Glossary
Crypto glossary
Plain-English definitions for the vocabulary you will meet reading about crypto markets — 27 terms, each explaining what it means and why it matters.
B
- Bitcoin dominance Bitcoin's share of the total market capitalisation of all crypto assets, expressed as a percentage.
- Blockchain A shared, append-only ledger of transactions that many independent computers hold copies of and agree on, without any…
C
- Circulating supply The number of units of a crypto asset that currently exist and are available to trade.
- Cold storage Keeping private keys on a device that has never been connected to the internet, so they cannot be…
- Consensus The process by which a decentralised network agrees on which transactions happened and in what order.
D
G
- Gas The fee paid to have a transaction processed on Ethereum and similar networks, priced according to how much…
H
L
- Layer 2 A network built on top of a blockchain that processes transactions cheaply off the main chain while still…
- Liquidation The forced closure of a leveraged position by an exchange or protocol when the collateral backing it is…
- Liquidity How easily an asset can be bought or sold in size without moving its price.
M
- Market capitalisation The current price of an asset multiplied by its circulating supply — a rough measure of the total…
- Max supply The largest number of units of an asset that will ever exist, where the protocol sets a hard…
N
- Node A computer running blockchain software that stores the ledger, validates transactions and relays them to other computers on…
O
- Order book The live list of buy and sell orders for an asset on an exchange, arranged by price.
P
- Private key The secret number that authorises spending from a crypto address. Whoever knows it controls the funds.
- Proof of stake A consensus mechanism where validators lock up the network's own token as collateral and can lose it if…
- Proof of work A consensus mechanism where computers compete to solve a hard arithmetic puzzle, and the winner gets to add…
S
- Seed phrase A list of ordinary words, usually twelve or twenty-four, that encodes every private key in a wallet.
- Self-custody Holding your own crypto directly, controlling the private keys yourself, rather than leaving it with an exchange or…
- Slashing The penalty in a proof-of-stake network where a validator that misbehaves or goes offline has part of its…
- Slippage The difference between the price you expected to trade at and the price you actually got.
- Smart contract A program stored on a blockchain that runs exactly as written when its conditions are met, without anyone…
- Stablecoin A crypto token designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar, so it can be used…
V
- Volatility How much and how quickly an asset's price moves, in either direction.