Bear market, shorted & rekt, and FOMO are some words many will see when they search for bitcoin and blockchain-related projects. This article is about the terminology you will find in the trading and blockchain world.

In this short article, you will find a description of some of these words.

Bear Market / Bearish

When you expect a bear market, you would expect that prices will go down.

Bearish means the same one example can be:

“I’m really bearish on bitcoin for the time; therefore I will be going over to fiat for the time being to buy back in later.”

Bull market / Bullish

The opposite of bear market / bearish, so one has the belief that the market will go up. Read this article to learn more about bear-/bullmarkets

Fiat

Fiat money is money without an internal value. There are money (coins and banknotes) issued by the central bank and declared to be money. However, the central bank does not have coverage (e.g., gold reserves) to redeem them in real terms. It is solely the belief that the next buyer in the range will also accept the money as a means of payment that makes them money. The word “fiat” comes from Latin and means “let it happen.”

Rekt

Say you’re almost ruined in a trading context.

Example:

“My Bitconnect investment got rekt today; I lost 90% of my original value”.

Exchange

An exchange market that offers to buy and sell cryptocurrency against other cryptocurrencies / Fiat.

Whale

Someone who owns absurd amounts of cryptocurrency.

Margin Trading

You “magnify” the intensity by betting the direction the market will go. NOTE: Very risky even for traders with years of experience, you can risk losing everything yourself with small movements in the market.

Going long

A margin trade – you earn if the price increases.

Going short

A margin trade you earn if the price drops.

ATH

Abbreviation for “All time high.” Thus a new value peak has been reached.

ICO

Abbreviation for “Initial Coin Offer,” a startup company requests funds to develop a service or product. You will receive “Coins / Tokens” in exchange for the donation that can yield returns in the long term if they are directly linked to the product/service.

Altcoin

All other coins/tokens that are not Bitcoin.

Shilling

Someone who advertises for a cryptocurrency, and in most cases with great unrealistic promises.

FOMO

Abbreviation of “Fear of missing out”. Is often used to describe people who throw themselves on the wave when something starts to rise in price.

FUD

Abbreviation of “Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.”

People often use abuse FUD by pointing out baseless allegations against something to make the price sink (and then buying in themselves).

Pump and Dump

Can happen to both well known and completely unknown coins and tokens, it suddenly shoots high in price and then falls back quickly. Most often it ends up much lower than it started.

Bagholder

Someone who still keeps an altcoin after a “pump and dump” for the price is too low to sell. Can also describe Altcoin’s who do not have an active team anymore and have prospects.

Marketcap

The total value of a given cryptocurrency.

It is calculated by taking the total amount of a cryptocurrency with the price of one unit of the cryptocurrency.

Example: Bitcoin is currently worth $ 7426.76. There are now 17,162,450 Bitcoin in circulation.

Price per Bitcoin 7426.76 * Number of Bitcoins in Circulation 17,162,450 = Marketcap $127 461 053 913

ROI

“Return on investment” The percentage on how much you have earned compared to what you have invested initially or how long it will take to go in zero / profit.

Example: You buy a Bitcoin miner, it costs $ 2000. You will earn $ 50 a week after expenses on this miner.

It will take 40 weeks before you reach ROI and you have the same amount left that you initially invested.

HODL

Slang term for hold.

Originates from a mispelled thread on the forum Bitcointalk in 2013. BTC had been crashing and the original poster decided that he was no trader and was going to hold his assets no matter what, and posted a thread called “I AM HODLING.