BULL RUN: This happens after a piece of good news or a pump of a coin. The price of the coin surges upward in a bull run. Day after day a coin can increase up to 1600% as seen with Ethereum in the early spring of 2017.

CASH OUT: Taking profits from the increase of a coin by selling all or part of your coins and exchanging them for FIAT currency.

FIAT CURRENCY: Currency that is backed by a governing body

FOMO: Traders often have a fear of missing out. When one coin surges in value, others climb aboard, making it even more valuable because of a fear of missing out. This can make a coin surge even higher, based purely on FOMO. This can lead others to cash out and crash the value of the coin.

HODL: Hold on for dear life. This is a philosophy held by some that eventually the coins you have been reading will be worth millions of dollars. A familiar example is now legend: A man bought pizza with 10,000 bitcoins in the early days of its use. Now, it is celebrated by the community as Pizza Day. HODL also is used when a currency does a sharp increase or decrease in value, making you very rich or very poor. HODL is a sacred act of any crypto user.

INTERNET OF MONEY: This idea was popularized by bitcoin enthusiast Andre Antonopoulis, which states that we are at the very beginnings of a system similar to the invention of the internet due to the emergent properties of cryptocurrencies. Many people were unsure of how the internet would be used in it’s early days, and current bafflement of the media regarding cryptocurrency has striking similarities.  

JOHN SMITH: A popular name for many crypto traders.

USE CASE: Crypto community members will often ask what the use case for a coin is. This simply means “what is it used for and by how many people could it be used?” If a coin has a unique use case, such as Ethereum’s “smart contracts,” it is looked at as having high potential value.

WHALE: Someone with a large holding in one or more cryptocurrency. When this person cashes out, the market moves.