Glossary

158 terms, zero jargon.

Short, plain-English definitions for crypto and stocks.

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Market cap

Price times the number of shares or coins in circulation. A quick way to compare size, not value or quality.

Active fund stocks: A fund where managers pick investments trying to beat a benchmark.
ADR stocks: American depositary receipt: a US-traded certificate representing shares of a foreign company, like ASML or AstraZeneca.
After-hours stocks: Trading after the regular session closes. Thinner and more volatile.
Airdrop crypto: Free tokens sent to wallets, often to promote a project. Fake airdrops are a common scam.
All-time high crypto & stocks: The highest price an asset has ever traded at. Often shortened to ATH.
Altcoin crypto: Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.
Annual report stocks: A company's yearly document with its financial statements and business review.
Annualized return crypto & stocks: A multi-year return expressed as an average yearly rate.
Ask price crypto & stocks: The lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept.
Asset allocation crypto & stocks: How you split money between asset types such as stocks, bonds, cash and crypto.
Balance sheet stocks: A snapshot of what a company owns, owes and the equity left over.
Bear market crypto & stocks: A long stretch of falling prices, often defined as a 20% drop from a recent high.
Benchmark crypto & stocks: A reference, such as an index, used to judge how an investment performed.
Bid price crypto & stocks: The highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay.
Bid–ask spread crypto & stocks: The gap between the highest price buyers offer and the lowest price sellers accept. It's a hidden trading cost.
Bitcoin ETF crypto: An exchange-traded fund that holds bitcoin, letting people get exposure through a regular brokerage account.
Block crypto: A batch of transactions added to a blockchain at once.
Blockchain crypto: A shared ledger copied across many computers, where new records are added in linked blocks that are hard to change.
Blue chip stocks: A large, established company with a long track record. Not risk-free, just less wild.
Bond stocks: A loan to a government or company that pays interest and returns the principal at the end.
Breakout crypto & stocks: When price moves beyond a level it had repeatedly failed to pass. Many breakouts fail.
Bridge crypto: A tool that moves tokens between blockchains. Bridges have been frequent hack targets.
Broker stocks: A company that places trades for you on an exchange and holds your account.
Bull market crypto & stocks: A long stretch of rising prices and optimism. Nobody rings a bell when it starts or ends.
Burn crypto: Sending tokens to an address nobody controls, permanently removing them from supply.
Buyback stocks: When a company buys its own shares, reducing the share count. It can lift EPS without growing profit.
Candlestick crypto & stocks: A chart bar showing the open, high, low and close price for one time period.
Capital gain crypto & stocks: Profit made when you sell something for more than you paid. Often taxable.
Capital loss crypto & stocks: Loss made when you sell something for less than you paid.
Capitulation crypto & stocks: A burst of panic selling where many holders give up at once.
Cash flow stocks: The actual cash moving into and out of a business.
Central bank crypto & stocks: The institution that sets a country's or region's monetary policy, like the ECB or the Federal Reserve.
CEX crypto: Centralized exchange: a company that holds your funds and matches trades.
Circulating supply crypto: How many coins or tokens are currently available on the market.
Cold wallet crypto: A wallet kept offline, such as a hardware device. Safer for long-term storage.
Compound growth crypto & stocks: Earning returns on earlier returns, so growth speeds up over long periods.
Consensus crypto: The method a network uses to agree on which transactions are valid.
Correction crypto & stocks: A drop of roughly 10–20% from a recent peak. Common, uncomfortable, usually temporary — but not always.
Counterparty risk crypto & stocks: The chance that the other side of a deal, or the platform in the middle, fails to deliver.
Custodian crypto & stocks: The party that actually holds assets on your behalf, such as a bank, broker or exchange.
Debt-to-equity stocks: A company's debt compared with shareholders' equity. Higher means more leverage.
DeFi crypto: Decentralised finance: lending, trading and other services run by smart contracts instead of banks.
Delisting stocks: When a share is removed from an exchange, often after failing listing rules.
DEX crypto: Decentralized exchange: trading straight from your wallet via smart contracts, without a company holding funds.
Diversification crypto & stocks: Spreading money across different assets so one bad bet doesn't sink everything.
Dividend stocks: Cash a company pays shareholders out of profits. Not guaranteed, and can be cut.
Dividend yield stocks: Yearly dividends per share divided by the share price.
Dollar-cost averaging crypto & stocks: Buying a fixed amount at regular intervals regardless of price, which smooths out your average entry.
Drawdown crypto & stocks: How far an investment has fallen from its previous peak, usually shown as a percentage.
Earnings stocks: A company's profit, reported every quarter. Stock prices often jump or drop on earnings day.
Earnings season stocks: The weeks each quarter when most listed companies report results.
EPS stocks: Earnings per share: profit divided by the number of shares.
ETF crypto & stocks: Exchange-traded fund: a basket of assets that trades on an exchange like a single share.
Ex-dividend date stocks: The cut-off date: buy on or after it and you won't get the next dividend.
Exchange crypto: A platform where you buy and sell crypto. Centralised ones hold your coins for you, with all that implies.
Exchange hack crypto: Theft from a crypto platform. A key reason many people avoid leaving coins on exchanges.
Expense ratio stocks: The yearly cost of a fund, shown as a percentage of what you hold in it.
Fee crypto & stocks: What a platform or fund charges you. Small fees add up a lot over many years.
FOMO crypto & stocks: Fear of missing out: buying because everyone else is, often near a top.
Fork crypto: A change to a blockchain's rules. A hard fork can split one chain into two.
Free cash flow stocks: Cash from operations minus spending on equipment and similar investments.
FUD crypto & stocks: Fear, uncertainty and doubt — negative talk, sometimes fair, sometimes spread on purpose.
Fully diluted valuation crypto: Market cap if every coin that will ever exist were already in circulation. A big gap hints at future supply.
Gas fee crypto: The fee paid to process a transaction on a blockchain like Ethereum. It rises when the network is busy.
Growth stock stocks: A company expected to grow faster than average, often reinvesting profits instead of paying dividends.
Guidance stocks: A company's own forecast for upcoming results. Markets often react more to guidance than to past numbers.
Halving crypto: A scheduled cut in Bitcoin's new-coin reward, roughly every four years.
Hardware wallet crypto: A small device that stores private keys offline and signs transactions.
Hash rate crypto: The total computing power securing a proof-of-work network.
HODL crypto: Crypto slang for holding through ups and downs, born from a typo in a 2013 forum post.
Hot wallet crypto: A wallet connected to the internet. Convenient, but more exposed to hacks.
Impermanent loss crypto: The shortfall a liquidity provider can face versus simply holding, when prices move.
Income statement stocks: A report of revenue, costs and profit over a period.
Index stocks: A basket of stocks tracked as one number, like the Nasdaq-100 or S&P 500.
Index fund stocks: A fund that simply copies an index. Usually low fees and broad diversification.
Inflation crypto & stocks: The general rise in prices over time, which reduces what your money can buy.
Interest rate crypto & stocks: The cost of borrowing money, set largely by central banks. Changes move most markets.
IPO stocks: Initial public offering: when a company first sells shares to the public on an exchange.
KYC crypto & stocks: Know Your Customer: identity checks that regulated platforms must do before you trade.
Large cap stocks: A company with a big market value, typically tens of billions of dollars or more.
Layer 2 crypto: A network built on top of a main blockchain to make transactions faster and cheaper.
Leverage crypto & stocks: Borrowing to make a bigger bet. It multiplies gains and losses, and can wipe out your stake fast.
Limit order crypto & stocks: An order to buy or sell only at a set price or better. You control the price, not whether it fills.
Liquidity crypto & stocks: How easily you can buy or sell without moving the price much. Thin liquidity means bigger price jumps on small trades.
Liquidity pool crypto: Tokens locked in a smart contract so others can trade against them on a DEX.
Mainnet crypto: The live blockchain where real value moves, as opposed to a test network.
Market cap crypto & stocks: Price times the number of shares or coins in circulation. A quick way to compare size, not value or quality.
Market cap tiers stocks: Rough size groups: large cap, mid cap and small cap. Smaller usually means more volatile.
Market hours stocks: Nasdaq's regular session runs 9:30–16:00 New York time (16:30–23:00 in Helsinki most of the year). Crypto never closes.
Market maker crypto & stocks: A firm that keeps quoting buy and sell prices so others can trade, earning from the spread.
Market order crypto & stocks: An order to trade immediately at the best available price. Fast, but you can get a worse price in thin markets.
Max supply crypto: The hard limit on how many coins can ever exist, if the project has one.
Memecoin crypto: A coin driven mainly by jokes, community and hype rather than a product. Extremely risky.
Merger stocks: Two companies combining into one.
MiCA crypto: The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, which sets rules for crypto issuers and service providers.
Mining crypto: Using computers to secure a proof-of-work blockchain and earn newly created coins plus fees.
Moving average crypto & stocks: The average price over a set number of days, plotted as a line to smooth out noise.
Mutual fund stocks: A pooled fund priced once a day, often actively managed.
NFT crypto: Non-fungible token: a unique blockchain record, often linked to art or collectibles.
Node crypto: A computer that keeps a copy of a blockchain and checks the rules.
Oracle crypto: A service that feeds outside data, like prices, into smart contracts.
Order book crypto & stocks: The live list of buy and sell orders waiting at different prices.
P/E ratio stocks: Price divided by earnings per share. A high P/E means investors expect strong growth — or are overpaying.
Passive fund stocks: A fund that simply tracks an index, usually with low fees.
Penny stock stocks: A very low-priced share, often thinly traded and easy to manipulate.
Phishing crypto & stocks: Fake messages or sites that trick you into giving away logins or seed phrases.
Portfolio crypto & stocks: The full collection of assets you own. Looking at it as a whole beats obsessing over one position.
Pre-market stocks: Trading before the regular session opens. Thinner and more volatile.
Private key crypto: The secret that proves you own a crypto address. Anyone with it controls the funds; lose it and they're gone.
Profit margin stocks: The share of revenue left as profit after costs.
Proof of stake crypto: A way to secure a blockchain where validators lock up coins as collateral. Ethereum switched to it in 2022.
Proof of work crypto: A way to secure a blockchain where miners spend computing power to add blocks. Bitcoin uses it.
Public address crypto: The string you share so others can send you crypto. Safe to share, unlike a private key.
Pump and dump crypto & stocks: Hyping an asset to push its price up, then selling on the buyers who arrive late.
Rally crypto & stocks: A sustained rise in prices after a flat or falling period.
Rebalancing crypto & stocks: Bringing your portfolio back to its target mix by trimming winners and topping up laggards.
Recession crypto & stocks: A broad, lasting decline in economic activity, often defined loosely as two quarters of falling GDP.
Resistance crypto & stocks: A price area where selling has tended to stop a rise in the past. A pattern, not a guarantee.
Revenue stocks: Total money a company brings in before costs. Growth is nice; profit is what's left.
Risk tolerance crypto & stocks: How much loss and price swing you can handle, financially and emotionally.
RSI crypto & stocks: Relative Strength Index: a 0–100 gauge of how fast price moved recently. Above 70 or below 30 is often called stretched.
Rug pull crypto: When a project's creators drain its funds and vanish. A classic risk with new, anonymous tokens.
Satoshi crypto: The smallest unit of bitcoin: one hundred-millionth of a BTC.
Sector stocks: A group of companies in a similar line of business, like technology or energy.
Seed phrase crypto: A list of 12–24 words that can restore a wallet. Never type it into a website or share it with anyone.
Self-custody crypto: Holding your own keys instead of leaving coins on an exchange. More control, more responsibility.
Share stocks: A slice of ownership in a company. It can give you votes and a claim on profits.
Shareholder stocks: Someone who owns at least one share of a company.
Short selling crypto & stocks: Betting on a price fall by selling borrowed assets and buying them back later. Losses can be unlimited.
Sideways market crypto & stocks: A stretch where prices move in a range without a clear trend up or down.
Slippage crypto & stocks: The gap between the price you expected and the price you actually got, common in fast or thin markets.
Small cap stocks: A company with a small market value. Often faster growing and more volatile.
Smart contract crypto: Code on a blockchain that runs automatically when conditions are met. Bugs can be costly and permanent.
Spin-off stocks: When a company splits off part of its business into a new listed company.
Stablecoin crypto: A token designed to track a currency like the US dollar, backed by reserves or algorithms. Pegs can break.
Staking crypto: Locking coins to help run a proof-of-stake network in return for rewards. Lock-ups and slashing are real risks.
Stock exchange stocks: A regulated marketplace where shares are listed and traded, like Nasdaq or the NYSE.
Stock split stocks: Splitting each share into several cheaper ones. The company's total value doesn't change.
Stop-loss crypto & stocks: An order that sells automatically if the price falls to a chosen level. It can limit losses but may trigger on brief dips.
Support crypto & stocks: A price area where buying has tended to stop a fall in the past. A pattern, not a guarantee.
Testnet crypto: A practice blockchain where tokens have no value, used for testing.
Ticker stocks: The short code for a listed asset, such as AAPL for Apple or NVDA for Nvidia.
Time horizon crypto & stocks: How long you plan to keep money invested before you need it.
Token crypto: A digital asset issued on an existing blockchain, as opposed to a coin with its own chain.
Token unlock crypto: When previously locked tokens, often held by insiders, become free to sell.
Tokenomics crypto: How a token's supply, distribution and incentives are designed.
Total return crypto & stocks: Price change plus any income such as dividends, over a period.
Trend crypto & stocks: The general direction of price over time: up, down or sideways.
Validator crypto: A participant in proof-of-stake that locks up coins to help confirm blocks.
Valuation crypto & stocks: An estimate of what something is worth, using measures like P/E or market cap.
Value stock stocks: A company priced low relative to its earnings or assets, which some investors see as a bargain.
Volatility crypto & stocks: How wildly a price swings. Crypto is famously volatile; big swings work in both directions.
Volume crypto & stocks: How much of an asset changed hands in a period, usually 24 hours. High volume means lots of activity, not necessarily a good sign.
Wallet crypto: Software or hardware that holds the keys controlling your crypto. The coins live on the blockchain, not in the wallet.
Wei and gwei crypto: Tiny units of ether used to price gas. One gwei is a billionth of an ETH.
Whale crypto: A holder with enough of an asset to move its price.
Yield crypto & stocks: The income an investment pays, shown as a percentage of its price.
Yield farming crypto: Moving crypto between DeFi apps to chase rewards. High risk of bugs and losses.