You could get away with not knowing much about cryptocurrency in 2021, but it's a new year, and with the crypto market now valued at $ 3 trillion, you have no excuse not to become crypto literate. Here are some of the biggest buzzwords of the year to know about, and a couple of less new ones to make this brave new money world less ... well cryptic.
block chain
While not new, you need to know what it means if you want a chance to understand cryptocurrencies. A blockchain is a decentralized and encrypted ledger that records everything cryptocurrency transactions around the world. More specifically, it is a shared database in which blocks of data (such as account balances and transactions) are chained in chronological order. On a blockchain, digital information is permanently recorded and cannot be edited. (Oh.)
altcoin
Yes Bitcoin is the granddaddy of crypto, altcoin is all its "altcoins" or alternate versions. The most prominent include: Ethereum, Solana, and Dogecoin.
stable coins
A subset of altcoin, stablecoins provide the benefits of cryptocurrencies with more stability. (Cryptocurrency prices are notoriously volatile; Bitcoin shares have been known to lose $ 9,000 in value overnight.) Designed to be relatively stable in price, stablecoins (such as Tether, USD Coin, and Binance) link their value to assets in the real world - commodities such as gold or other currencies, like the US dollar or the euro.
even the corners
If someone had told you ten years ago that new forms of currency inspired by online memes and jokes (such as "doge," a misspelling of "dog" that first appeared in an animated web series before becoming popular on Reddit) would be available for trading on the stock market, would you have believed them? Yes me neither. Still, here we are.
dogecoin
(DOHJ currency): This is tThe most prominent example of the meme coins mentioned above. This cryptocurrency was first coined in 2013 as a joke to satirize the huge popularity and (at the time) the apparent lack of foundation of cryptocurrencies. He gained widespread appeal after being promoted by Elon Musk.
Web 3.0 / Web3
Essentially the third iteration of the internet. If Web 1.0 saw the launch of the original "World Wide Web" with static sites, no ads, and dial-up, and Web 2.0 ushered in the rise of the tech giants (Amazon, Google) and user-generated content (blogs, podcasts, and social media), then Web 3.0 envisions the web evolving into a decentralized network based on peer-to-peer connections, where individuals, in theory, will retain more ownership of their digital property. (Web3's key features include 3D graphics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and semantic metadata.)
Crypto wallet
A place to store your private "keys" or passwords that give you access to the blockchain. They can be "hot wallets", that is, virtual (like the mobile application Coinbase wallet), or "cold wallets" which means tangible pieces of hardware such as Ledger. Either way, if you want to trade crypto, it is a must.
DeFi
Sometimes referred to as "the Wild West of finance", Decentralized finance is the largely unregulated industry of automated financial instruments that allows cryptocurrency users to lend, borrow, speculate through derivatives, and trade cryptocurrencies directly through a blockchain, without the need for brokerage, banks or other intermediaries.
NFT
Non-fungible tokens allow buyers to own collectible digital art, music, or games, among other assets that are much more fun than Bank of America stocks. Think of it as modern crypto; It's not just for fintech geeks, it's for investors who may be in the mood spend $ 208,000 on an epic LeBron James dunk-digitally, that is.
