Crypto Slang and Terms
Crypto Slang, Crypto Jargon. What does it all mean?
- FOMO Fear of missing out. The hype and social media pressure make you feel an urgent need to get in on what everyone is talking about. Such as buying a certain cryptocurrency. You feel pressured to buy because you don’t want to be left out or left behind.
- HODL This term originally came from the misspelling of the word hold. Then Crypto players morphed it into HODL with the meaning Hold on for dear life. Crypto can be very volatile, so when the market is experiencing wild price swings many of the diehard believers say people should HODL their crypto because the price will eventually go much higher.
- FUD Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. FUD is bad or derogatory news about crypto. The press and major news networks tend to have a lot of stories that would seemingly help Wall Street and Politicians and aimed at creating mass panic against crypto. The crypto community refers to these negative reports from the press, politicians, and Wall Street as FUD.
- Whale A whale is someone who owns a whole lot of cryptocurrency. If they hold a large enough amount of one crypto, they may be powerful enough to move the market or manipulate the value of that crypto.
- To The Moon To the Moon…
“To The Moon” means that they expect the crypto to skyrocket, such as taking a rocket quickly to the moon. Some people may say a coin or token is Mooning when the price spikes quickly.
Sometimes in the crypto forums you will see the topic or question “When Moon?”. This means they are asking opinions on when the price of that particular crypto will spike.
- Shill To shill a crypto coin or crypto blockchain project is when someone purposely promotes a certain cryptocurrency to influence the price for their own gain. Shilling is not original to the crypto investors, but the rise of social media has made it a popular term. It is often used to refer to people who try to pump up a crypto coin by spamming or pushing information on social media.
- REKT (Pronounced Wrecked) When you have big losses from crypto or stocks that have big drops in their value, you get Rekt. It is said to have originated from gamers. When players get absolutely destroyed in a game they say they were Wrecked.
- ALTCOIN The term Altcoin refers to cryptocurrency or a crypto coin that is not Bitcoin. There are now thousands of crypto coins that function as cryptocurrency or support a blockchain project that follows a protocol or uses rules that are different from bitcoin.
- ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. An ICO, an initial coin offering, is when a blockchain-based company offers digital “tokens” for sale to the public in an effort to raise money for their start-up blockchain project or business. It is similar to an IPO or initial public offering where a company will sell stock in the company in order to finance the business startup or expansion.
