So You Think You Can Speak Bitcoin?

By Pete Richison – Owner of Miners-Warehouse.com

If you have hung out in the bitcoin space at all you have likely seen a lot of slang terms floating around that may be hard to follow. This list is certainly not all-inclusive but will serve as a guide to help you navigate this wild and crazy world we call Crypto.

FOMO – “Fear of Missing Out” – Describes the action of ‘panic buying’ a coin when you see the price going up because you have a fear of missing out on the potential growth. Caution! This action is often followed by getting REKT!

REKT – “Wrecked” – This is used to describe when you lose badly on a trade. It could be a coin you hold for too long that falls down in value. Or less often it could be selling a coin that then grows significantly and you miss out on the growth.

YOLO – “You Only Live Once” – This term isn’t solely crypto related but does apply when people take big gambles this may be their justification for the risk. For example, “You Only Live Once” so why not take the big risks?

ATH – “All Time High” – Used to describe when a particular coin is at the highest dollar value in its history.

BTFD – “Buy the F*cking Dip” – It is said that when you see the Bitcoin pricing fall you should buy the price dips because they are looked at as a time when Bitcoin is “on sale”. The thought process being instead of panicking when the price drops, you should buy the f*cking dip!

GPU – Graphics Processing Unit – This is the muscle of all at home miners. These are ‘cards’ or large computer chips that are able to be inserted into a home PC to use for video game purposes. Cryptocurrency miners use these cards (GPU’s) in GPU mining rigs to process cryptocurrency mining operations and create crypto (like Ethereum).

ASIC – Application Specific Integrated Circuit – ASICs are highly specialized computers that do one thing and one thing only, mine a specific coins algorithm. They generally cannot be repurposed for anything else so they potentially have much less resale value than GPU miners. But they are typically exponentially more powerful that GPU miners. They cannot switch between coin algorithms like GPUs, so they are limited in their functionality.

PSU – Power Supply Unit – Miners use power supplies to run their GPU rigs and ASIC mining machines. They vary in wattages from a few hundred to 3600 watts or more.

MOBO – Motherboard – This is the main board of a GPU mining rig that all of the GPU’s are connected to.

CPU – Computer Processing Unit – This is the brain of the motherboard. For GPU mining you need a very minimal CPU and this is a great place to save costs when designing a rig.

Market Cap – This refers to a ranking website (www.CoinMarketCap.com) that compares all cryptocurrency and their valuations. The way it is calculated is the value of a coin multiplied by the total supply of that coin to determine its “Market Cap”.

Fork – Sometimes the programmers of a cryptocurrency disagree on how the coin should best proceed in the future. When this happens sometimes they may decide to create a fork in the block chain, and proceed forward with their own ideas for the coin. Sometimes these events are successful and sometimes they create new coins that end up dying off in the end.

Halving – Also referred to as a Halvening. This is an event that happens in most cryptocurrencies lifecycles where on a certain block in the block chain the mining rewards for that coin are cut in half. Typically these events are followed by a significant increase in the cryptos price so they are seen as somewhat sacred events.

“Not Your Keys, Not Your Crypto” – This is a saying in reference to the fact that every cryptocurrency wallet has a “private key”. Commonly folks are advised to keep their coins off of an exchange (like Binance, Coinbase, etc). Because when your coins are stored there you do not own the private key, someone else does (the exchange itself). And if you are not in control of the keys it’s possible someone could take the coins against your wishes.

Private Key – Every bitcoin wallet has a private key, essentially a complicated password, to get the coins out of the wallet. NEVER share this private key with anyone or you will be risking losing your coins.

Public Address – Your public address is just that, public. Share it with anyone you need to collect payment from. No one can take your coins with just your public key, they need that private key to get the coins (so don’t give it to them!).

Mt. Gox – Mt. Gox was a cryptocurrency trading exchange that was famously hacked in 2014. Many people who were holding coins on that exchange lost their crypto. This lends credence to the above term “Not Your Keys Not Your Crypto”. 

BTC – Bitcoin – Bitcoin is the most popular and valuable cryptocurrency at this time.

ETH – Ethereum – Ethereum is the number 2 most valuable cryptocurrency and specializes in “smart contracts”. These are a way to execute agreements via block chain.

LTC – Litecoin – Litecoin is a fork of bitcoin designed to be faster and cheaper than bitcoin.

DOGE – DOGE COIN – (No one really knows the “right” way to pronounce it, so do your best). This coin was originally created as a fun joke of a coin following a cute dog meme. But over time it has gained a significant following and recently has taken on some real value.

BNB – Binance Bucks – These are a native coin to the extremely popular cryptocurrency trading platform Binance. They are very useful because they can give you discounts on all of your trades. If you use haven’t used Binance before use this referral link https://accounts.binance.us/en/register?ref=35000613  and setup an account today!

USDC – US Dollar Coin is a “stable coin” on Coinbase. It’s value is pegged at $1 at all times. So it is considered a safe harbor crypto to use in between trades or for transactions.

USDT – Tether, is another stable coin, arguably the most popular stable coin in crypto. A cryptocurrency that it is backed by real world assets that cover every single dollar of Tether coin in existence.