Bitcoin Glossary: a Bitcoin language guide

The cryptocurrency universe is surrounded by its own language. Although all the jargon may sound cryptic to new users (pun intended), we at Cloudbet have compiled a Bitcoin Glossary to help you navigate through all the terms, slang and acronyms, so you can impress your friends with master-level hashtags on BitcoinTalk or Twitter.

Being a multidisciplinary field, apart from generating its own vocabulary, Bitcoin et al. have adopted and built upon language from areas such as law, finance, math, open-source software, memes and dodgy internet forums riddled with typos. But we got you covered: consider this your online crypto phrasebook, or you bit-cionary.

2FA

In times of rampant internet fraud and database leaks, 2FA (two-factor authentication or two-step verification) are a security feature put in place by most online services nowadays to mitigate the risk of having your account hijacked by malicious actors or jealous exes. Basically, they condition access to a service or platform by requiring proof of something you know (like a password or pin) and something you have (a mobile phone number, a registered device, or an email account). It's much like using your card in an ATM: you need a physical card (something you have) and your pin (something you know), and anyone that happens to get one can't access your funds without the other.

The most common 2FA schemes are SMS and Authenticator. The former will prompt you for a code sent via SMS to your registered phone number to complete the login. The latter will require a code randomly generated by an app (such as Google Authenticator) in your mobile or tablet. In the case of authenticator apps, they work by syncing your account to a unique time-stamped key that is then added to the device at the moment it is created, usually by scanning a unique QR code or manually inputting the key string into the app. After that, every 30 seconds a new random code is generated from that key, known only to your device and the authenticating server.

Address (Bitcoin)

In the Bitcoin network, addresses are the string of characters that are associated with a given bitcoin (or fraction thereof). They are mostly 34 characters-long, starting either with "1" (old addresses) or "3" (new addresses) and look something like this: 3pJmhaqfvL9S0Yo34YihAf3sRCW3qSin8r. All bitcoin values are associated with a single address, which can be used to both send and receive coins. So, if you need to send five bitcoin, and you have an address with two and another one with three, your transaction will include sending from both addresses (i.e., will contain two outputs).

Functionally, addresses are generated by wallets by hashing a corresponding cryptographic public key, which is in turn derived from a unique private key. A wallet can generate an infinite amount of keys and addresses. Although they can be reused, it's best practice to use an address only once to avoid compromising your privacy by having one address associated with several transactions, since this makes it easier to triangulate an identity from the transactions.

Think of addresses as single-use prepaid credit cards: use them once and throw them away later. If you don't use all the balance from one in a single transaction, the wallet will send the remaining to a brand new one, unknown to anyone else, thus keeping your funds safe from prying eyes.

Altcoins

After Bitcoin pioneered the way for self-sovereign digital money, a host of other cryptography-based currencies followed suit: Litecoin, DASH, DOGEcoin, ZCash, Monero, etc. Not only currency-focused projects, but also utility-based projects such as Ethereum, Cardano, IOTA, NEO and many others have entered the crypto market and quickly grown to acquire monetary value on their own. Any such non-Bitcoin currency is classified as an Altcoin, or simply coin.

Although the definitions are new and the lines are blurry, it is generally agreed that altcoins (and coins in general) are projects that run on their own network (or blockchain). This is in contrast to tokens, which are digital assets issued on a third-party network/blockchain.

AML

An acronym from "anti-money laundering", this is an umbrella term for sets of laws and regulations that aim to curb money laundering and tax evasion. Most countries adhere to some common AML practices and conventions on an international level, although at the individual level country regulations tend to vary a lot. Also, enforcement of these are irregular throughout nations, with some governments turning a blind eye to shady practices altogether, while others actually add their own, sometimes far more strict, rules.

In practice, you should always check your country's regulations to try and stay compliant, even if the fast pace of changes in the crypto regulatory ecosystem may require constant vigilance.

BIPs

Short for Bitcoin Improvement Proposals, the term refers to an emergent governance system developed in the early days in the Bitcoin Core group, establishing the rules by which developers can propose changes or improvements to the code. The community takes a vote on each BIP, and a majority means the proposal gets implemented in the following Bitcoin Core update.

Bitcoin vs bitcoin

Although no formal stylebook mandates it, it has become common practice to use Bitcoin (capitalised) to refer to the Bitcoin network and protocol, while bitcoin (lower case b) be used to denominations of the currency. For example, some figures estimate Bitcoin has around 20 million users worldwide, while a single user can own three bitcoins. Think of it like regular currency. While the United States' official currency is US Dollar (the currency itself), a cup of expensive coffee might cost around five dollars (the number of currency units).

Blockchain

Described for the first time in Satoshi Nakamoto's seminal Bitcoin whitepaper, in its original technical meaning a blockchain is the series of validated transaction blocks connected sequentially, from the genesis block to the current one, into a tamper-proof chain by the clever use of cryptographic hash functions. In this sense, blockchain is a de facto immutable, shared, ever-growing ledger containing all Bitcoin transactions ever conducted.

Blockchain is a shared ledger, meaning that all network participants (full nodes) own a copy and are responsible for checking its integrity and validating that new blocks are added following the protocol's rules at every update (every 10~ minutes in the case of Bitcoin. In essence, all the transactions are transparent for all to see, even if the identities of the participants aren't known, remaining masked behind anonymous addresses. This transparency incentivise miners (participants competing for adding new blocks) to follow the rules and remain honest, since their reward is based on their blocks being accepted by the network at large.

In a blockchain, new blocks contain a hashed header of the previous block, and in their turn have their header hashed into the following block. Since modifying a single character on previous data will result in a completely different hash for the whole chain, any changes would render such chain invalid. If a rogue miner - or anyone else - tries to manipulate previous transactions to gain advantage, their block will be rejected by the whole network and they will get no reward for their efforts.

The network achieves consensus by verifying the longest chain of valid transactions, discarding invalid blocks and resulting chains that don't follow the rules. The longest path of valid blocks is shared between all network nodes - this is the official blockchain.

More colloquially, the term blockchain is also used to refer to the chains of any other cryptocurrencies that make use of this mechanism, and it's slowly turning into an unofficial synonym for distributed networks based on decentralised consensus, and for the underlying technology. To get a more in-depth explanation, you can read our blog post on blockchain.

BTD

BTD is an acronym for ‘Buy The Dip’, a phrase often repeated in crypto trading circles to encourage others to invest in coins whose prices have hit a low point. It’s usually considered a savvy move, due to potential bounce backs in value that cryptocurrencies experience after a dip, sometimes making out for substantial returns.

Byzantine Generals Problem

Distributed networks suffer from something called the Byzantine Generals problem. These networks are made up of independent nodes at different geographic locations running machines with varying computing power. Since there is no central coordinator and communications are relayed from node to node, it’s hard to achieve consensus on the network's current state. If a malicious node modifies the original message (or transaction) to their advantage, or if there is a considerable delay to messages, the system can't reach a consensus on which is the right state, causing a network split. Bitcoin's Proof of Work algorithm was one of the first fully decentralised solutions to the Byzantine Generals problem.

Client

In general computer language, a client is any person, software or device (a client node) who makes use of a service or network provided by a server (a server node). In a P2P distributed system such as Bitcoin, where participants are mostly peers, the distinction between the two can be a bit blurry.

Lightweight (SPV) wallets are an example of client nodes, as they participate in the network through full nodes that act as servers. However, the Bitcoin Core wallet is a full node in itself, acting as both client and server. For more information, check the entry for "Node" below.

Coinbase Transaction

Not to be confused with the homonymous cryptocurrency exchange, a coinbase transaction is the first transaction included in each new block, whereby miners award themselves with a block reward (currently at 12.5 BTC/block) for their computational work (that helps by securing the network and processing transactions) before adding the remaining transactions in a block.

Consensus algorithm (network mechanism)

A consensus algorithm is the set of rules that govern how individual participants in a distributed system reach agreement around the network's (and its database's) current state. In the case of a financial network, since it takes different amounts of time for each participant to receive and process updates, participants need to be assured that they share the same state with others. This is so they know whatever money was sent to them was not also sent to someone else, and vice-versa (double-spending problem). To enable that, it is essential to have rules to ensure what everyone agrees is the latest state, otherwise the network's integrity could be compromised or exploited by malicious actors.

Historically, the easiest way to reach consensus and keep databases equal for everyone was to rely on a centralised third party to intermediate transactions. This requires trust in the central agent, and this approach proved flawed in many situations.

Perhaps the main innovation brought about by Bitcoin was its consensus algorithm, called "Proof-of-Work" (or simply PoW) that for the first time in history made it possible for myriad people who don't know each other exchange value in a network without the need for trust in anything but math and code. This advancement was key to decentralised networks, as they are built over the notion of not relying on a central party, and gave birth to a whole new crypto-based economy.

Consensus (community)

Bitcoin is not only a decentralised computer network, but also a decentralised social system made of people, each with their own interests and ideas, and each trying to impose their view over what Bitcoin should be. Since Bitcoin is owned by no one and at the same time by everyone, it has developed a unique governance system, one that's always changing, to be able to continue improving.

Community consensus and governance around the directions for Bitcoin were inspired by the experience of open-source software development, but due to its growing financial value and the heterogeneity of adopters this entails, consensus is considerably harder to reach. This makes decision-making around Bitcoin more akin to a modern democratic state's lobbies and pressure groups than any other open-source project, where even minor changes draw passionate reactions from all sides.

The Bitcoin Foundation, created by early adopters and Cypherpunks, works to try and organise discussions around further development, but that doesn't mean they have any degree of control. The whole community is riddled with politics and schisms, and even a the slightest code change proposal is a painful process. While this may seem bad, on the flip side it makes Bitcoin more resistant to control than most.

There is no single mechanism to guarantee community consensus. The system around BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals) and community voting has so far achieved reasonable success, and Bitcoin has one of the most stable development ecosystems in comparison with other cryptocurrencies - but even that is a work in progress.

Cryptocurrency

After Bitcoin paved the way, the term cryptocurrency was coined (pun intended) to comprise all software projects that, like their pioneer, make use of cryptography while aiming to be used mainly as currency. On a broader sense, the term is also used to refer to tokens built over multi-purpose networks such as Ethereum, as they have also acquired monetary value. All in all, it may refer to all tokenised assets, be these coins, tokens or whatever other name they might go by.

Cryptographic Keys

Cryptographic keys are the root for Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies. A cryptographic key pair is comprised of a private key, from which a corresponding public key is derived through the use of a hash function. However, due to some clever use of math, a public key can not be reverse-engineered to show its generating private key. That's why hash functions are also known as one-way functions.

As an example, a message encrypted with a given public key can only be decrypted by its private key. At the same time, a message signed by a user's private key can have its authenticity verified by anyone simply by checking it against that user's public key, but their content will not be shown in this process.

In Bitcoin, cryptographic keys are used as a way of signing and verifying transactions, and also generating Bitcoin addresses. Addresses, as we saw above, are generated by the hashing and compressing of a public key.

This is roughly how it works: Alice wants to send a bitcoin to Bob, so she starts by getting Bob's address (which is just a compressed version of his public key). Her wallet first creates the transaction by assigning her bitcoin to Bob's address. The wallet uses Bob's public key to encrypt the transaction, which is then signed by Alice's private key and broadcasted to the network. Since it was signed by Alice's private key, everyone can confirm that that bitcoin was indeed hers. However, since the transaction is encrypted to Bob's public key, only the owner of the corresponding private key (Bob) can claim ownership and spend that bitcoin.

Cryptography

Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques to enable secure communications between parties against potential adversaries. Nowadays, it's mostly based on the fields of mathematics, communications and computer science, but physics and engineering also play a pivotal role in its development. Applications of cryptography include e-commerce, computer passwords and, obviously, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

DYOR

‘Do Your Own Research’ is often shortened to 'DYOR', the useful advice that not all advice in regards to crypto trading can be trusted and taken at face value. With all the FUD and FOMO that can accompany rapid price changes it is very important to do one's research to avoid losing money. And since you are reading this, it's clear that you are taking at least some steps towards mitigating that risk.

Escrow

Escrow is a contract arrangement between two parties that don't trust each other and involve a commonly trusted third party to broker their transaction. The payer deposits the funds to the care of a third party mediator, who acts as a custodian for the funds and also as a referee to the contract in case there are conflicts regarding the fulfilment of obligations. Once the agreed conditions for the transaction are met, the third party releases the funds to the payee. Alternatively, if the payee defaults or fails to meet their obligation, the third party returns the funds to the payer.

Exchange

An exchange is a service provider who matches buyers and sellers in a given market, offering them a platform to exchange assets by placing offers or bids while taking a commission on each successful trade. Exchanges are intermediaries - they don't usually sell any assets, instead profiting from commissions from sellers and buyers.

Exchanges keep an order book and may take simple buy/sell orders or, in more liquid markets, more advanced types such as stop-loss and fill-or-kill. Trading on an exchange is usually based in trading pairs, where one asset is traded against another exclusively. An exchange can offer as many trading pairs as they want, so long as they can keep liquidity.

In the world of cryptocurrencies, there are many kinds of exchanges. Some take money deposits and offer pairs such as USD/BTC or ETH/EUR, while others are crypto-only (BTC/LTC, ETH/XMR, etc) exclusively dealing with digital currencies.

For the past years, a new kind of exchange has emerged: the decentralised exchange. These are basically a piece of distributed software that automatically manages the order books. DEXs promise more transparency and lower fees to both buyers and sellers. For obvious reasons, these are crypto-exclusive.

FIAT (money)

Not to be confused with the car maker, Fiat money is a denomination for any currency created and maintained by governments and bank systems. It's your good old Dollars, Euros, Pesos and Pounds. The term "Fiat" comes from Latin, meaning "let it be made" - sounding much like the government decrees that actually created most currencies out of thin air.

FOMO

The acronym FOMO means ‘Fear Of Missing Out’, and is usually used to describe the late rush of people buying into a currency that’s currently on the rise.You can find the term being thrown around by experienced crypto traders as an indication that it could be a good time to sell high before a drop while the inexperienced and impulsive buyers are jumping on a particular bandwagon.

Hash (hashing)

Hash functions are mathematical functions that are used to map data of arbitrary size to data of a fixed size, often called "hashes". Each set of data has one and only one corresponding hash, and although it's easy to determine a hash from a given set, the reverse is nigh on impossible. Hash functions are used to accelerate data lookout on databases, verify data integrity and secure cryptographic messages through cryptographic key pairs. Sounds familiar? That's because hash functions are the workhorse of choice for modern cryptography, and for cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin).

Hodl

A phrase whose origins can be traced back to a December 2013 post in the popular Bitcoin Talk Forums, from the user GameKyuubi, who responded to a dip with “I AM HODLING”. The typo was subsequently taken by the community and turned into a meme: to hodl.

Simply put, Hodl means ‘to hold’, ie, to not panic sell your cryptocurrencies during dips in value, but to ‘hold on’ for the inevitable climb. It was also infused with a posterior meaning, as an acronym to "Holding On for Dear Life."

FUD

"Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" is shortened to FUD. It describes the use of scare tactics and rumour-spreading to encourage inexperienced crypto owners to panic-sell their inventory.

FUD is not to be confused with FUD-ers, who are the ones spreading the false information and cashing in on the cheap dumped coins.

Full Node

A full node in Bitcoin is a node that is directly connected to the network, keeping an updated version of the blockchain, validating new blocks as they are added by miners, and relaying them to other full nodes. Most full nodes also serve as a communications hub for lightweight nodes (mostly wallets), allowing these to make transactions and access the network without the need to download a whole copy of the blockchain.

To run a full node, you need the Bitcoin Core client and also to download a copy of the whole blockchain. For more information, see the entries on "Miners" and "Nodes" below.

ICO

Initial Coin Offerings have become the go-to tactics for blockchain-based start-ups to raise capital. After developing a whitepaper describing their ideas, companies launch a sale of coins/tokens in the hopes of generating money to execute their project.

The term itself is an adaptation of IPOs (Initial Public Offering), whereby companies sell shares to the public in order to raise money to expand their activities. ICOs instead are a form of crowdfunding, in the sense that the start-ups that use them are selling an idea (most of the time, at least) that has not yet been implemented, thus having no basis for valuation apart from speculation.

They are not without controversy, as many countries have taxed, restricted or banned ICOs altogether. The main reasons is, as they are not regulated, they offer fertile breeding ground to scam artists or sheer incompetence. ICOs have exploded in 2016-17, with some of them earning their investors profits that reached the five digits. Others have flunked spectacularly, taking all their investors' money with them. Yet others have turned out to be nothing but good old scams.

KYC

An acronym from "know-your-customer", this is actually a popularised legal term for government regulations that mandate that (mostly financial) businesses collect personal information on their customers to avoid fraud, money laundering and other generally naughty human behaviour. In practice, this means cryptocurrency exchanges, ICOs and any other project that deal with monetary values require identification from customers in order to comply with legislation. This might include identity documents, addresses, phone numbers, tax numbers or any other personal information that a country deem appropriate to issue a licence. KYC goes hand-in-hand with AML (anti-money-laundering) laws, as the latter is usually used as justification for the former.

Lambo

A meme that constantly pops up across crypto message boards and social media channels. A short for Lamborghinis, Lambos are used as a measure of success. The idea being that when you strike it rich in the crypto world you can afford to buy yourself one, or whatever luxury goods that might take your fancy.

mBTC

One millibitcoin, it represents one-thousandth of a bitcoin, or 0.001 BTC, it’s a common denomination to make bitcoin’s units closer to being relatable to actual prices in most currencies, as bitcoin’s many decimals tend to feel abstract and hard to grasp without constant conversion.

Miner

The consensus mechanism of Bitcoin dictates that anyone can compete to add new blocks to the blockchain, in a process called Bitcoin Mining. This competition is a computational race to find a number that satisfies the current difficulty level of the network. However, over time this level has risen so much that mining Bitcoin has become a very specialised and expensive endeavour.

A miner is a Bitcoin network node that stakes his computational power in this competition, thus earning the associated block reward (currently at 12.5 BTC per block) and the network transaction fees (thus these being also known as miner's fees). Because of the high difficulty, miners are required to invest in massive ASICS (application-specific integrated circuit) mining rigs. The sheer cost of having an actual chance of winning is so high that anyone thinking of cheating would incur in costs much higher than the prospective gains.

This competition between miners is arguably one of the key security features of Bitcoin. Since miners have so much at stake, they're incentivised to remain honest, since any attempt at cheating, if successful, would devalue Bitcoin, hurting their own gains.

Moon (verb)

‘Moon’ is used to describe a rapid price increase of a particular cryptocurrency, a shortening of the phrase ‘To the moon!’ (sometimes abbreviated to TTM!). Moon is used as a verb, as in "XYZ currency mooned last week". The term can also be used by more experienced users to poke fun at the short term elation held by inexperienced traders when a coin is on the rise rapidly, as it’s usually followed by a fall in price during a ‘dump’.

Multisig (wallet)

Multisig wallets are wallets that require two or more signatures (or any combination, like three out of five, seven out of ten) for transactions to be conducted. Since this requires more people to move funds, it also makes stealing or hacking much harder, as there is more than one point of failure.

Multisig wallets are often used by exchanges and other custodians to mitigate online security risks and the potential case of one greedy assistant running for the hills with all the money.

Node

Broadly speaking, a node is a piece of software that participates in a network, either receiving or transmitting information to other network participants. In the context of Bitcoin, nodes can be either full nodes, lightweight nodes or miner nodes.

Network fee (aka Miner fee)

Besides earning the block reward (currently at 12.5 bitcoin per block), miners also profit from taking mining fees for the transactions they process. This is to further incentivise participants to validate transactions in the network. Every transaction in Bitcoin carries a corresponding fee that is calculated based on the transaction weight in bytes and the current demand of the network. Since each block has a maximum weight, in periods of high volume, transactions are queued according to the capacity of the network. Fees are adjusted dynamically, and miners prioritise higher-paying fees over lower ones to maximise their gain. For this reason, many wallets adjust fees automatically to conform to network volumes, with some even offering fee ranges depending on expected confirmation times.

Private Key

A private key is the most important element of the cryptographic mechanism that underlies Bitcoin. The private key is the actual key to a given bitcoin value, and whoever holds it controls the associated value.

Through hashing the private key, a corresponding public key is generated, which in turn give rise to Bitcoin addresses. Sending a bitcoin is performed by signing the transaction with a private key that will mathematically prove to the network that that person is actually the rightful owner of that given coin.

For this reason, users must protect their private key and keep them secret at all times.

Proof of Stake (PoS)

Developed as an alternative to PoW, Proof of Stake is a network consensus mechanism currently working in some cryptocurrencies and being implemented by Ethereum. With PoS, validators must stake tokens in order to reap the rewards associated with the job. The more stakes, the more reward. Not requiring massive energy-intensive pieces of hardware, PoS is said to be a faster, more environmentally friendly and scalable alternative than PoW.

Proof of Work (PoW)

One of Bitcoin’s greatest innovations was the concept of Proof-of-Work. PoW is a very clever solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem on distributed networks. The PoW algorithm dictate that nodes are rewarded for correctly validating the blocks that update the network status (the blockchain). To do so they have to stake their computing power to solve an increasingly difficult mathematical problem. The more invested miners are, the more incentive they have to behave honestly, since all other nodes need to validate the resulting solution, and should miners try and cheat, they would lose the reward. With today's extremely high levels of difficulty, it’s very costly to effectively enter the network as a miner, and the cost of cheating outweigh the benefits one might gain from it.

Public Key

In Bitcoin, a public key is a hashed version of the private key, and the basis from which Bitcoin addresses are derived (again, via hashing and compressing). Public keys are publicly available to the network. They are mathematically related to their parent private key, and can be used to validate that a transaction was signed by their parent without revealing the private key itself, since one cannot derive a private key from a public one. So, whenever Alice sends a bitcoin to Bob, she signs the transaction with her private key and the network checks that transaction against her public key, guaranteeing that only Alice could have created that signature.

Pump-and-Dump (also PnD, P&D)

This term is used to describe a rapid price increase in a coin’s value, however Pump & Dump are a form of market manipulation, usually seen as the actions of a ‘whale’ - ‘pumping’ the price up and then ‘dumping’ the coins when the price has been artificially inflated.

N00b (Noob)

Another term that has made its way across from the computer gaming world, this is simply another way to describe ‘newbies’ - people who are new and relatively inexperienced in the world of crypto trading. The term can however be seen as slightly negative and condescending, and is often used when discussing ways to take advantage of the new traders using FOMO and FUD.

Rekt

One of the more regularly used terms that has made it over from the world of competitive computer gaming, Rekt means that you or another person have been ‘wrecked’. In cryptocurrency circles it’s usually used to describe people missing opportunities for profits, selling too early, or being cleaned out by scammers.

Satoshi (bitcoin unit)

Named after Bitcoin's mystery creator(s), one satoshi (low caps) is Bitcoin’s lowest denomination, or 0.00000001 BTC.

Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitocoin’s mystery creator(s), a member of the cypherpunk message board that helped shape and popularise modern cryptography, especially in the context of digital money. Satoshi’s real identity remains a mystery, since her/his/their interaction with the Bitcoin community has ceased in December 2010. His bitcoin stash is said to be the biggest one around, with over a million coins, but there is no evidence of anyone ever moving these.

Seed (wallet)

A seed phrase, or seed words, are a series of usually 12 or more words used by deterministic wallets to generate a series of consistent private and public keys. Deterministic means that a given seed will always result in the same sequence of private keys, which in turn will result in the same public keys and bitcoin addresses.

Seed words effectively serve as a wallet’s backup, since any compliant wallet can be used to import the associated addresses and their corresponding history. Keep these safe and far from prying eyes, preferably offline.

Signature (cryptography)

In order to a bitcoin transaction to take place, a user must sign their bitcoin with their private key to a receiving bitcoin address. The signature is then checked against their public keys by the network to ensure that bitcoin actually belonged to the sender.

SPV

Simplified Payment Verification is the mechanism by which most wallets connect to the Bitcoin network. Wallets that use SPV are a type of lightweight client node. In order to broadcast and update transactions, they connect to the blockchain via a participating full node. This requires a little trust that the connected full node is honest, but in return it makes up for speed and practicality, as these wallets don’t require the downloading and updating of the entire blockchain (200GB and growing).

VPN

One of the tenets of privacy and security on the web, Virtual Private Networks are services that route a user’s traffic through their own servers, protecting users’ privacy from being monitored by malicious actors or surveillance-hungry ISPs. VPNs work by bridging the user and their endpoint. To anyone monitoring the outgoing traffic from the user, the only visible destination will be the VPN’s address. On the other end, to anyone monitoring the endpoint, the only traffic source will come from the VPN, and it’s very hard to correlate a given user traffic to the actual endpoint. It is universally regarded as a step towards safer browsing.

Wallet

In short, a Bitcoin wallet is a piece of software that allows you to manage your funds by generating and safekeeping your private and public keys, and their corresponding bitcoin addresses. On the surface, it works much like your bank account, as it allows you to send, receive and keep track of your coins. For an in-depth explanation, we have prepared a whole article dedicated at explaining how they work.

Whale

‘Whale’ is a term used to describe the big players in the crypto trading world, usually individuals that control more than 5% of any given coin. These are the traders that will typically get blamed for any price fluctuations on specific coins.

Whitepaper

Originally referring to British government-issued documents that inform readers about a complex issue, in business it has taken a different meaning. In crypto, particularly, whitepapers are a mix of technical and marketing-oriented text aimed towards both explaining and promoting an idea to prospective investors and other interested parties. When it comes to an ICO, whitepapers are the new black - the major selling point for a company’s idea. They have spawned other coloured documents, such as yellow papers and blue papers, but these spin-offs are used sparingly and with different meanings.

Now you’re able to decipher bitcoin posts, the next step is to join in. Bitcoin was created to be open and available to anyone. Sound interesting? We have an easy to follow guide for buying bitcoin, and if you want to make quick money, how to deposit bitcoin to place a bet with us.\

‍