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FIGR_HELOC$1.01—
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LEO$8.99+0.25%From your first block to the finer details. Explore the ideas, people, and systems behind the market—one useful explanation at a time.
Follow a transaction from a key to a shared ledger.
Begin with BlockchainExplore contracts, liquidity, borrowing and the risks between them.
Begin with Smart contractUnderstand what a price, valuation or sentiment indicator can tell you.
Begin with Market capitalizationLearn custody, permissions and how to assess what you sign.
Begin with Hardware walletConnect the original ideas to the incidents that changed the industry.
Begin with A Cypherpunk's ManifestoSeparate technical standards, issuer claims and legal frameworks.
Begin with Howey testA breakout that quickly reverses, trapping momentum buyers or sellers.
High fully diluted valuation with tiny float, so price looks rich versus eventual supply.
Fiat-backed Stablecoin is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
In stress, traders dump alts for BTC, ETH, or stablecoins.
The freely trading supply. Low float plus hype can produce violent squeezes both ways.
Splitting a high-value asset into many tokens so smaller buyers can hold a slice. Legal title design matters more than the token UI.
Franklin Templeton's tokenized money-market fund experiment, an early public example of fund shares on public rails.
The key that can block an address from transferring a token, common on Solana stables and some RWAs.
Max or total supply multiplied by current price. What market cap would be if every token were in circulation.
Harvesting perpetual funding by holding a hedged long-and-short book across spot and perps.
Perp funding so high or negative that a squeeze becomes likely. A timing tool, not a thesis.
A periodic payment between longs and shorts on a perpetual future so the contract tracks the spot index.
A contract to buy or sell an asset at a set date and price. Crypto futures are often cash-settled.
Gambling (GambleFi) is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Gaming (GameFi) is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
How fast delta changes. High gamma near expiry can force dealers to buy rips and sell dips, or the reverse.
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust traded at premiums then deep discounts to NAV until ETF conversion paths opened.
GENIUS Act Compliant Stablecoin is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Governance is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Bitcoin's programmed cut of the block subsidy every 210,000 blocks, roughly four years.
Revenue per unit of hashrate. The mining industry's key stress gauge.
A culture term for holding through volatility instead of trading every swing. From an old typo of hold.
A token contract that lets you buy but not sell, or that traps approvals.
Coins that have not moved in a long time, used in on-chain analytics as HODL proxies.
The annualized rate you earn or pay from a perp's funding, used to compare carry across venues.
The volatility priced into options. It is a market forecast, not a historical statistic.
Redeeming ETF shares for the actual asset (BTC, ETH) rather than cash. U.S. crypto ETFs have mixed permissions here.
Speculation around U.S. political calendars (elections, inaugurations) that spilled into memecoins and prediction markets in 2024 to 2025.
Index Coop Defi Index is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
A composite of spot venues used as the reference for derivatives.
The pace at which new supply is issued, often quoted as an annual percentage of circulating supply.
Infrastructure is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
A venue pool that backstops bankrupt liquidations before ADL is used.
The directional risk a market maker takes while holding coins between hedges.
When a market maker shades quotes because they already hold too much of one side.
A derivative commonly quoted in fiat units whose margin and profit or loss are calculated in the underlying cryptocurrency using inverse-price arithmetic.
Indication of interest. A non-binding hint of size used to find the other side without showing a firm order.
Margin assigned to one position so a wipeout cannot drain the rest of the account.
An OTC or FX habit of confirming a quote after the client hits it. Controversial in crypto RFQ.
Launchpad is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Layer 0 (L0) is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Layer 1 (L1) is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Layer 2 (L2) is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Lending/Borrowing Protocols is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Controlling a larger position than the cash posted as margin. Gains and losses both scale.
An instruction to buy or sell only at a chosen price or better. It may rest unfilled.
A derivative whose profit or loss changes proportionally with the underlying price change for a fixed position size, before fees and funding.
Tokens unlock smoothly over time rather than in one cliff.
Forced close of a leveraged position when margin falls below maintenance. The venue seizes collateral to pay the loss.
Hundreds of millions in forced closes within hours, a recurring headline in leverage-heavy markets.
A map of estimated leverage liquidation levels, used to hunt squeezes.
The mark price at which a leveraged position is force-closed.
How easily size can be traded without moving the price much. Deep books and pools mean better liquidity.
A wick through obvious stops that fills liquidations or stop orders before reversing.
Contractual period when insiders cannot sell. Separate from on-chain vesting schedules.
A position that profits if price rises.
Forced selling of leveraged longs that cascades price down. Common on perpetual futures venues.
A forced sell cascade when longs are liquidated into a falling tape.
The count or notional of retail longs versus shorts on a venue. A crowded side is fuel for a squeeze.
A trend-following oscillator built from two moving averages and their difference.
Made in China is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Made in USA is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
A fee schedule that rebates resting orders (makers) and charges crossing orders (takers).
Collateral posted to open and maintain a leveraged position.
A fair-price index used to trigger liquidations so a single print on one venue cannot hunt positions.
Circulating supply multiplied by current price. The primary ranking metric for crypto assets.
An instruction to buy or sell immediately at the best available prices.
An options heuristic: the strike where the most option value expires worthless. Not a law of physics.
Meme is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
MiCA-Compliant Stablecoin is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
The midpoint between best bid and ask, a common fair-value reference.
When hashprice crashes and inefficient miners shut off or sell treasuries, often near cycle lows.
The key or program that can create new tokens. On Solana this is a first-check for supply risk.
The thesis that specialized data-availability and execution layers beat monolithic L1s.
A smoothed average of recent closes, used as a trend filter rather than a forecast.
Market value to realized value ratio. Elevated readings historically cluster near euphoria.
Capital moving from one story (L2s, AI, DePIN, memes) to the next.
Net asset value. The per-share value of a fund's holdings, used to judge ETF premiums and discounts.
Neobank is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
NFT is a market sector used to group crypto assets with similar use or design.
Self-dealing volume to fake demand. Common in thin NFT markets.
Net unrealized profit/loss. Another on-chain sentiment gauge derived from realized price.
Moving collateral at a custodian so trades can net without depositing to an exchange wallet.
A service that turns crypto back into bank money.
Open, high, low, close prices over a fixed interval, drawn as a candlestick on price charts.
When price and open interest move in opposite ways, hinting at short or long covering.
A cascade of liquidations that wipes open interest and often marks a local extreme.
Publishing or settling fund net asset value through on-chain oracles or issuer updates for tokenized funds.
A service that turns bank money into crypto, usually a CEX, broker, or payment app.
Definitions offer a starting point. Detailed readings include the sources behind the explanation.