Crypto Glossary

Airdrop Beginner

An airdrop distributes free tokens to a set of wallets, usually to reward early use or bootstrap a user base. Read more →

Altcoin Beginner

“Altcoin” means any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin — literally an “alternative coin.” Read more →

ASIC Intermediate

An ASIC is a chip built to do exactly one job. In mining, it means hardware designed for a single algorithm and nothing else. Read more →

All-Time High (ATH) Beginner

An all-time high is the highest price an asset has ever reached. Read more →

Bear Market Beginner

A bear market is a sustained period of falling prices and pessimism. Read more →

Bitcoin Beginner

Bitcoin is the first and largest cryptocurrency — a decentralised digital money with a fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins. Read more →

Block Height Beginner

Block height is the number of blocks in a chain since its first block, effectively the chain's clock. Read more →

Block Reward Beginner

The block reward is the newly created coin paid to whoever produces a valid block, and it is a miner's main revenue. Read more →

Blockchain Beginner

A blockchain is a shared, append-only ledger of transactions maintained across many computers rather than by a single authority. Read more →

Break-Even Electricity Rate Intermediate

The break-even electricity rate is the power price at which a mining machine exactly covers its own consumption and earns nothing. Read more →

Bull Market Beginner

A bull market is a sustained period of rising prices and optimism. Read more →

Circulating Supply Beginner

Circulating supply is the number of coins currently available in the market, as opposed to the maximum that will ever exist. Read more →

Cloud Mining Intermediate

Cloud mining means renting mining capacity from a third party instead of owning hardware. It is a category with an unusually high concentration of fraud. Read more →

Cold Storage Beginner

Cold storage keeps private keys on a device that has never been connected to the internet, isolating them from remote attackers. Read more →

Consensus Mechanism Beginner

A consensus mechanism is how a decentralised network agrees on one shared history without anyone in charge. Read more →

Custody Beginner

Custody is the question of who actually holds the private keys, and therefore who actually controls the coins. Read more →

DAO Advanced

A DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) is a community-run entity governed by token-holder votes and smart contracts rather than a traditional management structure. Read more →

DeFi Intermediate

DeFi (decentralised finance) is financial services — lending, trading, earning yield — built on public blockchains without traditional intermediaries. Read more →

Difficulty Adjustment Intermediate

A difficulty adjustment is the scheduled recalibration that keeps block times near their target as hashrate changes. Read more →

DYOR Beginner

DYOR stands for “do your own research” — a reminder to verify claims independently before making any decision. Read more →

Ethereum Beginner

Ethereum is the largest smart-contract platform — a programmable blockchain whose native asset is ether (ETH). Read more →

Fear & Greed Index Beginner

The Fear & Greed Index summarises crypto market sentiment on a 0–100 scale, from extreme fear to extreme greed. Read more →

Fiat Currency Beginner

Fiat is government-issued money, such as the US dollar or euro, that is not backed by a physical commodity. Read more →

Fork Beginner

A fork is a change to a blockchain's rules, or a split in its history when participants disagree. Read more →

Gas Intermediate

Gas is the fee paid to process a transaction on Ethereum, measured in a small unit of ether called gwei. Read more →

Halving Intermediate

The Bitcoin halving is a scheduled event, roughly every four years, that cuts the reward miners receive for adding a block in half. Read more →

Hashprice Advanced

Hashprice is the revenue a unit of hashrate earns per day, a single figure summarising mining profitability conditions. Read more →

Hashrate Beginner

Hashrate is the total computing power a mining network applies to finding new blocks, measured in hashes per second. Read more →

Immersion Cooling Advanced

Immersion cooling submerges mining hardware in a non-conductive fluid to remove heat far more effectively than air. Read more →

Joules per Terahash (J/TH) Intermediate

J/TH measures mining hardware efficiency: how much energy a machine consumes for each terahash of work. Lower is better. Read more →

Layer 2 Intermediate

A layer 2 is a network built on top of a blockchain that processes transactions off the main chain while inheriting its security. Read more →

Liquidity Intermediate

Liquidity is how easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price much. Read more →

Liquidity Pool Intermediate

A liquidity pool is a smart contract holding two or more assets that traders swap against, replacing a traditional order book. Read more →

Market Capitalisation Beginner

Market cap is a coin’s current price multiplied by its circulating supply — a measure of its total size. Read more →

Mempool Intermediate

The mempool is the waiting room of unconfirmed transactions that each node holds before they are included in a block. Read more →

Merge Mining Advanced

Merge mining lets the same work secure two chains at once, earning rewards on both without extra energy. Read more →

Mining Intermediate

Mining is the process of using computing power to validate transactions and secure a proof-of-work blockchain like Bitcoin. Read more →

Mining Difficulty Beginner

Difficulty is a protocol setting that controls how hard it is to find a valid block, adjusting automatically to keep block times on schedule. Read more →

Mining Pool Beginner

A mining pool combines the hashrate of many miners and shares the rewards proportionally, turning rare large payouts into frequent small ones. Read more →

NFT Beginner

An NFT (non-fungible token) is a unique blockchain token used to represent ownership of a specific item, such as art or collectibles. Read more →

Node Beginner

A node is any computer running blockchain software and maintaining a copy of the ledger. Read more →

Nonce Intermediate

A nonce is the value a miner changes on each attempt so that hashing the same block produces a different result. Read more →

Pool Fee Beginner

A pool fee is the percentage a mining pool retains from rewards in exchange for aggregating hashrate and distributing payouts. Read more →

Private Key Intermediate

A private key is the secret number that controls a crypto wallet and authorises transactions from it. Read more →

Proof of Work Beginner

Proof of work secures a blockchain by requiring miners to spend real computation, and therefore real energy, to add blocks. Read more →

Rug Pull Beginner

A rug pull is a fraud in which a project's operators abandon it and take investors' money, typically by draining liquidity. Read more →

Scrypt Intermediate

Scrypt is the hashing algorithm used by Litecoin and Dogecoin, originally designed to be memory-intensive and therefore harder to specialise. Read more →

Seed Phrase Beginner

A seed phrase is the list of words that can regenerate a wallet and every key in it. Anyone who has it controls the funds. Read more →

SHA-256 Intermediate

SHA-256 is the cryptographic hash function Bitcoin uses for mining, producing a fixed 256-bit output from any input. Read more →

Slashing Intermediate

Slashing is the destruction of part of a validator's staked coins as a penalty for misbehaviour or serious downtime. Read more →

Slippage Intermediate

Slippage is the difference between the price you expect on a trade and the price you actually get. Read more →

Smart Contract Intermediate

A smart contract is code deployed on a blockchain that runs automatically when its conditions are met. Read more →

Solo Mining Intermediate

Solo mining means mining alone rather than in a pool, keeping the entire block reward on the rare occasion you find one. Read more →

Stablecoin Beginner

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged to a currency like the US dollar. Read more →

Staking Intermediate

Staking means locking up a proof-of-stake cryptocurrency to help secure the network, earning rewards in return. Read more →

Stale Block Advanced

A stale or orphaned block is a validly mined block that loses the race to be built upon, so its reward is forfeited. Read more →

Tokenomics Intermediate

Tokenomics describes how a token is created, distributed and removed, and what it is actually used for. Read more →

Transaction Fee Beginner

A transaction fee is what a user pays to have their transaction included in a block. Read more →

Validator Beginner

A validator is a participant in a proof-of-stake network that proposes and attests to blocks, the rough equivalent of a miner. Read more →

Volatility Beginner

Volatility describes how sharply and quickly a price moves up and down. Read more →

Wallet Beginner

A crypto wallet is software or hardware that stores the keys used to access and move your cryptocurrency. Read more →

Whitepaper Beginner

A whitepaper is the document in which a project sets out what it is building and how the system is meant to work. Read more →