Check out our comprehensive cryptocurrency glossary to help you to understand the basics of Bitcoin, blockchain & cryptocurrencies.

Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)

The acronym FOMO stands for “Fear Of Missing Out”. In the context of investing the term describes a fear of regret for missing out a potential profitable investment (i.e. the overwhelming feeling that one must buy a certain asset before the price rises even further). See also: FUD, Altcoin Trader.

FIAT

Any form of government-issued money that is used as legal tender by the population and government of a certain nation or region is known as a FIAT currency. Today, FIAT currencies act as a government-regulated instrument and serve as a store of value, unit of account and medium of exchange. FIAT currencies are backed by…

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

The acronym DeFi stands for “Decentralized Finance” and describes new forms of financial protocols that are based on smart contracts and do not require a central intermediary. In contrast, in traditional financial markets, central instances such as banks are indispensable for financial transactions and services. Recently, many new DeFi projects such as decentralized exchanges, stablecoins…

Cryptocurrency

A Cryptocurrency (or crypto) is a digital asset secured by cryptography. Cryptocurrencies are based on the so-called distributed ledger technology, whereby all transactions are stored on the blockchain. Like traditional FIAT currencies, cryptocurrencies also act as a medium of exchange, however with no intermediaries (e.g. banks) monitoring the transactions. In addition to Bitcoin, which is considered the first cryptocurrency,…

BTC

BTC is the abbreviation for Bitcoin. Bitcoins are the unit of currency of the Bitcoin payment network. The most used abbreviations for Bitcoin are BTC or XBT. See also: Blockchain, Altcoin.

Bounty

In the cryptocurrency context, the term Bounty refers to a reward in return for completing a specific job or (micro-) task. Like Airdrops, Bounty programs can be understood as a marketing strategy to promote and distribute new coins or tokens. The most prominent examples of Bounty programs are social media campaigns on Twitter or Facebook,…

Blockchain

The term Blockchain typically describes a decentralized, transparent, public ledger that allows units of value to be transferred securely using public key encryption and proof-of-work technology. Broadly speaking, it is a database shared across a network of computers. In this database, each block in the chain contains a certain number of transactions and whenever a new…

Blockchain Explorer

You can look up cryptocurrency transactions by using a Blockchain Explorer. A Blockchain Explorer is a tool for viewing and querying blocks on the blockchain. It works like a web browser (e.g. Firefox or Google Chrome) but is connected to the blockchain rather than the internet. The main function of a cryptocurrency block explorer is to enable anyone…

Bitcointalk

Bitcointalk is the largest online forum for discussing topics related to Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies in general and blockchain technology. The forum was created on November 22, 2009 by Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto. Since January 2018, users have been able to reward high-quality posts from other users by awarding them “Merit” as part of a forum ranking…