Below are some common cryptocurrency words that one should know when looking into getting involved with cryptocurrency.
- Cryptography – The study of making information unreadable so it can be kept secret. With cryptocurrencies, we hide money and the people who sent them in scrambled, unreadable form
- Currency – A system and its units for exchanging value. The value of each unit is agreed to be worth something
- Cryptocurrency – an electronic money created by technology that controls its creation, protection, and the identities of its users
- Blockchain – technology for creating permanent, secure digital recordings. It can record any information, but it started with recording transactions. Imagine the blockchain as a book of records where each page in that book is what is known as a “block”. Blocks are attached to each other making what is known as the blockchain
- Block – simply a recording of information
- Bitcoin – The first digital cash created in 2009 by an unknown person or group of people who went by the name, Satoshi Nakamoto
- Altcoin – Short for “alternative bitcoin” and “alternative coin”, it is any cryptocurrency expect for bitcoin. At the end of 2017, there were over 1,000 altcoins with many more planned for release
- Satoshi – A Satoshi is the smallest amount of bitcoin at one billionth of a bitcoin or 0.00000001 bitcoin
- Market Capitalization – A way to rank and judge the size of a cryptocurrency and stock. The total dollar value is calculated by taking the total supply and multiplying it by the price
- Distributed Ledger – is a consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital date geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, or institution. There is not central administrator or centralized data storage.
- Mining – a computer process of recording and verifying information on the digital record know as the blockchain. Each computer that fulfills this process can earn a reward in digital money and sometimes brand-new altcoins.
- Hashing – a mathematical computer program that takes any set of information and turns it into letters and numbers of a certain length
- Fork – A split in the digital recordings, known as blockchain, created by computers running cryptocurrency technology
- Soft Fork – A change make to cryptocurrency technology creating a temporary split in the group of recordings (blockchain). This chance creates all new, valid recordings (blocks) that are slightly different form the original blocks. They are just different enough that users of the new technology see blocks from original technology as invalid
- Hard Fork – A decision to make a permanent change to the technology used by a cryptocurrency. This change makes all new recordings (blocks) very different from the original blocks. They are changed so much that new blocks are seen as invalid to anyone who didn’t upgrade their technology
- Address – a string of lett3ers and numbers that is publicly available and allows cryptocurrency to be received, held and sent
- Private Key – A string of letters and numbers known only by you that allows access to cryptocurrency. Never share your private key
- Exchange – A place where something of value can be traded. Traditionally, stocks are a common item traded on exchanges. One of the purposes of an exchange is to ensure fair trades are conducted
- Wallet - digital money needs to be sent and received between people. A wallet is a software that interacts with the network of recordings (blockchain) and lets users receive, store, and send access to the digital money
- Paper Wallet – A piece of paper that contains the information needed to access and spend your cryptocurrency
- Hardware Wallet - A specially designed device to securely lock away access to your cryptocurrency
- Software Wallet – A computer program designed device to secure your cryptocurrency while allowing only you to access it
- Fungible – Two or more of the same thing that have identical value. Basically, anything of the same kind can be substituted and it won’t change the value
- HODL – A misspelling of “hold” that evolved into a shortened form of “Hold On For Dear Life”
Source: https://decryptionary.com/25-common-cryptocurrency-words-you-should-know/