Cryptogloassary

Because I see a lot of new altcoin enthusiasts joining the crypto world, I made a simple glossary with crypto jargon. Do you miss anything? Don’t hesitate to add it as a comment (I will edit the post).

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Address – A bitcoin address is essentially the same thing as your home address. It’s the location from which you would receive, send or hold your currency. These addresses generally manifest in a long string of alphanumeric characters and will look something like:
1MhN5qfH1vgx9CLL17i3DK9D2gzrHR7dZF
A wallet address is the public portion of the two encrypted keys necessary for a holder to accept or verify a transaction.

Altcoin, the abbreviation for alternative coin, or alternate coin, or all blockchain projects and related currency that exist in addition to Bitcoin.

ASIC – Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)

An Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) is a computer chip created to perform one specific function, and only that function. Since mining of cryptocurrency data blocks can demand a lot of computer space and time, some miners set aside entire devices—or partition off a section of their computers—to do nothing but mining.

Bearish, a downward trend.

Bip – Bitcoin Improvement Proposals. A set of proposals that members of the bitcoin community have submitted to improve bitcoin. For example BIP0021 is a proposal to improve the bitcoin URI scheme.

Block is a part of the Blockchain and is usually associated with an encrypted hash with the previous block in the block.

Blockchain, very neatly explained by Nieuwsuur (or here), but in text: a decentralized database that maintains a data list that can not be manipulated.

BTC (฿). I do not intend to spell out all currencies, but Bitcoin is an exception.

Bullish, an upward trend.

Confirmations – Once a transaction is included in a block, it has “one confirmation”. As soon as another block is mined on the same blockchain, the transaction has two confirmations etc. Six or more confirmations is considered sufficient proof that a transaction cannot be reversed.

Core wallet, a wallet that contains the whole blockchain and most of the time delivers tools to give developers the ability to program in or on the blockchain.

Dapps aka applications written in the blockchain, which means it’s a decentralized application aka Dapp.

Difficulty – A network-wide setting that controls how much computation is required to find a proof-of-work.

Difficulty target – A difficulty at which all the computation in the network will find blocks approximately every 10 minutes.

Difficulty re-targeting – A network-wide re-calculation of the difficulty which occurs once every 2106 blocks and considers the hashing power of the previous 2106 blocks.

Electrum wallet, a light weight wallet to store coins. Doesn’t download the blockchain, but gets the information from a thirth party.

Encryption, data lock that can only be unlocked with a private key.

Exchange, sometimes called coinexchange, is the exchange office where buyers and sellers can trade in Bit and Altcoins. Examples are Litebit, BTCdirect, Kraken and Bittrex.

Fees – The sender of a transaction often includes a fee to the network for processing their requested transaction. Most transactions require a minimum fee of 0.5mBTC.

FOMO means Fear Of Missing Out. As the term suggests, the Bitcoin or an altcoin rises sharply in value and investors take steps without rationale – so emotion – because they are afraid to miss the boat.

FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. In the world of crypto FUD means spreading fear, uncertainty or doubt about a certain blockchain project.

Genesis block – The first block in the blockchain, used to initialize the crypto-currency.

Hash, an encryption that can no longer be undone.

HODL, either hold, but then written wrong. Reportedly a Bitcointalk user wearing a drunk mood over his keyboard. HODL is currently jargon for long-term investor cryptocurrency trader. Nice acronym mentioned in the comments: Hold On Despite Loss.

ICO, Initial Coin Offering. A crowd sale that offers the opportunity to purchase digital coins from a new blockchain project.

Long – to be long on bitcoin (or any other coin); trading term that means buying, with the expectation to sell at a higher price in the future and realize a profit.

Miner, device validating the blockchain (transactions).

Mining reward, the reward that a miner receives for the computing power he delivers to check the nodes in the blockchain.

Mnemonic Phrase a fancy version of your private key, that is actually used to derive multiple private keys.

Network – A peer-to-peer network that propagates transactions and blocks to every bitcoin node on the network.

Public key, publicly accessible “key”, in crypto currency jargon your wallet.

Private key, the key to open your wallet.

Proof of Stake, verification of the blockchain is done by (wallet) adresses with a certain amount of coins. The more coins means the more authority and computing power for verifying the blockchain.

Proof of Work is roughly a method where blockchain(transactions) are verified with computing power.

Reward – An amount included in each new block as a reward by the network to the miner who found the proof-of-work solution. It is currently 25BTC per block.

Satoshi is the smallest part of a bitcoin. 1 Satoshi = 0.00000001 ฿.

Short – trading term; Shorting bitcoin means selling first (before buying), with the expectation to buy the stock back at a lower price and realize a profit.

Transaction – In simple terms, a transfer of bitcoins from one address to another. More precisely, a transaction is a signed data structure expressing a transfer of value. Transactions are transmitted over the bitcoin network, collected by miners and included into blocks, made permanent on the blockchain.

Wallet, a digital wallet on cryptocurrency. Examples are Jaxx, Exodus and the Gulden Wallet.

51% Attack – When more than half of the computing power of a cryptocurrency network is controlled by a single entity or group, this entity or group may issue conflicting transactions to harm the network, should they have the malicious intent to do so.