Crypto & Digital Assets
60 Crypto & Digital Assets terms, defined in plain English — part of the 1345-term Finicade finance glossary. Each one has its own page, and links to the free game that teaches it.
- 51% Attack
- A 51% attack is one party controlling most of a network's mining power or stake, allowing them to reverse recent transactions and double-spend.
- Airdrop
- An airdrop distributes free tokens to users who have interacted with a protocol, used to reward early adopters and decentralise ownership.
- Altcoin
- An altcoin is any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin, a category covering everything from major networks to tokens created in an afternoon.
- Automated Market Maker
- An automated market maker prices trades with a formula against a pool of two assets instead of matching orders.
- Bitcoin
- Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency, launched in 2009, with a fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins and no issuing authority.
- Block Explorer
- A block explorer is a website for reading a blockchain — transactions, addresses, balances, contract code.
- Blockchain
- A blockchain is a shared ledger of transactions grouped into cryptographically linked blocks, maintained by many computers rather than one authority.
- Bridge
- A bridge moves assets between blockchains, typically locking them on one side and minting a representation on the other.
- Circulating Supply
- Circulating supply is the tokens currently tradeable, excluding locked, vesting and reserved allocations.
- Cold Storage
- Cold storage keeps private keys on a device that never touches the internet, so remote attackers have nothing to reach.
- Consensus Mechanism
- A consensus mechanism is how a distributed network agrees on one version of history when participants can't trust each other and some may be actively hostile.
- Crypto Exchange
- A centralised crypto exchange matches buyers and sellers on its own order book and typically holds customer assets.
- Crypto Winter
- A crypto winter is a prolonged bear market where prices fall 70–90% from the peak and stay there for a year or more.
- Cryptocurrency
- A cryptocurrency is a digital asset secured by cryptography and issued on a blockchain rather than by a state.
- Custodial vs Non-Custodial Wallet
- In a custodial wallet a company holds the keys and you hold an IOU; in a non-custodial one you hold the keys and the company holds nothing.
- DAO
- A DAO is an organisation whose rules and treasury are governed by token-holder votes executed through smart contracts.
- Decentralized Exchange (DEX)
- A decentralised exchange lets people trade directly from their own wallets through smart contracts, with no custodian and usually no identity checks.
- DeFi
- DeFi rebuilds financial services — lending, trading, derivatives, insurance — as open smart contracts anyone can use without permission.
- Ethereum
- Ethereum is a blockchain designed to run programs, not just record payments — a general-purpose computer whose state every node agrees on.
- Fork
- A fork is a change to a blockchain's rules.
- Gas Fee
- A gas fee pays for the computation a transaction consumes, priced by network demand.
- Halving
- The halving cuts Bitcoin's block reward in half roughly every four years, tapering new issuance towards the 21 million cap.
- Hash Function
- A hash function turns any input into a fixed-length fingerprint that is fast to compute and effectively impossible to reverse.
- HODL
- HODL is crypto's term for holding through volatility, originating in a drunken 2013 forum typo for 'hold'.
- Hot Wallet
- A hot wallet holds keys on an internet-connected device, trading security for the convenience of actually being able to transact.
- Impermanent Loss
- Impermanent loss is the shortfall a liquidity provider suffers versus simply holding both assets, because the pool sells the riser and buys the faller.
- Initial Coin Offering (ICO)
- An ICO sells newly created tokens to the public to fund a project, typically before any product exists.
- Layer 2
- A layer 2 is a separate network that processes transactions off the main chain and posts proof back to it, inheriting its security at far lower fees.
- Lending Protocol
- A lending protocol lets users deposit assets to earn interest and borrow against collateral, with rates set algorithmically by utilisation.
- Lightning Network
- The Lightning Network is Bitcoin's payment layer: two parties open a channel, transact freely off-chain, and settle the net result on-chain.
- Liquidation
- Liquidation is a protocol force-selling your collateral when its value falls below the required ratio, usually with a penalty paid to whoever triggers it.
- Liquidity Pool
- A liquidity pool is a smart contract holding two assets that traders swap against, funded by liquidity providers who earn a share of trading fees.
- Mempool
- The mempool is the waiting room of unconfirmed transactions each node holds before they're included in a block.
- MEV
- MEV is the profit available from reordering, inserting or censoring transactions within a block.
- Mining
- Mining is competing to solve a computational puzzle for the right to add the next block and collect the reward.
- NFT
- An NFT is a token representing ownership of a specific unique item rather than an interchangeable unit.
- Node
- A node is a computer that stores a blockchain and independently verifies every transaction against the rules.
- On-Chain Analysis
- On-chain analysis reads public blockchain data for signals — coins moving to exchanges, long-dormant supply waking, holder concentration, realised profit.
- Oracle
- An oracle feeds outside data — usually prices — into smart contracts, which cannot see beyond their own chain.
- Overcollateralization
- Overcollateralisation requires borrowers to post more value than they take out — often 150% or more — because the protocol has no way to pursue a defaulter.
- Private Key
- A private key is the secret number that authorises spending from a crypto address — whoever holds it owns the assets, with no reset and no appeal.
- Proof of Stake
- Proof of stake secures a chain with capital instead of electricity: validators post tokens as collateral and lose them for misbehaving.
- Proof of Work
- Proof of work secures a blockchain by making block production expensive in real electricity, so rewriting history would cost more than any attack could gain.
- Public Key
- A public key, and the address derived from it, is what you share to receive funds — safe to publish, and impossible to work backwards to the private key.
- Rollup
- A rollup batches many transactions into one posting on the main chain.
- Rug Pull
- A rug pull is a project's creators abandoning it and taking investors' money, usually by draining the liquidity pool or dumping a hidden allocation.
- Satoshi
- A satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, one hundred-millionth of a coin, named after its pseudonymous and still-unidentified creator.
- Seed Phrase
- A seed phrase is 12 or 24 words that regenerate every private key in a wallet — the single point of both recovery and total loss.
- Smart Contract
- A smart contract is code deployed to a blockchain that executes automatically when its conditions are met, with no one able to stop or amend it.
- Spot Bitcoin ETF
- A spot Bitcoin ETF holds actual Bitcoin and trades on a stock exchange, letting investors gain exposure through an ordinary brokerage account.
- Stablecoin
- A stablecoin is a token designed to hold a fixed value, usually one dollar, backed by reserves, by crypto collateral, or by an algorithm.
- Staking
- Staking locks tokens as collateral to help secure a proof-of-stake network, earning a share of new issuance and fees.
- Token vs Coin
- A coin is the native asset of its own blockchain — BTC on Bitcoin, ETH on Ethereum — and pays for that network's transactions.
- Tokenomics
- Tokenomics describes how a token is issued, distributed and used — supply schedule, allocation to insiders, vesting, and what the token is actually needed for.
- Total Value Locked
- Total value locked measures the dollar value of assets deposited in a DeFi protocol, and it's the sector's headline size metric.
- Validator
- A validator is a participant in a proof-of-stake network that proposes and attests to blocks, backed by staked collateral.
- Web3
- Web3 is the idea of an internet where users own their data, identity and assets through blockchain-based credentials rather than platform accounts.
- Whale
- A whale is a holder large enough that their trades move the market.
- Wrapped Token
- A wrapped token represents an asset from one chain on another, backed one-to-one by the original held in custody.
- Yield Farming
- Yield farming chases returns by moving capital between DeFi protocols that pay token incentives for supplying liquidity.