Crypto / DeFi Dictionary

I started my crypto journey in DeFi around May 2020. One of the hardest parts initially was understanding what the fuck people were saying with this whole new language being spoken. 

Without a second thought I grabbed my phone to type out as many words I could possibly define. While some things might be missing there's a lot on here that was then vetted by one of the best who many of you know as L!Qu!D!TY1 ...aka the top tier of women in the space, who flys under the radar, but doesn't skip a beat.

So with that I'll leave this with you... 

• • Apeing: Going all-in with a YOLO attitude; buying a large bag of a token
    
    
  • APY: Annual Percentage Yield, the annual interest rate
    
    
  • APY Hunters: Someone who constantly looks for new farms with juicy high APYs so they can earn yield on their bagz
    
    
  • Aave: Borrowing and lending protocol. Can deposit assets and earn yield on it.
    
    
  • Appreciates: Goes up in value or price
    
    
  • ATH: All Time High
    
    
  • Balance: Number of tokens you have
    
    
  • Based: Like “cool man” or “solid”
    
    
  • Bitcoin Halving: The moment when the rewards for mining Bitcoin transactions is cut in half. New Bitcoin enters the market ½ as fast afterwards. Makes an intense boom & bust cycle.
    
    
  • Bluesky Breakout: when a crypto asset moves above its previous record high and there's only blue sky overhead
  • BRUTE FORCE ATTACK: A password-cracking hack that generates as random combinations of letters & numbers until it cracks your passwords
    
    
  • Bull flag: A pattern on a chart that looks like the number will go up!
    
    
  • Bull Market: Market where prices (mostly) go up
  • Bear Market: when prices go down over a sustained period of time. Crypto Twitter likes to say, "We're in a BEAR MARKET!" every time BTC dumps more than 5%... aka, every week
    
    
  • BTFD: BUY THE FUCKING DIP
    
    
  • Candlestick chart: The charts that use vertical boxes instead of a line to show data like prices.
    
    
  • Cesar Cypher: A type of cryptographic cypher that is almost impossible to crack
    
    
  • CEX: Centralized exchange (like Binance) are online trading platforms that match buyers and sellers via an orderbook. They function essentially the same way as online brokerage accounts which are popular amongst investors. Allow you to exchange your fiat (cash) for cryptocurrency.
  
  
  
  • CDP: Collateralized debt position, aka when you deposit your assets into a lending protocol and take out a loan on them. It’s like when your bank gives you a loan… except fuck your bank, you’re doing it on your own for a way better interest rate.
    
    
  • Compounding: Taking out your rewards and putting rewards back into whatever money is working for you. This ups your principal amount and ups your return; compounding interest on compounding interest.
    
    
  • Cryptography: The study and use of secure communications techniques. Think the Enigma machine, only today our cryptography is built into the code that makes up Bitcoin & other cryptos
    
    
  • CPU: This definition pertains to mining. Mining is the method of using a Central Processing Unit (CPU) to conduct calculations in order to add transaction records to the public ledger of cryptocurrency.
    
    
  • Delta neutral: A portfolio strategy utilizing multiple positions with balancing positive and negative deltas so that the overall delta of the assets in question totals zero. A delta-neutral portfolio evens out the response to market movements for a certain range to bring the net change of the position to zero.
  • Dev Team (development team): The team who builds a tech product. Every DeFi project has a dev team behind it.
    
    
  • Dev is sleeping: When a shitcoin launches and the TG chat goes silent because the dev is sleeping... you gonna get rugged.
    
    
  • Diversified Portfolio: A portfolio made of a variety of investments who have different risk profiles.
    
    
  • Dirty Dev: Known “bad actor” developer who rugs communities over & over. Often pseudo-anonymous.
  
  
  • Dollar cost averaging (DCA): Buying a set amount of an asset at a set parameter, usually time. It’s a way to minimize your emotional investment by outsourcing your decision-making ;) For example, buying $10 of BTC every Monday is a DCA.
    
    
  • Farming: Yield farming is the heart of decentralized farming <3 It’s becoming a market maker instead of a price taker.
    
    
  • Fren: When you want to type friend but you've been online too long and you basically have carpal tunnel.
    
    
  • FUD: FEAR UNCERTAINTY DOUBT.
    
    
  • DAO: Decentralized Autonomous Organization; sometimes called a decentralized autonomous corporation. is an organization represented by rules encoded as a computer program that is transparent, controlled by the organization members and not influenced by a central government.
  • DUST: A small balance of a token.
  
  
  • Infantile: Like a child.
    
    
  • Fiat: Actual cash or “real world” money, printed and controlled by your government.
    
    
  • Fiat collateralized stable coins: 1-1 ratio of fiat to the stablecoin
  • Fork:
    
    
  • Hedge Fund: An institution that pools funds from big investors and invests them at large scale. They aim to make their investors more money.
    
    
  • Hedging: A risk management strategy that traders use to offset investment losses.
    
    
  • Liquidity: Capital, money, or funds. Liquidity means there are assets in the market for trading. Bitcoin has liquidity.
    
    
  • Liquidity pairs: Pairing one asset with another, to give the less-valuable asset more value. For example, USD used to be backed by GOLD. Every dollar had a gold certificate, meaning an individual could take their dollar to the bank and exchange it for gold. It’s the fusion of belief; pairing a shit coin to BNB gives the shitcoin value.  
  • Longs: A professional trading move when a trader bets that an asset will go up in price.
    
    
  • Multi-chain wallets: A wallet that can hold tokens from multiple blockchains. This is useful because you can keep more assets in 1 place. Metamask & Safepal are multi-chain wallets. 
  • Newb(ie): Some new to the game.
    
    
  • Normie: Normal new people.
    
    
  • Omen: A sign of what will happen in the future; signals
    
    
  • Price Discovery: The overall process, whether explicit or inferred, of setting the spot price or the proper price of an asset, security, commodity, or currency. In crypto, this happens when a NEW project launches, or when an existing asset enters a new price range that it's never been in before.
    
    
  • Processor: A computer component that provides computer power to conduct software operations fitted on the computer.
  • Pumping bags: MAKE MONAYYYY
    
    
  • Red pill: What people want to believe: maximize portfolio actively  Blue pill: Holding crypto (real deal)
    
    
  • Rug: Bad projects that drain investors’ money
    
    
  • Satoshi: The smallest unit into which a Bitcoin is divisible. Value of 1 Satoshi is always 100 millionth of a Bitcoin. For 1 satoshi to be worth $1, the value of Bitcoin would have to reach $100 million.
    
    
  • Security exchange commissions: The SEC is a US government entity responsible for protecting and regulating assets.
    
    
  • Ser: Like sir, but on the internet, and applies to women too.
    
    
  • Scalping: A short-term day trading strategy which involves buying low and selling high many times during the trading day, with the aim of making small and frequent profits by timing the movements of an asset.
    
    
  • Shitcoin: The crypto token your fav influencer is promoting that they said they made soooo much money on, but actually just got paid to. promote. Usually a variation of doge/shib/baby/Inu
    
    
  • Shorts: A professional trading move when an investor places a bet that the asset will go down
    
    
  • Stable Coins: Stablecoins are coins pegged to an outside, real-world asset. A common example of a stablecoin is USDT, which has its value pegged to $1 such that 1 USDT = $1 USD. Coins like BTC and ETH are NOT stablecoins because their value fluctuates with the market.
    
    
  • STAKING: The process of actively participating in transaction validation (similar to mining) on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain
    
    
  • Stop losses: An order you place on an exchange to help you NOT get liquidated, aka stop your losses
    
    
  • Taproot: A Bitcoin upgrade coming in November!
    
    
  • Token Genetics: The family tree of a token; the genetics of its code
    
    
  • Total value locked (TVL): amount of assists locked or staked in a Defi protocol. (Bitcoin is not a DeFi project but PancakeSwap + Polycat are.
    
    
  • Hammer: Triple bottom
    
    
  • UTXO: Unspent transaction output
    
    
  • Verb Salad: People throwing pointless words together
    
    
  • Volatile/volatility: When something goes up, down, and all over the place. Like your date when he takes you home after too many drinks...
    
    
  • Whales: Large token holder (you can see what addys hold large portions of tokens)
    
    
  • Wicks: The “tail” on a candle. 
  
  
  • Wrapped Token: it is a copy of a token from one blockchain, which was transferred to another blockchain. Moreover, this copy has the same value as the original.
  
  
  • Yield farming: The heart of DeFi. Putting your crypto assets to work to get you more crypto.