Slang, Memes, and more — A guide to understanding millennial crypto investors
Note- This is not an exhaustive list of technical terms.
The world of crypto moves fast. Not only does this mean you might wake up to a 43% dip in your portfolio, but also have every new reference fly over your head. Don’t worry though, we’ll get you up to speed.
Hodl
Hodl is simply a typo for ‘hold’, which gained popularity when someone misspelt it in a now popular blog post. It is now interpreted as ‘Hold On For Dear Life’, especially when the market is volatile and crypto prices keep dipping.
BUIDL:
Buidl is a warp of the word build, much like Hodl. It encourages crypto holders to actually contribute to, and build a crypto ecosystem rather than just passively sitting on their investments to make money.
Addy
An Addy simply refers to a cryptowallet’s address. To run crypto transactions, you need to know the addresses you’re dealing with, much like a bank account number.
Bagholder
A bagholder is someone who had the opportunity to sell all his coins but waited too long, and is now left with worthless coins -holding an empty bag.
FUD
Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. Often used to describe false information that is spread on forums to scare people into not investing in a particular crypto or a market.
Sats
Sats stands for Satoshis -named after the enigmatic founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. 1 Bitcoin is made up of a 100 million Satoshis. Since the price of Bitcoin exploded, everyday investors dealing with tiny amounts of bitcoin often use Satoshis to denote value.
546 Satoshis is a lot easier to denote, compared to a convoluted 0.00000546 BTC.
Whale
An investor or an account that holds a huge amount of crypto, and is capable of influencing the market price of a coin on his/her own.
Bear
Someone who believes the market is going to go into a decline.
Bulls
Bulls are the exact opposite of bears. Much like those perennial annoying crypto gurus on social media, Bulls have a positive outlook on the market and believe prices are about to go up.
Shill
Exactly what it means outside of the crypto world. A trickster who poses as a genuine customer to entice others to a particular crypto project.
Noob
The universal tag for a newcomer to any space, or someone who doesn’t understand the space very well.
Shitcoin
A Shitcoin is a crypto currency that has no immediate purpose or utility other than being used as a means of exchange. Dogecoin for instance, might be dubbed a shitcoin.
Weak hands / Paper hands
Weak hands is a condescending term used to describe a crypto trader who doesn’t have the courage or resources to follow through on his trading plans, and folds to market pressure, often selling his funds too early.
Diamond Hands
Diamond hands refer to a person who doesn’t cave under pressure and holds onto their funds despite market volatility. Exactly the opposite of paper hands.
Bitcoin Maximalist
Someone who believes Bitcoin will always remain the supreme crypto, and will eventually provide every functionality that a digital asset might need in the future. They believe all other coins are inferior to Bitcoin, and all of Bitcoin’s shortcomings can be solved.
DeFi
Although more of a solid technical term, I thought I’d include it here. Decentralized Finance aims to take financial networks into a public, decentralized blockchain network so that no one agency or government has control of these transactions. Instead, transactions are peer-to-peer, allowing users to directly trade with other users. Dapps, refer to Decentralized Applications which follow the same principles.
Flippening
The flippening refers to a point in the future when the market capitalization of Ethereum overtakes Bitcoin. Much like Kanye West becoming president, this may or may not ever happen.
Pump and dump -also abbreviated to PnD
This refers to a fraudulent practice where someone encourages people to invest in a project, and once the price of the asset increases, sells their shares immediately, effectively pulling the rug on the project. This is how several crypto/ICO scams were carried out post the ICO boom.
When Lambo?
Probably my favorite of the lot. Where Lambo originates from a meme and essentially stands for “Where is my Lamborghini?” It’s a humorous dig at how some people invest into crypto projects and expect to become millionaires overnight.
Memecoin
Memecoins are coins based on internet memes and current events. These coins/tokens often have no utility and are promoted by influencers and online communities. Dogecoin fits this bill as well.
To the moon/mooning
This term refers to the price of an asset shooting up so high that it might ‘touch the moon.’
It doesn’t always reach new highs though. Sometimes…. this happens
Rekt
Originating from ‘wrecked’, rekt is generally used in games to signify someone losing badly. This sentiment carries over to the crypto community, referring to someone losing their assets after making bad financial decisions.
Web 3.0
While the Web 1.0 was a bunch of static ‘read-only’ websites, the Web 2.0 was a ‘read-and-write’ global highway, allowing people across the world to share content that others could interact with. Web 3.0 is based around the decentralized storage of data and the ability for anyone in the world to interact with it, regardless of the stance their government takes in relation to censorship.
At Point, we are building the future of the web. Come say hi at https://t.me/pointnetworkchat
More Acronyms
FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out
ATH: All Time High
ATL: All Time Low
BTD: Buy The Dip (Also see BTFD: Buy The F***ing dip)
SFYL: Sorry For Your Loss
DYOR: Do Your Own Research