DYOR - Do Your Own Research

Fairly easy to understand, but not as easy to commit to. 

A big reason as to why people lose funds is not pure chance, but rather lack of research surrounding different cryptos. If the idea backing a crypto isn't solid, it's bound to fail. It's very rare to see coins such as DOGE, SHIB or SAFEMOON succeed despite the lack of a fundamental purpose behind them. Make sure to dig often and thoroughly as you decide where your coins are best placed, it'll literally save your ass in the future. How to actual do this properly is hard as you can't trust every source or every developer.

FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out

Whenver people are making profit or a coins price rises rapidly, there will always be a spread of FOMO. People want to follow along everyone's portfolio rising in price and thus investing into a coin with a rising value. The increased investment creates a larger rise and following that a stronger FOMO reaction and sparking the price higher potentially triggering a new ATH.

HODL - Hold On for Dear Life

Most common practice for retail investors trying create profit for themselves. Simply buying and holding a coin hoping that the value will increase over time. Most of the time this strikes true as the large majority of crypto today is deflationary, causing a increase over time as supply decreases. This is the complete opposite of tradional fiat that is inflationary, promoting spending and decreasing value over time

FUD - Fear, Uncertainity, Doubt

Often spread on social media as incidents happen. Exchanges being hacked, rug pulls or simple loss of funds can spark any FUD to spread. This often causes a coins marketcap to sink further as people are uncertain whether or not they want to keep holding onto a coin with a large amount of FUD surrounding it. 

SHORT

A form of invesment where you gamble on a stock or crypto losing value in the short term. Upon a crypto losing value, the short position holders get a return by selling for a loss. Short holding can be damaging for crypto as it may remove funds from the marketcap further upon a coins value taking a dive.

LONG

The opposite of short., Gambling on coins or stocks increasing value over time and giving a larger return compared to simply holding a coin. Most large investors gamble with a 25x, 50x or 100x multiplier bonus to increase their holdings. However this may result in a way larger loss than originally accounted for as all the extra funds comes from the investors own pocket.

APY

Annual percentage yield, this is often used to describe the return you get yearly on your investment in percentage. APY is preferble over APR when picking a percentage for your savings or investment. Takes the compounding interest into account resulting in higher return of investment (ROI).

APR

Annual percentage return, most often used to describe the interest that people have to pay for their loans. This method of calculating interest doesn't take interest into acocunt, often resulting in a small loss with the difference that you could've recieved through APY as opposed to APR. This interest method is preferble for loans however as it may result in a smaller cost if you pay in a smaller amount of periods.

DEFI

Decentralized finance or DEFI. It's the word used to describe anyform of financial plattform or service that the user can use without having to worry about a central governing body having any form of control. Popular places to find DEFI is in crypto, wallets and exchanges. The general idea that finance not being centralized is more secure and gives more control to the individual user.

PoS - Proof of Stake

PoW - Proof of Work

This is the method that miners use to verify Bitcoin transactions. A computer verifies the transaction and checks with the other computers connected to the network, then adds it onto the list of previous transactions. Coins that are PoW generally have higher transfer fees as compared to PoS coins, however these coins can, as stated, be mined for profit inviting investors to also invest into the network by providing hashrate to the total mining pool. 

Shill

A person trying to make money by screwing over investors, often convicing them to putting money into a meme or shitcoin and then later pulling the rug and taking all the investors money. Most common shills are found on social media, taking advantage of their following for a quick buck.

MOON

The term used when the value of any given coin skyrockets, thus going to the moon, and incerasing in value. This is what most investors get into the game for, seeing their profits shoot to the sky and getting a high ROI on their money.

Whale

A person with a large holding or storage of crypto or fiat. Compared to whales as they are one of the largest mammals, being one of the largest players on the crypto scene respectively. Can often swing or manipulate the value of cryptos by simply moving their coins around.

Pump & Dump

A common scheme amongst whales within the crypto world. Any coin that has some value invested into it gets it's value pumped by whales investing a large sum of money, often rivaling or trumping the current marketcap. This cases the coin to shoot up in value, the whales and any investor quick on the trigger will sell off their share, making a nice chunk of change in profits. This sell off causes the price of the pumped coin to crash, thus creating a dump. This often harms the coins affected as the whales tend to scrape off a bit of the marketcap as profit leaving the orignal investors worse off.

SATS/Satoshis

The smallest possible amount of bitcoin any one wlalet can hold. 1 Satoshi is 0.00000001 Bitcoin. Named after the supposed creator of bitcoin.

Altcoin

Coins that doesn't have a large marketcap, often considered alternatives to Bitcoin, hence the name, altcoins. This is a good option to diversify your portfolio as these coins' value may increase higher than the Bitcoin as they haven't been around for as long. It's also more likely that these will drop off in value as they haven't been around for as long as Bitcoin and doesn't have as large as a marketcap, making them more subject to manipulation. There's no consensus which coins aren't ALTcoins as most people only consider Bitcoin to be large enough to it's own coin, some also group Ethereum together with bitcoin as it has roughly 20% of the current crypto marketcap.

Shitcoin

Most cryptos fall under this category, coins with no real effort or value. Different from Memecoins as people don't consider these as a joke. Often scams or developers looking to make quick money. If any coin is classified as shitcoin, it's advised to avoid it as to not lose any money you would invest. Instead turn to other projects looking to provide a service or solve problems.

Memecoin

A coin with little to no actual value, often used or created for shits and giggles. One such coin is DOGE, however this is useble on reddit for tipping creators and commentors, providing atleast a use case for the coin. SHIB coin is another example that has no real value other than investing for a return or for the name/image of the coin itself. 

DEX - Decentralized Exchange

An exchange that isn't controlled by a central governing body. This allows users to be anonymous and have a more direct control over their funds. An example of this is to try and withdraw a large amount of crypto onto a wallet and then trying to do a similar thing with a tradional bank. Holding coins with a decentralized exchange stll carries risk as you don't have direct control over your keys and it would be preferble to store anything of significant value in a wallet instead.

FIAT

Traditonal currency offered and provided by banks or governments. Most fiat are pegged towards gold, however this is growing more uncommon. Almost all fiat today is inflationary, meaning that the value of 1 of the respective fiat loses value over time. Most first world countries try to keep the inflation solid around 2% as anything higher could be potentially destructive. Inflation encourages spending and consumtion as simply saving the fiat would result in a loss of value over time.

P2P - Pier to Pier

The immediate connection between two end points without the need of any intermediary, almost all cryptos are P2P. The communications and transactions between each end point are confirmed by a independant network of nodes.

NODE

Most commonly a computer connected to a blockchain. Holding coins, data or a miner can all be nodes connected to a blockchain. All blockchains are a collection of several thousands of nodes, creating stability and safety due to the nodes being independant and spread out over several users, offering decentralized security.

SEED phrase

The 12 or 24 long unique word phrase used to recover and grant access to your crypto wallet. This is one of the most important things any crypto investor possess as it grants access to the wallet the phrase is associated with. Best way to protect this is to write this down physically and store it somewhere safe so there it can't be stolen or destroyed. Never write this down or store it on anything that is connected to the internet. 

Stable coin

Coins that have their value pegged to something tangible, often the american dollar. This provides a stability unlike most other cryptos, allowing for secure storage or transfer as traditonal fiat currencies are built to be more stable instead of relying on projected market value.

Wallet

A place that can hold your private keys for your crypto, giving you full control over your coins. Most common are hot wallets but there's also the more secure cold wallet. Hot wallets store your keys on a device, most often connected to the internet. It's safer than storing it in a pool or exchange but there's still a risk with your seed phrase being comprimsed by hackers or scammmers as your device is connected to the web. Cold wallets aren't connected directly to the internet, providing greater security as any scammer would need to physically access your wallet device to gain access to your coins.

ATH - All Time High

The point in time when a coin was valued the highest. Also the best time to sell of any coins you have, alternatively the worst time to invest into any given coin. This point is often reached in combination with pumps or good news or PR surrounding the coin in question.

NFT - Non-Fungible Token

A NFT is a unique token that can carry a payload, a digital file or storage attached to each NFT on any given blockchain. This allows for the unique creation of digital files that can't be copied as each token is unique. Having unique tokens allows for minting collectble files, such as artwork, videos, media or textfiles. There are different methods of minting NFTs on different blockchains and different methods of transfer and ownership.