The Beginner Guide to Crypto Slang
Crypto culture has a ton of (often baffling) slang, which can make it both confusing and intimidating to get your footing in the space. So whether you're trying to make sense of what it means to "HODL" or curious about why someone might be excited about "going to the moon," this guide will equip you with the knowledge to understand and participate in crypto conversations confidently.
Diamond Hands
Popularized on Reddit, this term is used to describe traders or investors who hold onto their crypto investments, despite market fluctuations, or significant losses. One might say, “you’ve got diamond hands.” The opposite (negative connotation) term is “paper hands”.
DYOR
Crypto twitter is fond of saying “DYOR” or “Do your own research” when information that is being shared. DYOR is closely related shorthand to “not financial advice” and is a recommendation to make sure you’re well informed and have done the work to find out if an investment is right for you before buying.
FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
This acronym describes the anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere. In the crypto world, FOMO refers to the fear of missing out on buying or investing in a cryptocurrency when its price starts rising rapidly.
A practical strategy to combat FOMO effective strategy is dollar-cost averaging (DCA). This approach involves investing the same amount of money every week regardless of the current state of the market.
FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt)
In crypto and blockchain, FUD can refer to negativity spread deliberately by skeptics or competitors to decrease the price or reputation of a certain asset.
The Flippening
The Flippening is a hypothetical scenario where Ethereum's market capitalization, utility, or overall market dominance surpasses that of Bitcoin. This is considered a potential future event by the Ethereum community.
Halving
This term usually refers to the Bitcoin Halving (or “Halvening”), where the reward for mining new blocks is halved. This means miners receive 50% less cryptocurrency for verifying transactions than they did before the halving. For Bitcoin, a halving happens approximately every four years or after 210,000 blocks have been mined.
This mechanism was designed by Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, to mimic the production rate of commodities like gold, introducing a form of synthetic inflation that decreases over time.
HODL
Originally appearing as a typo for "hold," in a Bitcointalk forum in 2013, HODLing has now become synonymous to holding onto your cryptocurrency long term, believing in its long term upward trajectory. As Mike, the original poster describes - “In a zero-sum game such as this,” he wrote, “traders can only take your money if you sell.”
There have been many bull and bear cycles since Mike’s original post, but thus far his advice hasn’t been off the mark as Bitcoin has become one of the best-performing assets of the last decade. Fitting, since HODL has also become an acronym for "Hold On for Dear Life."
Interested in HODLing? As mentioned in FOMO, one great method is dollar cost averaging (DCA).
Laser Eyes
This meme is especially popular on social media, where bullish Bitcoin supporters change their profile pictures to include red laser eyes; Among the most well known are MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, Tom Brady, Elon Musk and Paris Hilton.
Meme coins
Meme coins are a type of cryptocurrency that are created as a joke or based on an internet meme rather than a serious project with specific goals or utility.
Dogecoin is the most famous example of a meme coin but there are thousands of others, with new ones such as dogwifhat rising in prominence each crypto cycle.
Moon (or Mooning)
This term is used to describe a cryptocurrency whose price is experiencing a strong upward market trend, or "going to the moon." It signifies a dramatic increase in the price of a cryptocurrency.
Pump and Dump
A pump and dump scheme is a manipulative tactic where a group of traders collaborate to artificially increase the price of an asset. Cryptocurrency with smaller market capitalization can be susceptible to such strategies. A group of traders will buy large amounts of a certain token then aggressively promote the asset across various platforms, including Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Facebook, and YouTube comments.
Once the asset reaches a predetermined target price, the initial group sells off their holdings leading to a sudden drop in the asset's price. New investors, drawn in by the hype and now purchasing at peak prices, finds latecomers "holding the bag"—stuck with a devalued asset.
Rekt
A gaming slang adaptation of "wrecked," this term is used to describe a large financial loss in cryptocurrency trading. It's typically used when traders FOMO into coins and then experience significant losses.
Crypto Whales
In the crypto context, a whale is an individual or an entity that holds a large amount of a particular cryptocurrency. Here’s an example of the top 100 Bitcoin addresses. Whale’s massive holdings mean they have the potential to influence cryptocurrency markets through large-scale buy or sell orders.
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