When investing in cryptocurrency, you have to do your research. But this can seem impossible when every time you visit a crypto forum, you get bombarded with weird words and slang that you cannot decipher.

We are here to help. Check out our helpful glossary, and please keep in mind that we just made all this stuff up.

Whale — Someone who owns a ton of cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, some crypto enthusiasts have taken this term literally and started actually spearing major crypto collectors with seal bladders, which was a popular whaling technique. The International Crypto Whaling Commission has called for a ban on this type of hunting, insisting it depletes the population of large scale crypto holders.

ATH — All Time High. Used when the value a cryptocurrency climbs to previously unforeseen heights, which tends to happen at least once a week. Snore!

ICO — Initial Coin Offering. This niche term is used to denote any offering of a new kind of coin that comes on the market. For instance, if my own new cryptocurrency, KristenCoin, were to come on the market, I’d need to do an ICO to give early investors a chance to buy it. Please buy it.

Bagholder — Someone holding cryptocurrency that’s sinking in value. On an unrelated note, would anyone like to buy some MySpaceCoins?!

FUD — Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Camus and Sartre actually had the cryptocurrency world in mind when they wrote about these universal human feelings that come from the burden of human kind’s freedom nearly a century ago.

Bollinger Band — A special band made by a man named Mr Bollinger that can tell us whether or not a currency is overbought. You can then catch the currency with your Bollinger trap if, in fact, it’s not overvalued.

Mining — The process of acquiring cryptocurrency by using your compute power. No canaries are hurt in this process.

Fork — When a blockchain splits into two separate chains. Kind of like when the ants living in your kitchen are marching together, then a few of them start their own marching line and go a different way. Also, maybe you should call an exterminator.

Sharding — Keeping an incomplete copy of the blockchain in order to improve compute power. Kind of like when you only read the last page of a book then tell everyone you read the whole thing. I mean, of course I’ve read War and Peace!!

Hardware wallet — A physical wallet for storing cryptocurrency. The advantages of this are increased safety and something neat to show to your friends and really anyone you meet on the street.

Cold storage — Moving cryptocurrency offline to store it more securely. Also, a cooler used to store perishable currencies like SalmonCoin and 100%BeefCoin.

The Flippening — Are we done yet? It feels like we should be done soon. Anywho the flippening is a theoretical future event in which Ethereum’s value surpasses that of Bitcoin. The Ethereum/Bitcoin rivalry is one of the great rivalries of our times, right up there with Drake vs Pusha T and cats vs dogs.

Hodl — How someone who is too excited about cryptocurrency to spell “hold” correctly spells “hold.”

Lambo — What we will all buy once our cryptocurrencies make us rich, oh dear lord they have to make us rich, otherwise why have we sharded and hodled so hard?!

This is gentlemen — Again, what someone whose mind is full of pure love for cryptocurrency says to denote an exciting new development in cryptocurrency. These people sure do make a lot of grammatical errors, but at least they’re getting rich!

Mooning — This refers to a cryptocurrency’s value shooting up “to the moon,” as it were. The moon was unable to be reached for comment on how it feels about being poked by all these different cryptocurrency values, but we can only imagine it feels perturbed to say the least!

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Written by: Kristen Pyszczyk