Crypto terms you need to know (Top 50)

Have you ever thought that you must know all the terms in crypto when “playing coins”?

In fact, you don't need to know them all to be among the 5% winners in this market.

In fact, there are many people who do not know it all, but they still invest successfully. They just need to know what they need to know.

Because they are related to capital management, risk management, patience… rather than purely technical aspects.

And I will list the terms in that crypto in this article. Especially if you are new.

NOTE: To avoid complications, I use the word "coin" to refer to both coin and token!

1. What is Blockchain?

Blockchain (block chain) is a chain (chain) of many (blocks) connected to each other.

The newly created block will be attached to the old block with a unique code that makes the data stored in the blocks will not be changed.

2. What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency to apply blockchain technology. A rather special feature of Bitcoin is its limited quantity.

There are only 21 million BTC in the world. Currently has been more than 19 million.

But with the mechanism of halving the reward after 4 years, to mine the remaining 2 million BTC will take more than 100 years.

3. Crypto Terms: What are Altcoins?

Coins (actually including tokens) that are not Bitcoin are called altcoins.

Alt stands for "alternative". So altcoins mean alternative coins.

Altcoins are ETH, BNB, SOL, LUNA, DOGE…

4. What is a coin and what is a token?

There are a few differences between coins and tokens. But you just need to remember that coins that run on its own blockchain are called coins.

Those coins that do not have their own blockchain are called tokens.

For example, ETH is called a coin because it runs on its own network, Ethereum.

While other coins are built on Ethereum blockchain and do not have their own blockchain like LINK, DOGE, USDT, WBTC, OMG are called tokens.

But for the sake of simplicity, I always call them all coins.

5. What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is the second blockchain invented to overcome the weaknesses of Bitcoin.

One of the special features is that one can program on the Ethereum network with Smart Contracts to create decentralized applications (DApps).

But the Ethereum network itself has other inherent weaknesses. That is the reason that other blockchains are constantly being born.

Ether (ETH) is the coin of this blockchain.

6. What is a stable coin?

Coins that are pegged to fiat currencies such as USD, EUR, VND… are called stablecoins.

Because of the 1:1 exchange rate with fiat currencies, these coins are very volatile.

This coin is the bridge between the traditional financial market and the cryptocurrency market.

See more: What are stablecoins?? 3 popular stablecoins

If you spend VND to buy USDT in your wallet, you will never be afraid of losses because of market fluctuations.

Popular stablecoins are USDT, USDC, BUSD, UST…

7. What is USDT?

USDT is a kind of stablecoin as I mentioned above.

USDT is easily understood as a digital version of the USD. The only difference is that it is on the blockchain.

Therefore USDT is priced at par with the US dollar.

This is probably the first coin that you will come into contact with when getting acquainted with the cryptocurrency market.

8. Crypto Terms: What is BUSD?

BUSD (Binance USD) is a stable coin pegged at 1:1 against USD issued by Binance exchange (in partnership with Paxos).

BUSD is approved and regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). It is one of the 5 largest stablecoins on the market today.

9. What is USDC?

USDC is a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and was founded by Coinbase exchange and the company Circle.

10. What is P2P Transaction?

A P2P transaction is a transaction between two users on an exchange.

For example, if I want to get VND money in my bank account and want to buy $100 USDT, go to Remitano, Binance and find a seller.

The exchange will stand in the middle as an intermediary to ensure that the transaction takes place quickly and smoothly.

11. What is a crypto wallet?

When you create an account on the exchanges, you will automatically have the wallets that the exchange provides. You can use this wallet to buy, sell, transfer money between exchanges or other wallets.

It's called a floor wallet. Even though it's your wallet, you don't actually own it.

In addition, you can use a non-custodial wallet (which I often call a personal wallet for easy understanding).

Some wallets that you should use are Trust Wallet, Coin98 Wallet... These are multi-chain wallets so you can store coins of many different blockchains.

12. Crypto Terms: What is Hold Coin?

Hold coin or hodl coin is a word used to describe the act of holding a certain coin for a long time (usually in years).

You can hodl on exchange wallets, personal wallets (hot wallets, cold wallets) at will.

13. What is DCA crypto?

DCA is a price averaging strategy when investing in crypto.

This means that when you find a coin you trust you will always buy when the price is low for a better average price.

Of course, you should thoroughly research the coin you intend to DCA with. Some coins you more DCA the more you go into the "ground".

There are 2 DCA strategies that I temporarily call proactive and periodic.

Active is when you buy yourself when the price of that coin goes low at a rate you choose.

For example, if the price drops at 10%, buy it. Or you rely on the support zone when doing technical analysis…

A recurring DCA strategy means that you will buy at a certain time of your choosing. For example, buy $10 in BNB at 8:00 am every Sunday.

Some exchanges like Binance have automatic recurring purchases for you. They will then transfer this coin to Staking to increase your interest rate.

14. What is hidden gem coin?

"Hidden gem" means "hidden gem".

Hidden gem coin refers to coins with great potential but untapped.

See more: KuCoin exchange registration guide to hunt the next hidden gem

15. What is a market cap?

Market cap is the total value of a coin on the market.

Market cap = the number of coins in circulation x the value of that 1 coin in the current market

For example, there are 19 million Bitcoins in circulation and the current Bitcoin price is $36,000, the market cap of Bitcoin will now be $684 billion.

16. Crypto Terms: What is Coin Top?

Top coins are coins with a market cap greater than $1 billion.

Usually the top 100 coins on the CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap rankings will be the top coins.

17. What is low cap coin?

Low cap coins are coins with low capitalization (under $50 million), low 24-hour trading volume (sometimes less than $100k).

18. Crypto Terms: What is FOMO?

FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out.

This is the psychological effect when you fear that if you don't do something like the crowd is doing, you will miss something like an opportunity to buy a certain coin at a good price.

See more: What is FOMO?? 5 effective ways to "escape" FOMO for newbies

19. What is Buy the Dip?

This is the coin term used to refer to buying when the market or a certain coin has a strong decline in price.

20. What is Binance Staking?

Staking is simply the act of locking a certain cryptocurrency on the Binance exchange to receive rewards.

See more: Binance Registration Instructions latest 2022

There are 2 forms of staking that are fixed and flexible.

Fixed staking is that you will have to lock a certain coin for a certain period of time, for example 28 days. If you withdraw before this time, no interest will be charged.

Flexible staking is that you can withdraw anytime you want and still get interest. Of course, because of flexibility, the interest rate will be lower than fixed staking.

21. Who is CZ?

CZ full name is Changpeng Zhao is a Chinese Canadian. He is the founder and CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange - Binance.

22. Crypto Terms: What is ATH?

ATH (short for All Time High) refers to the all-time high price of a certain coin ever recorded.

You can view the ATH index on CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap.

For example BTC ATH as of May 2022 is $69,044 on 11/10/2021 according to CoinGecko.

NOTE: Depending on the data, the ATH of each platform may be slightly different.

23. What is a DEX?

This crypto term stands for Decentralized exchange – decentralized exchange.

This means that the transaction process takes place completely automatically between the buyer and the seller without the presence of any intermediaries.

You do not need to transfer money to the exchange. You just need to connect the wallet to the DEX and conduct the transaction.

When executing a buy or sell order, the assets will be transferred directly from your personal wallet such as Metamask to the wallet of the person you are dealing with and vice versa.

The largest DEXs by trading volume are Uniswap (v3), Curve Finance, PancakeSwap…

24. Crypto Terms: What is an IDO?

IDO stands for Initial DEX Offering – the initial distribution of tokens to the public via the DEX exchange.

This is a form of fundraising for crypto projects through decentralized platforms.

25. What is an Airdrop?

Airdrop literally means "falling from the sky".

If you are airdropped, it means that you are given free coins of the project or projects in that ecosystem by the project.

If you perform one or more certain tasks to receive a reward, it is called a bounty.

The most famous form of airdrop is retroactive.

This is a form of giving coins to users who have interacted with the project in the past at a time when the project has not yet launched the token.

And the first project to airdrop for users in this form is the Uniswap DEX exchange with UNI at the end of 2020.

26. Crypto Terms: What is Trade Coin?

Trade coin is a term used to refer to the activity of buying and selling coins on the cryptocurrency market to make a profit.

If you buy low and sell high, you will make a profit and vice versa.

27. What is Crypto?

Crypto or cryptocurrency are coins (or tokens) running on the blockchain platform, so it has the characteristics of blockchain technology such as security, anonymity, transparency, preventing duplicate transactions twice...

In Vietnam, crypto is called cryptocurrency, electronic money, cryptocurrency and even virtual money…

28. What is the platform coin?

The platform coin is the coin of the foundation blockchain (the blockchain platform, often referred to as the blockchain).

Platform blockchains are blockchains that allow developers to create decentralized applications on it.

It can be roughly understood that blockchain platform is like iOS or Android phone operating systems.

On those operating systems, developers can build apps like YouTube, Facebook, TikTok or Binance…

Popular platform coins such as ADA, SOL, MATIC, NEAR, ATOM…

29. Crypto Terms: What is an EVM?

EVM is an Ethereum virtual machine that acts as an intermediary in the execution of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

Each EVM assumes a separate node creating the security and decentralization of the network.

EVM blockchains are blockchains compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine. This means that Ethereum smart contracts can run on those blockchains.

Some typical blockchain EVMs are BSC, Celo, Avalanche, Fantom, etc.

So even though the Metamask wallet runs on the Ethereum network, it can also be configured to run on other EVM networks.

See more: Instructions on how to add networks to Metamask

30. What is on-chain sending?

Sending coins on-chain means that all transaction data will be recorded on the blockchain.

This data includes receiving wallet address, coin type, transfer amount, time, gas fee, etc.

The opposite of on-chain sending is sending off-chain with zero or very low sending fees.

31. What is Swap Coin?

Swap coin means swapping from one coin to another. Usually there are two cases:

• First: you want to swap one coin for another without any fees. For example, you want to convert 1000 USDT to BUSD. You can also use the Spot trading function if you wish.
• Second: you hold the coin of a changing project so you have to swap from the old coin to the new coin. For example, if you hold GXS on Binance, you can swap to a new currency, REI…

32. Crypto Terms: What is Gwei?

Gwei is the unit commonly used to calculate gas prices when transacting on the network.

Depending on different blockchain, Gwei will have different value.

For example:

• On the Ethereum network, 1 Gwei = 10^-9 ETH
• On BSC network, 1 Gwei = 10^-9 BNB

33. What is a hard cap?

When you register to buy coins on Binance Launchpad, you will encounter the concept of Hard cap per user.

This is the definition indicating the maximum number of tokens that a user can buy.

34. What is Discord?

Discord is a social platform that allows you to send instant messages or voiceovers to people on the same server.

The difference between Discord and other platforms like Telegram is, in one server you can create many different channels.

For example, a project will have items such as rules, chat, support, events, gifts, coin trading (NFT) ... and even separate channels for each different language.

For example, a Vietnamese chat channel for Vietnamese people. Japanese channel for Japanese people for example…

35. What is the ecosystem in crypto?

An ecosystem in crypto is a system of many products and platforms that support each other in the same blockchain.

Those platforms can be stable coins, wallets, exchanges, borrowing and lending platforms, NFTs, games, etc.

36. What is VC in crypto?

VC stands for Venture Capital.

These are venture capital funds that specialize in pouring capital into small projects that they think have potential in the market.

Some of the major VCs in crypto include:

• 3AC – Three Arrows Capital
• a16z – Andreessen Horowitz
• Alameda Research
• Digital Currency Group
• Coinbase Ventures
• Binance Labs
• Multicoin
• Pantera
• Animoca Brands
• …

37. Crypto Terms: What is an NFT Game?

NFT games are video games built and developed on the blockchain platform.

Each game will have its own economy to combat inflation and have 1-2 tokens that complement each other.

In-game items, rewards... will be released in the form of NFT (are unique, non-fungible tokens).

38. What is Tradingview?

Tradingview is a platform that helps you do technical analysis of cryptocurrencies, stocks, Forex…

In addition, this is also a miniature social network for traders. A place where you can freely share your opinions with everyone.

See more: What is Tradingview?? 3 ways to use TradingView 2022

39. Crypto Terms: What is TVL?

TVL stands for Total Value Locked, which is the total value of assets locked on a DeFi protocol.

In addition, TVL is also known as the coin value staked on the blockchain network using the Proof of Stake (POS) consensus protocol.

40. What is Binance liquid swap?

Liquid swap is a DeFi product of Binance exchange and is integrated with Binance Earn.

Anyone can become a liquidity provider or use the Swap feature without having to go through the complexities of DeFi.

Recently, Binance Liquid Swap was recognized as the top liquidity pool platform in terms of 24-hour active users (according to debank.com).

41. Crypto Terms: What is Rug Pull?

Rug pull is a crypto term that refers to the act of a developer suddenly leaving the project and stealing all the investors' money.

Rug means carpet, and pull means pull. So reg pull literally means you pull out the mat when someone else is standing on it.

Everyone has greed, so before investing in any project, you should learn carefully! Especially projects with anonymous teams.

42. What is a verification code?

Verification code in Vietnamese is a verification code (or confirmation code).

This is a sequence of numbers (usually 6 numbers) sent to your email or phone number when you sign up for an account on exchanges or other platforms.

The verification code ensures that you are the original owner of that email account or phone number.

Verification codes are present in many places on the internet, not only in the cryptocurrency sector.

But every time sending verification code to email or phone is quite annoying.

So many platforms allow you to get the verification code through another platform like Google Authenticator or Authy… (you have to install it before).

So when saying Google verification code, it is usually understood as a 6-digit verification code that is automatically generated every 30 seconds from the Google Authenticator app.

43. What is a Diamond Hand?

Diamond hand means "diamond hand" in Vietnamese.

You will probably see this phrase appear quite a lot on Twitter / Reddit and even Telegram when the market is on fire.

Diamond hand refers to those who hold onto their crypto holdings no matter how the market plunges.

However, whether you cut your losses or not, you have to decide for yourself!

44. Crypto Terms: What is a Smart Contract?

Smart contract or Smart Contract is a program that runs on the blockchain.

The most popular are Smart Contracts that run on the Ethereum blockchain.

Unlike a real-life contract, a Smart Contract does not require the intervention of a third party.

It runs by itself according to a set of pre-made rules, something like “if this happens, this will happen”.

45. What is a Hackathon?

Hackathon is a combination of the words "hack" and "marathon".

This is a competition for developers to find potential projects built on an ecosystem.

In Vietnam, we often hear about Solana's Hackathon.

46. Crypto Terms: What is Tokenomics?

Tokenomics is a combination of the words Token (cryptocurrency) and Economics (economics). So Tokenomics means anything that can affect that token.

If you are a hodler, a long-term investor of a certain coin, you should learn carefully about the token's tokenomics.

Tokenomics has a lot of different factors, but you should pay attention to circulating supply, total supply, token allocation rate, token payment schedule, etc.

For example, if you are a trader or hodler of NEAR, C98… then you must know what days their token payment schedule is.

47. What is meme coin?

Meme coins are coins created not for the purpose of contributing to the cryptocurrency market.

Meme coin inspired by memes, funny jokes on social networks.

One of the most famous coin memes is Dogecoin (DOGE). After that, a lot of coin memes trend dogs and cats were born.

48. What is a peak swing?

When you have just bought a certain coin and when you have just bought it, the price drops continuously, it means you have swung right at the top of the price.

The “peak swing” is often the result of the FOMO effect. There is a day "back to the shore" or not, it is still unlucky.

Of course, this word is used for many financial markets in general such as stocks, foreign exchange... not just cryptocurrencies.

49. Crypto Terms: What is an AMA coin?

AMA stands for Ask Me Anything - ask me anything.

This is usually a showcase and Q&A event between the project's founders and the community interested in the project.

AMA is often livestreamed on Telegram, Facebook…

50. What is all in in crypto?

All in means "all hands". All in has a rather broad connotation.

It could be that you use all the money you have to buy cryptocurrency. Then it can be considered that you are all-in to crypto.

Or you use all the money available on the exchange to buy a certain coin only once.

You shouldn't be all-in. Worst case you could lose everything. Divide and manage your capital well.

51. Crypto Terms: What is a vesting token?

As I said in the tokenomics section, the token release schedule is an important part of any project.

This both helps the project retain long-term investors and avoid strong discharges.

The process of holding, locking, and paying that token is called vesting.

52. What is the Billing Postal Code?

This is your zip code-based payment code.

63 provinces and cities will have 63 different zip codes. To find the zip code of the area you live in, just type “province name + zip code” into Google.

Note that this code consists of 6 digits. For example, Hanoi is 100000, HCMC is 700000.

53. What are the terms in crypro: Pump and dump?

These are words that refer to the act of “blowing” the price to a high (pump) then continuously selling causing the price to drop dramatically (dump).

Pump and dump can be part of the shark's "loading" process to "collect" and take profits.

54. What is Telegram?

Telegram is a messaging app like Zalo or Mess.

The difference is that the messages on Telegram are 2-way encrypted, so it is used by many crypto believers.

Moreover, this is a non-profit, ad-free platform that is loved by many people.

55. What is Coinbase?

Coinbase is a cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States. The CEO of this exchange is Brian Armstrong, also a quite famous person in the crypto world.

Coinbase listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in April/21 with the stock ticker COIN.

See also: Top 10 virtual currency exchange biggest in the world

56. What is Binance Chain Wallet?

Binance Chain Wallet is the official non-custodial (your full control) wallet of the Binance exchange.

Binance Chain Wallet works on the blockchain of BSC, Binance Chain and Ethereum. You can install this utility into Brave, Chrome, Firefox browsers.

57. Crypto Terms: What is Bitcoin Halving?

For every 210,000 blocks generated, the reward for each block is halved.

There are a total of 21 million Bitcoins, as of now (June/22) there have been more than 19 million BTC mined.

But because of the halving mechanism, to mine the remaining 2 million BTC, it will take more than 100 years.

58. What is white paper?

A white paper, also known as a white paper, is a report or guide to help readers better understand an issue. Or solve a problem.

For example Satoshi released the white paper on Bitcoin in October 2008.

When learning about a certain cryptocurrency project, you should carefully read the white paper of that project!

59. What is Bitcoin dominance?

Bitcoin dominance is the ratio of % Bitcoin capitalization to the total capitalization of the entire cryptocurrency market.

The higher this ratio, the more the capitalization of BTC prevails over altcoins.

You can see Bitcoin dominance on TradingView.

You can see the Bitcoin halving information updated by Binance exchange here.

So I've just gone through crypto terminology for newbies.

I will update more. Wish you success!