Airdrop
Free tokens sent to wallets, usually to reward early users of a project.
Free money, right after you spend $800 in gas qualifying for it.
The Cope Dictionary
Crypto slang, with the real meaning and the honest one. Tap any word to share it.
No match. Maybe it's too new, or it got rugged.
Alpha
Valuable early information, supposedly.
Usually shared in a group chat by someone who already bought.
Alt season
A stretch when altcoins outperform Bitcoin.
Like a comet: talked about constantly, seen rarely.
Altcoin
Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.
Thousands of them. A handful matter. Guess which ones you hold.
Ape in
To buy something fast, with little or no research.
Research is for people who enjoy missing pumps.
ATH
All-Time High: the highest price a coin has ever reached.
Also known as the exact moment you bought.
Bag holder
Someone stuck holding a coin that has fallen a long way.
Bags are heavy. That's how you know they're valuable. (They're not.)
Bear market
A long stretch of falling prices and gloomy sentiment.
When your portfolio hibernates and forgets to wake up.
Blue chip
A large, established project seen as relatively safe.
Relatively.
Bull market
A long stretch of rising prices and optimism.
The season when everyone is a genius and nobody takes profits.
Bull trap
A rally that looks like a recovery, then reverses.
The market's way of saying “just kidding.”
Capitulation
When holders give up and sell in a panic, often near a bottom.
If you sold at the very bottom, that was you. Thanks for your service.
CEX
Centralized exchange: a company that holds your funds and matches trades.
Convenient. Until withdrawals are “temporarily paused.”
Cold wallet
A wallet whose keys are kept offline, such as a hardware device.
The safest place for your coins. Also for forgetting where you put it.
Cope
Telling yourself it's fine when it isn't.
The official sport of this website.
Copium
Slang for the imaginary drug that helps you cope with losses.
Available in unlimited supply. The only thing in crypto that is.
DCA
Dollar-cost averaging: investing a fixed amount on a regular schedule, whatever the price.
The boring strategy that actually works, which is why nobody does it.
Dead cat bounce
A brief price recovery in the middle of a big decline.
Even a dead cat bounces if it falls far enough. It's still a dead cat.
DeFi
Decentralized finance: lending, trading and earning through smart contracts instead of banks.
All the excitement of a bank. None of the deposit insurance.
Degen
Short for degenerate: someone who takes wild, reckless bets.
In crypto, this is somehow a compliment.
DEX
Decentralized exchange: trade straight from your wallet through smart contracts.
No company to blame when it goes wrong. Just you.
Diamond hands
Holding through any crash without selling.
Sometimes conviction. Sometimes they just forgot the password.
Down bad
Losing a lot of money.
See: your portfolio, most of the time.
Dust
Leftover amounts of a coin too small to trade.
What your portfolio becomes after a long enough bear market.
DYOR
Do Your Own Research.
Usually said by someone who did none, right before shilling you something.
Exit liquidity
The buyers whose purchases let earlier holders cash out.
If you can't spot the exit liquidity, it's you.
Fiat
Government-issued money, like dollars or euros.
The thing you'll need when the coins don't work out.
Flippening
The hypothetical moment Ethereum's market cap overtakes Bitcoin's.
Predicted every cycle. Still pending.
FOMO
Fear Of Missing Out: buying because everyone else seems to be getting rich.
The force that makes you buy the top. Every top.
Fren
Friend.
The people you'll share your losses with.
FUD
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt: negative news or rumors.
Any news you don't like, including true news.
Gas
The fee paid to process a transaction on a blockchain such as Ethereum.
Occasionally more than the thing you're buying.
GM
“Good morning,” the standard crypto greeting.
Said even when it's neither good nor morning.
Gwei
A tiny unit of ether (0.000000001 ETH), used to price gas.
Very small unit. Somehow very large fees.
Halving
The scheduled cut in Bitcoin's mining reward, roughly every four years.
Reliably blamed for every price move, up or down.
HODL
Hold instead of selling. It comes from a misspelled 2013 Bitcointalk forum post titled “I AM HODLING.”
A typo that became an investment strategy.
Hopium
Unrealistic hope that prices will recover soon.
Copium's optimistic cousin.
Hot wallet
A wallet connected to the internet: convenient, but riskier.
Convenient for you. Also convenient for hackers.
KYC
Know Your Customer: the identity checks exchanges are required to do.
The exchange knows everything about you. You know nothing about the exchange.
Leverage
Borrowing to make a bigger bet, which multiplies both gains and losses.
A tool that lets you lose money 100× faster.
Liquidation
When a leveraged position is force-closed because losses ate the collateral.
The exchange closing your trade for you. Rude, but efficient.
Market cap
A coin's price multiplied by its circulating supply.
Why a coin at $0.0001 isn't “cheap.”
Memecoin
A coin based on a joke or meme, usually with no other purpose.
Somehow keeps outperforming the serious ones.
Moon
A huge price rise. “Wen moon?” asks when it'll happen.
Wen moon? Not wen you bought.
NFT
Non-fungible token: a unique token, often linked to digital art.
A receipt for a JPEG. A very expensive receipt.
NGMI / WAGMI
“Not Gonna Make It” and “We're All Gonna Make It.”
WAGMI gets said a lot more often than it comes true.
Normie
Someone who isn't into crypto.
Statistically, the people doing better than you.
Not your keys, not your coins
If someone else controls the private keys, such as an exchange, you don't fully control your crypto.
See: Mt. Gox, FTX, Celsius, and your cousin's exchange.
Paper hands
Selling at the first sign of trouble.
The opposite of diamond hands. Sometimes, annoyingly, right.
Pump and dump
Hyping a coin's price up so insiders can sell to latecomers. Illegal in regulated markets.
The pump is for them. The dump is for you.
Rekt
Wrecked: having taken a big loss.
Past tense of “I'm sure it'll go up.”
Rug pull
When a project's developers disappear with investors' money.
When the floor you were standing on leaves with your wallet.
Sats
Satoshis, the smallest unit of bitcoin: 0.00000001 BTC.
“Stacking sats” sounds much better than “buying $5 of bitcoin.”
Seed phrase
The 12 or 24 words that can restore a wallet. Whoever has them controls the funds.
Never type it into a website. Never. Not even this one.
Ser
“Sir,” used jokingly in crypto chats.
As in: ser, this is a Wendy's.
Shill
Promoting a coin, often because you hold it or are paid to.
If the advice is free, you might be the product.
Smart contract
Code on a blockchain that runs automatically when its conditions are met.
Runs exactly as written. Bugs included.
Stablecoin
A token designed to hold a fixed value, usually $1.
Stable, right up until it isn't. (See: UST.)
Staking
Locking up coins to help secure a network in exchange for rewards.
Earning interest by promising not to panic sell. For a while.
Tokenomics
How a token's supply is created, split up and released over time.
Usually a pie chart where the team's slice is suspiciously large.
Wen Lambo
A joking question: when will I be rich enough to buy a Lamborghini?
Current estimate: never. But keep asking.
Whale
Someone holding enough of a coin to move its price.
The reason your stop loss got hit at 3 a.m.
Whitepaper
A document explaining a project's idea and how it works.
Bitcoin's was 9 pages. Most people have read none of it.
Yield farming
Moving funds between DeFi apps to chase the highest returns.
Farming, except the crop is risk.
Zoom out
Looking at a longer-term chart to feel better about a drop.
Works great. Until the long-term chart is also down.