Crypto Glossary

  1. Address

      A string of letters and numbers that bitcoins can be send to and from. It appoints a specific wallet location within a blockchain.
  2. All-Time-High (ATH)

      The highest point (in price, in market capitalization) that a cryptocurrency has been in history.
  3. All-Time-Low (ATL)

      The lowest point (in price, in market capitalization) that a cryptocurrency has been in history.
  4. Altcoin

      All cryptocurrencies that are not bitcoin.
  5. Anti Money Laundering (AML)

      A type of framework made of legal and regulatory procedures to minimize and curb the flow of funds that come from illegal or dubious activities.
  6. Arbitrage

      The practice of quickly buying and selling the same asset on different markets to take advantage of the price difference.
  7. Bear Market

      A form of a negative trend in prices of a market.
  8. Bid Price

      The value buyers offer for an asset, such as a commodity, security, or cryptocurrency etc.
  9. Bid-Ask Spread

      The price difference between the lowest asking price and highest bid price on the order book for an asset.
  10. Bitcoin

      The first global, decentralized currency, created by the pseudonymous developer(s) Satoshi Nakamoto. The first cryptocurrency, initially described as a 'Peer-to-Peer e-cash'.
  11. Bits

      A sub-unit of one bitcoin. There are 1,000,000 bits in one bitcoin.
  12. Block

      A collection of bitcoin transactions that have occurred during a period of time (typically about 10 minutes).
  13. Blockchain

      A decentralized, digitized ledger that records transaction information about a cryptocurrency in a chronological order.
  14. BTC

      An abbreviation for the bitcoin currency.
  15. Bull Market

      A positive trend in prices. Term related not only to cryptocurrency area but also commonly known in the traditional markets.
  16. Central Bank Digital Currency

      CBDSs are digital currencies issued by a central bank whose status as legal tender depends on government regulation or law.
  17. Centralized

      When the planning and decision-making mechanisms are concentrated in a specific point within a system.
  18. Chargeback

      The reversal of a bank payment or money transfer after it was authorized.
  19. Coin

      A cryptocurrency or digital cash that is independent of any other platform, which is used as an exchange of value.
  20. Coin Mixer

      Coin mixer allows users to mix up transactions between different cryptocurrency addresses, so they become untraceable.
  21. Cryptocurrency

      A digital currency that is secured by cryptography to work as a medium of exchange within a peer-to-peer (P2P) system.
  22. Cold Storage

      The storage of bitcoin private keys in any fashion that is disconnected from the internet. Typical cold storage includes USB drives, offline computers, or paper wallets.
  23. Cold Wallet

      A bitcoin wallet that is not connected to the internet.
  24. Confirmations

      A bitcoin transaction is considered unconfirmed until it has been included in a block on the blockchain, at which point it has one confirmation. Each additional block is another confirmation.
  25. Cosigner

      An additional person/or entity that has partial control over the wallet.
  26. Decentralized

      Having no central authority nor controlling party.
  27. Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

      An alternative to traditional, centralized forms of financial services.
  28. Digital Asset

      Refers to the digital representation of something that has value.
  29. Digital Currency

      A currency that exists only in digital form, contrary to the traditional currencies.
  30. Distributed

      Designed so that there is no central server or entity that others must connect to. Instead, network participants connect directly to each other.
  31. Distributed Ledger

      Ledgers in which data is stored across a network of decentralized nodes.
  32. Divisibility

      Something that one can split into different sections or portions.
  33. Double Spending

      When a given amount of coins are spent more than once.
  34. Encryption

      A way of encoding a message so that only the intended recipient(s) can decode it. Bitcoin uses encryption to protect wallets from unauthorized access.
  35. Exchange

      A marketplace for cryptocurrencies where users can buy and sell coins.
  36. Fiat

      Money that a government has declared to be legal.
  37. Finality

      The assurance or guarantee that completed (cryptocurrency) transactions cannot be altered, reversed or canceled.
  38. Forex (FX)

      Foreign Exchange Markets. A global market for the trading of fiat currencies.
  39. Full Node

      A computer that fully implements the entirety of rules of an underlying blockchain network and completely validates transactions and blocks on a blockchain.
  40. Fungibility

      The property of an asset whose individual units are indistinguishable from each other. Value and functionality wise.
  41. Halving

      When the block reward of a crypto asset drops to one-half of what it was before.
  42. Hash

      1) A unique identifier of a bitcoin transaction.
      2) A mathematical function that bitcoin miners perform on blocks to make the network secure.
  43. HODL

      A typo of 'Hold' originating from “bitcointalk” that has also been retrofitted to be an acronym for Hold on for Dear Life - to maintain ownership of coins and not sell.
  44. Hot Wallet

      A bitcoin wallet on a device connected to the internet. A wallet installed on a desktop computer or smartphone is usually a hot wallet.
  45. Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

      A fundraising method in which new projects will sell their cryptocurrency to investors.
  46. Know Your Customer (KYC)

      A standard procedure in the finance industry which allows companies to identify their customers and comply with KYC AML laws.
  47. Ledger

      A physical or electronic log book containing a list of transactions and balances typically involving financial accounts.
  48. Lightning Network

      A second layer operating on top of a blockchain, enabling increased transaction speed among participating nodes.
  49. Maker

      A “maker” is somebody that places an order and it does not trade immediately, so his/her order stays in the order book and wait for someone else to fill/match with it later.
  50. Market Capitalization

      The total trading value of a given coin - calculated by the product of the supply of the coin by the current price.
  51. Mempool

      A mempool is the node’s set of all of the unconfirmed transactions that it has seen (but have not yet been added to a block).
  52. Miner

      A computer or group of computers that add new transactions to blocks and verify blocks created by other miners. Miners collect transaction fees and are rewarded with new bitcoins for their services.
  53. Mining

      The verification of transactions on a blockchain network, in which transactions are added as entries into the ledger.
  54. Node

      A participant of the bitcoin network. Nodes share copies of the blockchain and relay new transactions to other nodes.
  55. Non-fungible Token (NFT)

      A type of cryptographic token that represents a unique digital or real-world asset and is not interchangeable.
  56. Open Source Software

      Software's code that is made publicly available and free to distribute. Bitcoin is an open source project.
  57. Order Book

      An electronic record/inventory of outstanding buy and sell orders for a specific asset on an exchange or marketplace.
  58. Paper Wallet

      A type of cold storage wallet where private keys are printed on a piece of paper (or other physical medium.)
  59. Peer-to-Peer (P2P)

      The decentralized interactions between parties in a distributed network, partitioning tasks or workloads between peers.
  60. Portability

      Easily carried or moved.
  61. Private Key/Secret Key

      A string of letters and numbers that can be used to spend bitcoins related to a specific bitcoin address.
  62. Proof of Stake (PoS)

      A consensus mechanism that reward block validators according to the amount of coins they have at stake.
  63. Proof of Work (PoW)

      Data that requires a significant amount of computation to generate but requires a minimal amount of computation to be verified as being correct.
  64. Protocol

      The official rules that dictate how participants on a network must communicate.
  65. Public Key

      A string of letters and numbers that is derived from a private key. A public key allows one to receive bitcoins.
  66. QR Code

      A digital representation of a bitcoin public or private key that is easy to scan by digital cameras.
  67. Satoshi

      The smallest unit of a bitcoin, as defined by the bitcoin protocol. It equals one-hundred-millionth of a bitcoin or 0.00000001 BTC.
  68. Satoshi Nakamoto

      The inventor(s) of bitcoin.
  69. Security Token

      A security token is a digital form of traditional securities.
  70. Shitcoin

      A coin with no obvious potential value or usage.
  71. Signature

      A portion of a bitcoin transaction that proves that the owner of the private key has approved the transaction.
  72. SHA-256

      A cryptographic hash function that generates a 256-bit signature for a text, used in bitcoin proof-of-work (PoW).
  73. Smart Contract

      Automated contracts that trigger certain action when predetermined conditions are met. It works like 'If…then'.
  74. Stablecoin

      Cryptocurrency that is designed to maintain a stable value, linked to an asset like the USD which doesn't change much in value.
  75. Staking

      Participation in a proof-of-stake (PoS) system to put tokens in to serve as a validator to the blockchain and receive rewards.
  76. Taker

      The 'taker' is someone who decides to place an order that is instantly matched with an existing order on the order book.
  77. Token

      Tokens (these are not coins) are digital units issued on a blockchain. They can hold value or be redeemed for assets.
  78. Transaction

      A blockchain's entry that describes a transfer of bitcoins from one address to another.
  79. Transaction Fee

      The so-called "miner's" fee, it is an amount of bitcoin included in each transaction that is collected by miners.
      This is to encourage miners to add the transaction to a block. A standard bitcoin fee amount is 0.0001 BTC.
  80. Validator

      A participant on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, involved in validating blocks for rewards. Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) A very broad term that covers a wide range of natural and legal persons acting as VASP financial intermediaries. These can be crypto exchanges, wallet providers, financial service providers in connection with the issue, offer and sale of virtual assets and other possible business models.
  81. Volatility

      How quickly and how much the price of an asset changes. Calculated in terms of standard deviations in the annual return of an asset over a period of time.
  82. Wallet

      A collection of bitcoin private keys used to spend bitcoins.
Bitclear Payment Gate and Bitclear Exchange are owned by Bitclear AG.
Bitclear Aktiengesellschaft
P.O. Box 534
Industriestrasse 26
9491 Ruggell, Liechtenstein
Copyright © 2023 Bitclear.li