ERC-20, mooning, HODL, DEX, ICO, pump and dump
These are all words that you probably heard or read in the past when researching crypto.
It is easy for seasoned traders to throw these terms around without remembering that they once didn’t know them.
For them, it's like saying their name.
For crypto newbies, it can be very confusing.
In this video, I'll give you the talk.
No, not that talk.
Ask your parents to give you that one.
One day, you might actually find out what it means.
I mean introducing you to as many concepts as I can.
This will help you to make sense of news articles and convos between traders.
Let's get it.
It's pretty good.
Welcome to BitBoy Crypto! The hardest working channel in all of cryptocurrency.
If you're new, hit that Subscribe button and check the description for links you can use to connect with me and the BitSquad.
Alright, guys.
In this series of introductory videos, we might have already explained some of these terms when talking to you about other subjects,
so you might be familiar with some of them.
If you haven't watched any of the videos in this series and are watching this one,
I recommend you check them out to learn more about the crypto world as a whole.
You can find them on my Back to Basics playlist.
We're going to be looking at some crypto news and headlines which use some of the terms I want to present to you.
And I will be explaining them as they show up.
So, let's get started. Please take your seats as this lecture is about to begin.
Don't fall asleep.
The first term you might have heard a lot when it comes to crypto is whales.
Huh!
Obviously, they're not referring to those majestic animals that live in the sea, but are a reference to size.
Just like the animals, huge crypto whales are big players who have an incredible amount of capital,
being able to impact the market in a big way when they make moves.
When whales move in the sea, or the crypto market, everything around them moves as well.
The smaller the project is when a whale is operating, the bigger the impact its movements will have.
ICOs is a term that most crypto traders started hating around 2017 and 2018.
ICO stands for initial coin offering,
a type of crowdfunding in which coins were offered in exchange for fiat or more established cryptocurrencies like Ethereum or Bitcoin.
The reason for the distrust and hate towards ICOs was the number of scams that started showing up at a certain point.
Scammers would start an ICO for projects they never had any intentions of working on and had not even started developing,
disappearing when they got the money from investors,
and if they did deliver, the project was not always what was promised.
Oh, Polkadot. Such a good project.
I covered this project back on August 18, and look at it now,
growing as I expected.
I'm so proud of it, I could almost cry.
Anyway, let's talk about circulating supply,
which as you can see had a lot to do with Polkadot’s success.
This concept is pretty easy and at the same time super important in crypto.
This is the number of tokens or coins that are circulating at any given time.
I'm sure you guessed that from the name.
However, I've seen people confusing the terms circulating and total supply.
The circulating supply are the coins that are available to the public at any given moment,
which is the result of the following calculation:
circulating supply = total supply - team tokens - foundation tokens - locked tokens
Circulating supply is used to calculate the market capitalization of a cryptocurrency,
which is the result of the circulating supply multiplied by the value of the token.
You guys love math.
Market capitalization is an indicator of the value of a project,
which is the attribute used to rank crypto projects by most sites,
like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap.
Ah, FOMO and JOMO,
two abbreviations that define two of the most common emotional states for crypto investors.
These abbreviations stand for “fear of missing out” and “joy of missing out.”
The first one is the feeling an investor gets when the price of a coin is super bullish,
which means it is going upwards,
and they quickly jump into the wagon expecting to make returns and not missing out on the opportunity.
Some investors consolidate assets to jump in, or just invest money they wouldn't have otherwise.
This may pay out or go wrong.
Joy of missing out, on the other hand, is that relief that those who didn't jump in feel when they see that the price of the project dropped.
abridged version
FOMO is what made people buy Bitcoin a few days before December 16, 2017, when it reached its all-time high.
JOMO is what people who didn't buy Bitcoin in those days felt on December 17, when the value dropped.
Pump and dump
a term that trolls love using in the comment section of this channel
Pump and dump is the act of boosting a coin’s price by talking about it trying to sell it to other people.
A thing that is easy for big personalities like Dave Portnoy to do because of their big followings.
You basically say great and exaggerated things about a project and promise people it will be mooning soon,
something known as shilling.
Then when the price of the coin goes up, as your followers are buying it, boom!
You sell the coins you had bought at a cheap price before recommending them and then you sell them at a higher price.
The crappier the projects, the easier the technique is for people doing this.
It's not a nice thing to do, if you ask me.
Now, this one is pretty simple.
Altcoins are basically every other cryptocurrency that is not Bitcoin.
Decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, is a cryptocurrency exchange that is now operated by an individual or a group that operates as a central authority.
This is the opposite of Binance, KuCoin or Coinbase.
Decentralized exchanges, like Uniswap, work without a central authority by facilitating trades via automation and liquidity pools.
Now, this is a good opportunity to explain what a liquidity pool is.
And please don't be the guy who says,
Are all pools liquid?
They have water after all.
Okay. The dad jokes are my jokes, okay?
You stay away from them.
A liquidity pool is a pool of tokens that’s been locked in smart contracts to facilitate trading by providing liquidity.
These pools are filled by investors who earn rewards by locking tokens into the pool.
ERC-20 is a term you will see pretty regularly in white papers, wallets, crypto product descriptions, news and exchanges.
ERC-20 is a type of token hosted on the Ethereum blockchain.
ERC-20 stands for “Ethereum Request for Comments,” which represents the standards for a valid token in the network.
For all intents and purposes, ERC-20 means that the token is part of the Ethereum network.
The term “gas” is usually used when referring to the Ethereum network in particular.
Gas refers to the fee that users need to pay to start transactions in the network,
which is paid in Ether.
By charging these fees, the network ensures that the transactions can be validated by rewarding those nodes who work on keeping the network running.
Now, as you can see in this headline, Ethereum’s gas prices have become a big issue in recent months as the cost of operating in it has skyrocketed.
No news article for this one.
HODL is one of the most well-known and beloved terms when it comes to crypto investing.
The term is a misspelling of hold that gained popularity in a crypto forum when a drunk user wrote an extremely emotional and eye-watering post
on how he would be HODLing his beloved Bitcoin.
The term has its own manifesto in everything.
You should really check it out.
I just want to say that most of the people made fun of this guy for his drunk post.
But, hey, back then, BTC was valued at less than $1K.
If the guy did indeed HODL,
he's probably swimming like Scrooge McDuck.
So, let's talk about mooning.
No, not that type of mooning, guys.
This is a family-friendly channel.
I'm talking about a crypto term referring to a coin's value rising to the moon as if it was a rocket.
A coin that is mooning is not just a coin that's increasing in value constantly, but a really sharp increase in value.
Any reference to the moon in crypto means the project is having a moment of great success.
“To the moon,” “moonshot,” and other similar expressions should be something you should keep an eye on,
especially if it's in the title of my video.
But now it's your turn.
What crypto trading terms did I miss?
Did any of these terms mean something to you?
Did any of these terms mean something that you didn't expect?
Let me know what you think down below in the comment section.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did, please make sure to smash the Like button and hit Subscribe to become a member of the BitSquad.
Thanks for watching. Have a blessed day.
BitBoy out.