaction data is contained.

A block explorer is essentially a search engine for blockchain data, allowing anyone to search and view real-time information on transactions, wallet addresses, blocks, and smart contract interactions.

A block reward is the cryptocurrency issued to miners or validators for successfully adding a new block to the network.

A blockchain is a distributed, immutable digital ledger designed to record transactions across a decentralized network of computers. 

A blockchain bridge is a protocol that connects two separate blockchain networks, enabling the transfer of tokens between them. 

Blockchain oracles are services that provide data feeds to blockchain applications, acting as a bridge between the network and the outside world.

Bond tokenization is the process of converting ownership rights of a bond — corporate, municipal, or sovereign — into digital tokens on a blockchain.

A bull market is a sustained period of rising asset prices, characterized by investor optimism and increased risk appetite.

A burn mechanism is a strategic process used to permanently remove a specific number of tokens from the circulating supply. 

Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is a property of distributed systems that allows a network to continue functioning correctly even when some of its components fail or act maliciously.

A candlestick is a visual representation of an asset’s price action over a specific period, commonly used in cryptocurrency price charts.

A Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is any organization run by smart contracts and member voting rather than by a team of managers.

An Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) is a formal document that proposes a change or new feature for the Ethereum network.

A fair launch is a distribution model designed to give all participants an equal opportunity to acquire tokens, without preferential allocations to founders, developers or early investors.

A gas fee is a charge paid to process transactions or execute operations on a blockchain network.

A halving is a scheduled event that reduces the amount of new cryptocurrency awarded to miners for adding blocks to a blockchain.

Impermanent loss is the reduction in value that liquidity providers can experience when the prices of tokens deposited into a DeFi liquidity pool change relative to each other.

Jito is a Solana-based liquid staking protocol that provides infrastructure to increase validator revenues through maximal extractable value (MEV).

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a process used by financial institutions and crypto exchanges to confirm the identities of customers.

A Layer 1 (L1) blockchain is a foundational network that provides the base-layer infrastructure for cryptocurrencies, decentralized applications (DApps) and other digital asset services.

The market cap of a cryptocurrency is simply its current market value, calculated by multiplying its circulating supply by its price.

A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is a digital token with a unique identifier, used to represent ownership of an asset.

Offchain describes transactions, data or other activities that take place outside a blockchain's main network.

A payment stablecoin is a cryptocurrency pegged to the price of a reference asset (typically USD) and designed primarily for payments, transfers and settlement.

Quantum resistance refers to the ability of cryptographic systems to withstand attacks from quantum computers.