2017 was the year of cryptocurrencies, with a huge spike of public interest in this complex phenomenon, and people feeding their curiosity by acquainting themselves with the challenging concepts of the endless digital currency world.
Here are some of the common cryptocurrency jargons to give you a head start and prepare you for the baffling world of virtual currency!
1. HODL– HODL stands for ‘Hold on for dear life’. It first emerged on the Bitcoin Talk Forum in 2013, from a member named ‘GameKyuubi’ under a thread called ‘I AM HODLING’, to indicate that he was ‘holding’ on to his Bitcoins. Despite a serious crash in its value. This misspelled term has now become extremely popular and is used to indicate that a trader is holding on to their respective crypto because they believe it might become profitable in the future, if not currently.
2. MOONING or TO THE MOON– This jargon refers to an escalation or upward momentum of a cryptocurrency, as it keeps increasing in value and price. For example, the price of a new cryptocurrency might one day ‘go to the moon’.
3. WHALE– This term is used for traders in crypto with hefty accounts who believe that the market for a particular cryptocurrency will rise or escalate and are referred to as ‘Bullish’ or ‘Bullish Whales’.
4. HASHRATE– This refers to the rate at which a block is discovered and the rate at which the tasks or arithmetic puzzles related to it are cracked.
5. SMART CONTRACT– It refers to a two- way contract that is not alterable and which is stored on a blockchain that has specific operations and is similar to a real-world contract. It can be used to define certain benchmarks or barriers that have to be fulfilled to verify money or data to be deposited.
6. BEAR– Borrowed from the Wall Street lingo, BEAR means a trader or investor who believes that the value of a specific cryptocurrency will fall in the market and wishes to benefit from, that fall.
7. ATH– ATH is an acronym for ‘All Time High’ which refers to the point where the price of a cryptocurrency or coin has broken all previous records and is now trading at the highest price it has ever reached.
8. BAGHOLDER– A ‘Bagholder’ is a trader or investor who has been ‘hodling’ or holding on to a specific cryptocurrency for a very long span of time and now has to face the consequences of it.
9. FOMO– FOMO stands for ‘ Fear of Missing Out’ which indicates the fear of missing out on the potentially exponential profit from an investment or decision.
10. P2P– Peer-to-Peer is one of the biggest focus of blockchain tech because it is one of the biggest factors to establish decentralisation. Almost every interaction on the blockchain can be fulfilled by P2P.
Hence, these are some of the many basic terms that anyone dealing or trading with cryptocurrencies should be well acquainted with, and which help in communication with other traders or investors easier.
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