15 Cryptocurrency Terms That You Should Know By Now

cryptoexaminers (47)in #cryptoexaminers • 7 years ago (edited)

Cryptocurrency is super popular these days and if you’re new to this crypto world, you may not know some of the terms yet. Here are some of the popular cryptocurrency terms that you should know.

1. HODL

HODL simply means to stop yourself from selling your cryptocurrencies. Some would say “hold on to dear life!” and it’s generally used when the price of tokens are dropping in the market. You know what they say. If you believe in the coin’s potential, HODL!

2. FOMO

FOMO stands for fear of missing out. It is normally used when a coin massively jumps or drops in price and people tend to buy or sell at the time. They fear missing out on a good buy or selling in case the coin “dies off”.

3. To the moon

To the moon or lambos is just a way to say that the particular cryptocurrency will have a massive increase in price in the future. Many think their buys are still undervalued and will go to the moon.

4. Fiat

Fiat is the paper currency printed by governments, like the USD or Sterling Pounds. We normally use this term to differentiate cryptocurrency and paper money.

5. Whale

A whale basically refers to someone rich enough to manipulate the cryptocurrency market. In other words, someone rich.

6. Altcoin

Altcoins are all cryptocurrencies that are not Bitcoin. Another way of saying alternate coin.

7. ATH

ATH stands for all time high. For e.g. Bitcoin hit its ATH at $20,000, i.e. its peak so far.

8. Shilling

Shilling is a term used for someone trying to promote a coin in a way that will bring up the price of a coin. You will find plenty of shillers on Reddit and blogs like this one. Everyone’s shilling to get their coin more popular and eventually hope to have an increase in value.

9. FUD

FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. FUD is used when there’s news of something that would bring down the price of cryptocurrencies. Some people (especially banks and Dimon) definitely do not like cryptocurrency and will try to diminish its importance.

10. Market cap

Market cap is the total value of all cryptocurrencies in the market. You can refer to the Coinmarketcap website.

11. Pump and dump

Pump and dump is where whales buy up a lot of the same coin just to push its value up and eventually dump them when they’re at a high price. There are plenty of pump and dump coins that may not have any real value; just speculation.

12. TA

TA stands for technical analysis, i.e. trying to predict how the value of a coin will fluctuate. They are no more than educated guesses at best.

13. Fork

A fork is a change in protocol. There are hard forks and soft forks. Soft forks are optional meaning you can opt to use the updated version or not. Hard forks affect the coin as a whole. For e.g. Bitcoin went through several hard forks and created new coins. Everyone gets the new coins regardless of whether you want to or not.

14. Gas

Gas is a term popular with Ethereum. You need gas to complete a transaction on the Ethereum network, e.g. sending ERC-20 tokens or performing a contract.

Gas is also a cryptocurrency on its own, but it’s not related to Ethereum. The other Gas is simply a different token that is connected to NEO. Don’t confuse yourself with the different terms.