Every community has its own language. It’s an identifier of belonging.

When we enter a new space, a new industry or a new community and we do not speak the “local lingo” yet, we’re immediately being spotted and recognized as a stranger or “newbie”. Especially as women entering a men’s world, this can really suck…

Luckily, the online community of the cryptocurrency, DASH, is a welcoming and supportive place. We even have a sub group especially for the “Women of DASH” in there (which we’re hoping to grow. So if you’re reading this, and you’re a woman looking for your new crypto home, join us in the DASH Nation Slack Channel!)

Unfortunately, that doesn’t go for every crypto community, so…

If you don’t want to out yourself as a complete crypto-newbie, use this list as a head start and avoid having to ask “stupid” questions.

Below you will find a list of terms you’ll come across in the world of crypto currency. Some are actual official terms and some are slang. While you don’t have to use this language yourself right from the start, I hope it will enable you to understand the conversations and threads in the online forums.

(Some words are not specific to crypto, but you may have never heard them before you entered the crypto space.)

So let the translations begin…

noob — That’s you. But only for another minute. A noob is a newbie who doesn’t have a lot of insider knowledge yet. Also spelled “nOOb” sometimes.

pwnd — as in “He got pwnd”. He got owned. Burnt.

rekt — “wrecked”. As in “something might go rekt” or “He got rekt” (similar as “pwnd” in that case). Usually refers to losing a lot of money.

hodling — “holding”. As in, “I’m not selling my Bitcoins, I’m holding them.” You must put this spelling mistake in. Only n00bs would spell this correctly by accident…

fiat — our regular money (Dollars, Euros, etc). Isn’t it weird that hardly anyone knows that’s what our money is called?

DAO — Decentralized Autonomous Organization — the kind of organization the blockchain supports. Basically a network without a boss. As opposed to a Centralized Organization — our traditional pyramid shaped organizational model with a central controlling entity on top.

altcoins — every coin that is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the original. The blockchain was invented together with Bitcoin. It’s an open source code — meaning everyone can find it on the internet and make a few alterations and create their own coin. Every new coin is then also an alternative to Bitcoin, the original.

Polo — Short for Poloniex, a coin exchange where you can trade crypto currency.

FUD — “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt” often heard in the Bitcoin fork debate for example. As in, “Don’t listen to them, they’re just spreading FUD!”

trustless — this means something good! It actually means the opposite of what your dictionary says. Trustless in crypto means that trust is not required, because the blockchain makes sure everything is correct. You don’t have to trust a third party, or a middleman.

permissionless — similar to trustless. It means “no permission needed”
block reward — another name for the “free coins” the miners receive as a reward for processing transactions and securing the network using specialized hardware.

shapeshift — changing one crypto currency into another without having to exchange them through an official coin exchange. Warning: because of its convenience, the costs for this service are also higher than at exchanges. Shapeshift.io.

wallet— this is where you keep your coins. Sort of like a PayPal account. Only completely different ;) There are core wallets for each single currency — like the DASH wallet here — and there are also third party multi-currency wallets, in which you can keep different kinds of coins, and where you can also shape shift them directly within those wallets. Jaxx.io is one example of a multi-currency wallet with a shapeshift function.

whale — describes a big player — a big fish — in the crypto scene. Someone who owns such a large amount of coins or funds, that they could influence the price by selling their holdings or buying more.

So there you go! You’re not a n00b anymore, yay!

Next stop: whale!

This is obviously not an exhaustive list… More experienced non-noobs are welcome to add to the list!
I am @aniinl in the DASH Nation Slack Channel. If you decide to join us in there, come and say Hi!

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I first published this post on medium here: https://medium.com/dash-for-newbies/excuse-me-do-you-speak-crypto-from-n00b-to-whale-in-3-minutes-f19ea13f4d8b