As the crypto and blockchain industry continues to grow, we’re seeing more and more newcomers enter the space. And with that, there are a lot of new terms and definitions being thrown around. But don’t worry — at CryptoSessions we’ve got you covered with the Crypto & Web3 Glossary!

ATL (All-time low)

An All-Time Low (ATL), or a record low is the lowest price yet since a financial instrument was unveiled. All-time lows can be recorded per year, month, per week, or day. For Bitcoin, ATLs usually follow bad news about the coin or waning interest from holders and users.

Airdrop

A crypto airdrop refers to the transfer of digital assets from a crypto project to multiple wallets. The idea is to distribute coins or tokens to current or potential users to increase awareness of the project. These tokens are given out for free, but some airdrops require users to perform certain tasks before claiming. Crypto airdrops became popular during the initial coin offering (ICO) boom of 2017, but are still used as a marketing strategy by many crypto projects today.

Altcoin

An altcoin shorthand for alternative coin, altcoin is a term used to describe other types of cryptocurrencies outside of Bitcoin.

Anarcho-capitalism

A political philosophy and school of thought that believes in removing centralised states in favour of self-ownership, private property and free markets. Many of the early adopters of Bitcoin were proponents of anarcho-capitalism, believing it would give power and control back to the masses.

ATH (All-time high)

The term “All-Time High” relates to the highest price that an asset has achieved on an exchange, for the current trading pair that is being referenced. For example, if a share of stock comes to IPO at a price of $13 per share, then trades as high as $55 per share, before falling to $23 in a certain period of time, we could say that the “All-Time High” for the XZY Corp share price was $55.

Automated Market Maker

An automated market maker actor that encourages buyers and sellers in a decentralised market. Like market makers on traditional markets, they aim to make money from discrepancies in pricing on different markets, until the asset price falls into line across all markets. An automated market maker deposits their own pair of cryptocurrencies into a smart contract and lets computer code handle buying and selling with interested parties, who are also using their own smart contracts. Owners of assets are incentivised by sharing in the pool of fees that are generated through trading activity. The process has been compared to YouTube because investors can generate and upload their own content.

Bear market

The term bear market refers to a negative trend in the prices of a market. It is widely used not only in the cryptocurrency space but also in the traditional markets, such as stocks, bonds, real estate, and commodities markets.

Bitcoin

The world’s first widely-adopted cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is digital money that allows secure and seamless peer-to-peer transactions on the internet.

Blockchain

Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network. An asset can be tangible (a house, car, cash, land) or intangible (intellectual property, patents, copyrights, branding). Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded on a blockchain network, reducing risk and cutting costs for all involved.

Bots

Automated trading software bots that execute trade orders extremely quickly, based on a preset algorithm of buy-and-sell rules.

Bubble

A bubble describes a situation where market participants drive prices up above their value, which is usually followed by a steep, rapid drop in prices as the market corrects.

Bull market

The term bull market refers to a positive trend in the prices of a market. It is broadly used not only in the cryptocurrency space but also in the traditional markets. In short, a bull market relates to a strong market uptrend that presents meaningful rising prices over a relatively short period of time. When compared to traditional markets, cryptocurrency markets are smaller and consequently more volatile. Therefore, it is quite common to see strong and consistent bull runs, where a 45% price increase in a couple of days is quite common.

Candlesticks

Candlesticks is a graphing technique used to show changes in price over time. Each candle provides 4 points of information: opening price, closing price, high, and low. Also known as “candles” for short.

Central ledger

A ledger maintained by a centralised agency (such as a bank) that records all financial transactions.

Centralised

The concept of centralization relates to the distribution of power and authority in an organisation or a network. When a system is centralised, it means that the planning and decision-making mechanisms are concentrated at a particular point within the system.

Circulating supply

The best approximation of the number of coins that are circulating in the market and in the general public’s hands.

Correction

A correction is a (usually negative) reverse movement of at least 10% in a cryptocurrency or general market, to adjust for over- or under-valuations.

Crypto wallet

A crypto wallet refers to a software program or physical medium to safely store the public and private keys you need to make cryptocurrency transactions.

Cryptoassets

Cryptoassets leverage cryptography, consensus algorithms, distributed ledgers, peer-to-peer technology and/or smart contracts to function as a store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account, or decentralised application.

Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrencies use a technology called public-private key cryptography to transfer coin ownership on a secure and distributed ledger. A private key is an ultra secure password that never needs to be shared with anyone, with which you can send value on the network. An associated public key can be freely and safely shared with others to receive value on the network. From the public key, it is impossible for anyone to guess your private key.

Cryptography

A field of study and practice to secure information, preventing third parties from reading information to which they are not privy.

Custody

Custody is the concept of holding and guarding assets. Crypto custody focuses on the holding of your private keys. Side note: public and private keys are kind of like two-part passwords used to unlock and access your crypto wallet assets.

DApps

dApp is the abbreviated term for decentralised application. Just as any developer can build apps for the App Store on Apple’s IOS operating system, developers can (also) build on top of Ethereum’s blockchain infrastructure. To the end user, a dApp might not look and feel any different than other apps you use today. However, dApps are powered by the blockchain and are run on a decentralised network, avoiding a single point of failure.

Decentralised exchange

A peer-to-peer exchange that allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrency and other assets without a central intermediary involved.

Decentralised

Decentralisation refers to the property of a system in which nodes or actors work in concert in a distributed fashion to achieve a global goal.

DeFi

Short for decentralised finance, DeFi is an umbrella term for peer-to-peer financial services on public blockchains, primarily Ethereum.

Distributed ledger

Distributed ledgers are ledgers in which data is stored across a network of decentralised nodes. A distributed ledger does not necessarily involve a cryptocurrency and may be permissioned and private.

Dogecoin

An alt-coin that purposely began as a joke, to highlight the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies in 2013. It uses a Japanese Shiba Inu dog as its mascot and has surged in popularity and value despite its beginnings.

Ethereum

Ethereum is the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap after Bitcoin. It is also a decentralised computing platform that can run a wide variety of applications — including the entire universe of DeFi.

Exchange

Cryptocurrency exchanges (sometimes called digital currency exchanges) are businesses that allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies for fiat money or other cryptocurrencies.

Fiat

Fiat currency is “legal tender” backed by a central government, such as the Federal Reserve, and with its own banking system, such as fractional reserve banking. It can take the form of physical cash, or it can be represented electronically, such as with bank credit.

Fork

A software fork occurs at a point where software is copied and modified. The original project lives on, but it’s now separate from the new one, which takes a different direction. Suppose that the team of your favourite cryptocurrency content website had a major disagreement with how to proceed. One part of the team might replicate the site on a different domain. But going forward, they would post different types of content than the original. The projects build off a common ground and share a history. Just like a single road that later splits into two, there’s now a permanent divergence in their paths.

FUD

An acronym that stands for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt”. It is a strategy to influence perception of certain cryptocurrencies or the cryptocurrency market in general by spreading negative, misleading or false information.

Fundamental analysis

A method in which you research the underlying value of an asset by looking at the technology, team, growth prospects and other indicators. Some people perform fundamental analysis as part of an investment strategy called “value investing”.

Gains

Gains refer to an increase in value or profit.

Gas fees

The fees paid by users to compensate for the amount of computing energy needed to verify a transaction on the ethereum network. They are intended to prevent nefarious actors from spamming the network. Prices can rise and fall depending on demand. Users have complained about ethereum’s fees, which can cost anything from $20 — $100, because ethereum is so heavily used.

GM

GM simply means “Good Morning”. The crypto community says GM to each other because everyone is in a global community and it is nice to say good morning to each other as you start the day. The twitter community usually starts off their day with a GM tweet, and the followers will greet back with a GM reply.

GMI

GMI or WAGMI is short for “Gonna Make It” / “We All Gonna Make It”. It refers to a high conviction and optimistic state about the future. “Just bought a XXXX, GMI”.

GN

The reverse of GM is GN or “Good Night”. The same way active crypto community leaders say GM the first thing when they start their day, they say GN when they are going to take a quick rest before starting the day again with a GM.

Hard fork

Hard forks are backward-incompatible software updates. Typically, these occur when nodes add new rules in a way that conflicts with the rules of old nodes. New nodes can only communicate with others that operate the new version. As a result, the blockchain splits, creating two separate networks: one with the old rules, and one with the new rules.

HODL (Hold On for Dear Life)

A type of passive investment strategy where you hold an investment for a long period of time, regardless of any changes in the price or markets. The term first became famous due to a typo made in a bitcoin forum, and the term is now commonly expanded to stand for “Hold On for Dear Life”.

IBO (Initial bounty offering)

An Initial Bounty Offering or IBO in crypto is the limited-time process by which a new cryptocurrency is made public and distributed to people who invest time and skill into earning rewards in the new cryptocurrency, such as doing translation or marketing. Unlike an Initial Coin Offering where you can buy coins, an IBO requires more mental commitment from the receiver.

ICO (Initial coin offering)

A type of crowdfunding, or crowdsale, using cryptocurrencies as a means of raising capital for early-stage companies. It has come under fire due to the occurrence of scams and market manipulators.

Immutable

A property that defines the inability to be changed, especially over time.

IYKYK

IYKYK is short for “If You Know, You Know”, and is used similarly to “Few” and “Probably Nothing”.

JOMO (Joy of Missing Out)

The opposite state of FOMO, JOMO stands for “Joy of Missing Out”. Most often used by no-coiners who declare their happiness that they are not involved in cryptocurrencies, usually when prices are declining or a scam ICO is revealed.

Keys

A cryptographic key is a string of bits that is used by an encryption algorithm to convert encrypted ciphertext into plaintext and vice versa as part of a paired key access mechanism. Keys are usually randomly generated and, unlike a password, are not intended to be memorised by users.

LFG

LFG is short for “Let’s f***ing go” and is used when you are excited about a project. Best used with the rocket emoji.

Liquidity pool

A central feature of decentralised trading. Customers do not trade on an order book but against other participants in the pool, who have also filled up the pool with funds that sit on smart contracts.

Memecoin

A cryptocurrency that is associated with a meme or viral online joke. dogecoin is a popular example of a memecoin.

Metaverse

The metaverse refers to a shared, open, virtual world that combines various aspects of social networking, mobile gaming, and cryptocurrency – theoretically allowing participants to socialise and transact in a digitally immersive environment through the use of personalised 3D avatars.

Mining

A process where blocks are added to a blockchain, verifying transactions. It is also the process through which new bitcoins or some altcoins are created.

Mining pool

A setup where multiple miners combine their computing power to gain economies of scale and competitiveness in finding the next block on a blockchain. Rewards are split according to different agreements, depending on the mining pool. Another term for this is Group Mining.

Mint

Minting is the act of initially issuing a piece of art on the blockchain, either by the artist or the collector. “Wow, that is such a promising NFT collection, Mint it!”

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)

NFTs are tokens that we can use to represent ownership of unique items. They let us tokenise things like art, collectibles, even real estate. They can only have one official owner at a time and they’re secured by the Ethereum blockchain – no one can modify the record of ownership or copy/paste a new NFT into existence.

NGMI

“Not Going To Make It” — slang for missing out on the profits of a trade. Its opposite is “GMI”, or Going to Make It.

Node

A node is usually understood to mean a physical point on a computer network where an activity takes place. Sometimes, it can be to collect and distribute information; sometimes, it is where transactions on a blockchain are verified.

Normies

Normies refers to the mass majority of people who have yet to explore the crypto space, or have decided to stay out of the twitter space.

P2P (Peer-to-peer)

The decentralised interactions between parties in a distributed network, partitioning tasks or workloads between peers.

Portfolio

A collection of cryptocurrencies or crypto assets held by an individual, investment company, hedge fund or financial institution.

Private key

The complex password needed to access a virtual currency wallet.

Rekt

Rekt In the world of gaming, you might shout rekt when you gun down an opponent in Fortnite, the violent and popular video game. In cryptocurrencies, someone is rekt if they suffer a loss as a result of a bad crypto investment. A cryptocurrency that has gone down significantly in value could also be said to be rekt.

Sidechain

A sidechain is a separate blockchain that is attached to its parent blockchain using a two-way peg. The two-way peg enables interchangeability of assets between the parent blockchain and the sidechain. They allow tokens and other digital assets from one blockchain to be securely used in a separate blockchain and then be moved back to the original blockchain if needed. Sidechain functionality holds tremendous potential to scale and enhance the capabilities of existing blockchains. Sidechains allow cryptocurrencies to interact with one another. They add flexibility and allow developers to experiment with Beta releases of Altcoins or software updates before pushing them on to the main chain.

Smart contract

A smart contract is a self-executing code or protocol that carries out a set of instructions that is verified on the blockchain. These contracts are trustless, autonomous, decentralised, and transparent; they are irreversible and unmodifiable once deployed. While they have several use cases, some of the most popular are various financial contracts (loans, derivatives, trading). They can also be used for legal contracts, identity management, and numerous other use cases. Popular in decentralised finance (DeFi), smart contracts can be bundled into decentralised applications (dApps) to execute more complex functions

Soft fork

A soft fork is a backward-compatible upgrade, meaning that the upgraded nodes can still communicate with the non-upgraded ones. What you typically see in a soft fork is the addition of a new rule that doesn’t clash with the older rules.

Stablecoin

A stablecoin is a digital currency created with the intent of holding a stable value. The value of most existing stablecoins is tied directly to a predetermined fiat currency or tangible commodity, like Gemini dollar (GUSD), which is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. However, stablecoins can also achieve price-stability through collateralization against other cryptocurrencies or algorithmic token supply management. Since stablecoins do not fluctuate significantly in price, they are designed to be used rather than as an investment.

Staking

Staking is a protocol that aims to boost asset owners’ earnings. Users lock their crypto in their wallet but give permission for a third party, often an exchange, to stake their crypto on DeFi projects that offer interest or yield farming. The barriers to staking are quite high and users normally need to hold a lot of a particular cryptocurrency first. Binance and Coinbase both offer staking.

Staking pool

On a Proof-of-Stake network, staking pools allow multiple cryptocurrency stakeholders to combine tokens in a collective pool in order to secure the benefits held by a larger, collectivised network stake. By combining computational resources, the individual stakeholders who choose to participate in a staking pool aggregate their staking power to more effectively verify and validate new blocks, which consequently increases their chances of earning a portion of the resulting block rewards.

Szn

Szn is short for season which means market cycle. Crypto Szns are typically market rotation from one theme to another theme and can be as short as 1 week to 2 months.

Technical analysis

Technical analysis (TA) is a charting evaluation method employed by traders and investors by analysing specific patterns on charts such as price and trading volume. There are hundreds of technical indicators that may be utilised in TA. Some of the most popular indicators include relative strength index (RSI), moving average convergence divergence (MACD), and Bollinger Bands. Technical analysts attempt to extrapolate future price movements from various historical data.

Tokenomics

Tokenomics is the study of the economics of crypto tokens. The term is derived from the words token and economics.

Total market capitalization

Total market capitalization is a measurement used to determine the entire market capitalization of a specific asset or asset class, such as gold. The total market capitalization of a company is determined by multiplying its number of shares by the price per share, while the market cap of a blockchain project is instead determined by multiplying the circulating supply of coins by the price per coin. The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined is determined by totaling the respective market caps of all individual cryptocurrencies.

Traceability

Traceability refers to the degree to which a third party is able to track the details of a transaction, such as the transaction amount or the identities of the involved parties. Blockchain-based projects approach traceability in different ways. For example, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) following the ERC-721 standard are created to maximise traceability, while projects like Monero have designed systems that obfuscate user accounts and transactions from external viewers in an attempt to remain completely untraceable.

Trustless

When a system is trustless within a peer-to-peer (P2P) blockchain network, it means that all participants in the network do not need to know or rely upon verification from one another or a third party. This means that the system is run autonomously by the underlying technical architecture and consensus mechanism of the blockchain protocol itself. Transacting on a shared, trustless network is not beholden to a central organisation to ensure trust, and is a key value proposition of blockchain technology. A number of innovations underlay the trustless nature of blockchain networks, including immutability, decentralisation, transparency, censorship resistance, and neutrality.

Unrealized profit and loss

Unrealized profit and loss (P&L) is a metric that is used to keep track of the profit or loss of open trading positions on an exchange or related platform. Generally, unrealised P&L is calculated from when a position is opened until it is closed. It is often used after opening leveraged trading positions via derivatives instruments, but can also be used for spot trading and other trading types. While Unrealized P&L can be calculated for any type of trader, it is an especially important metric used by institutional investment firms that allocate large amounts of capital towards their investments.

Utility token

A utility token is a tokenized digital asset designed to grant its holder access to the products or services of a blockchain protocol. As a result, utility tokens are intended to be used within the blockchain’s network, rather than serve as an investment. However, given that most utility tokens fluctuate in value in accordance with its network’s perceived popularity and adoption, many traders and crypto enthusiasts nonetheless purchase certain utility tokens as speculative investments.

WAGMI

GMI or WAGMI is short for “Gonna Make It” / “We All Gonna Make It”. It refers to a high conviction and optimistic state about the future. “Just bought a XXXX, GMI”.

Wash trading

Wash trading is a form of market manipulation whereby a security or other asset is bought and sold with the intent to portray misleading market information. Wash trading is often facilitated by a trader and broker colluding to gain substantial profits. Other times, wash trading is executed by a single entity acting as both a buyer and seller of an asset to manipulate its price, or to show substantially increased trading volume compared to the actual amount that is really being traded. Wash trading can also be carried out by trading firms, brokers, and cryptocurrency exchanges.

Weak hands

The term \”weak hands\” is used in the crypto space to refer to an investor who chooses to sell their investments when there is a substantial dip in the market, taking a loss. This is generally considered to be a poor investment strategy as long-term investors tend to believe that, in time, the value of their cryptocurrency portfolios will rise above and beyond their initial value despite substantial market corrections.

Web 1.0

Web 1.0 was initially launched in the early 1990s when the internet first began to enjoy mainstream adoption. Web 1.0 was primarily a static, read-only infrastructure which generally lacked the more expanded functionalities of Web 2.0. Web 1.0’s infrastructure was made up of many companies that were mostly unable to maintain their monopoly of the internet because they were replaced by more interactive, capable systems that became more widespread in the early 2000s. Today, many see a new evolution of the internet dawning, as blockchain systems seek to foster a more sophisticated, democratic, user-centric version of the internet: Web 3.0.

Web 2.0

The realisation of Web 2.0 began in the early 2000’s. This second wave of internet innovation is characterised by its read-write and interactive design model. Platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, Airbnb, Alibaba, and Twitter led the charge in Web 2.0 development, offering dynamic and multi-functional application experiences across all our devices. However, many criticise Web 2.0 for being too centralised, and for paving a path toward excessive focus on profit, unreasonable advertising, mass surveillance, decreased privacy, and widespread data theft. In response, the Web 3.0 movement seeks to leverage blockchain technology to flip the Web 2.0 model on its head and link programs directly with each other.

Web3

Web3 is an umbrella term for a variety of endeavours to integrate crypto assets, NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, the metaverse, and smart contracts into existing web infrastructure. In short, the term refers to a third generation of the internet.

Whitepaper

A whitepaper is a report-style document that explains a complex issue in relation to a specific industry or field, and discusses how an enterprise solves that problem. Whitepapers typically introduce a business model and development plan. In the context of blockchain, a whitepaper is one of the first documents that is created after a project has a working product and funding. It also acts as a pitch to new investors to help the company further their funding process. For blockchain-specific whitepapers, the technical architecture, token economics, team, and other data are also commonly outlined.

Wrapped token

A wrapped token cryptocurrency token pegged to the value of another token. They have identical values but enable one token to live on a Blockchain that it was not issued on. For example, Bitcoin and ethereum blockchains cannot talk to each other; but a wrapped token acts as a bridge between the two.

Yield farming

Yield farming is the practice of staking or locking up cryptocurrencies within a blockchain protocol to generate tokenized rewards. Many decentralised finance (DeFi) projects rely on yield farming to incentivize users to contribute to the network’s liquidity and stability, since these projects do not rely on a centralised market facilitator.

YTD (Year to date)

Year to Date (YTD) refers to a specific time period which spans from the first day of the current calendar year, or fiscal year, up to the current date. YTD data is critical for analysing financial and business trends over time or to compare performance data among investments within the same or different industries. The term is usually used within the traditional investment industry but can be also used as it relates to blockchain and crypto investing to keep track of the performance of assets.