A feed that tells contracts the reference price of an asset. Bad oracles cause bad liquidations.

The ability to inspect original records, identify what they actually establish, and distinguish evidence from interpretation or promotion.

A firm that packages custody, leverage, settlement, and OTC for funds so they do not juggle ten exchange logins.

A secret number that authorizes spends. If it leaks, the address is compromised.

A BIS-led exploration of cross-border payments using tokenized commercial-bank deposits and central-bank money on a shared programmable platform.

A BIS Innovation Hub experiment on a shared platform for cross-border settlement using multiple central-bank digital currencies.

A multi-CBDC cross-border payment project developed with central-bank partners; the BIS announced its handover to those partners in October 2024.

A BIS initiative to connect domestic instant payment systems through a standardized model for cross-border payments.

Consensus run by a known, permissioned set of validators. Fast, centralized, common on sidechains.

A scheme to show a wallet is one human, used to fight airdrop farming and bots.

Evidence about a custodian's reserve assets at a specified time and within a stated scope; it does not alone establish full solvency.

Consensus where validators lock tokens as collateral to propose and attest blocks. Used by Ethereum.

Consensus where miners expend computation to propose blocks. Used by Bitcoin.

Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction. A wallet-exchange format for hardware signers and multisig.

The counterpart to a private key. Addresses are usually a hashed or encoded form of the public key.

The payee debits the payer under a mandate, as with many card and ACH debit flows.

A coordinated hype cycle that lifts a thin token so insiders can sell into the rush.

A Solana launchpad that lets anyone spin up a bonding-curve memecoin and graduate it to a DEX pool.

Canadian exchange that collapsed after the CEO's death and inaccessible cold wallets, becoming a custody cautionary tale.

A regulated entity that can hold assets for U.S. advisers under custody rules.

Caps on how fast value can leave a protocol, buying time during exploits.

A bug where a contract is called again before it finishes updating state. The DAO hack's family of bugs.

A contract flaw where an external call re-enters before state updates, used in classic DeFi hacks.

George Soros-style feedback where rising prices create narratives that create more rising prices, until they reverse.

A U.S. mini-IPO exemption some tokenized-equity issuers have tried to use.

A U.S. exemption used for private securities offerings, including many token sales to accredited investors.

Cross-border retail money transfer. Crypto and stablecoins compete with traditional operators on speed and cost.

Rebroadcasting a valid signed transaction on another chain or after a fork so it executes twice.

Independent parties can rebuild the same binary from source, raising trust in wallet releases.

A price area where sellers have repeatedly capped advances.

The company that builds RippleNet payment software and is closely associated with the XRP Ledger and XRP.

Position size, leverage limits, and invalidation levels decided before entry.

A U.S. retail brokerage that added crypto trading alongside stocks and options.

A scaling system that executes transactions outside its settlement chain and publishes commitments plus sufficient data, using fraud proofs or validity proofs to enforce state-transition rules.

Long social engineering that ends in fake investment apps. A major fiat-to-crypto crime pattern.

The underlying bug or process failure, not just the stolen amount headline.

Remote procedure call. The API wallets and apps use to read chain state and broadcast transactions.

The Relative Strength Index, a 0 to 100 oscillator that flags stretched short-term moves.

Real-time gross settlement. Central-bank rails that settle each payment in full, not in net batches.

A 2021 BNB-chain tax-token phenomenon later hit by lawsuits and criminal cases over liquidity and disclosures.

FTX founder convicted after the 2022 collapse. Shorthand SBF for the scandal era.

Legal prohibitions on dealing with listed people, entities, or jurisdictions. On-chain, this often means frozen addresses.

A suspicious activity or suspicious transaction report filed with a financial-intelligence unit.

An Ethereum rollup that executes EVM-compatible transactions on Layer 2 and uses validity proofs, published data, and Ethereum contracts to settle its state.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which polices securities offerings, exchanges, and advisers.

A U.S. civil enforcement case filed in 2023 concerning Coinbase's securities-related activities and dismissed by agreement in February 2025.

U.S. penalties on third-country firms that deal with a primary sanctioned party, a key SWIFT-risk topic.

The U.S. law that requires registration or an exemption before securities are offered to the public.

The U.S. law that governs exchanges, brokers, and ongoing disclosure for public securities.

Basics every user needs: seed secrecy, URL checks, and never signing blind approvals.

A token that is a security under applicable law: ownership, debt, or investment-contract rights, usually with transfer restrictions.

A word-based wallet recovery backup, often using BIP-39; successful restoration can also require a passphrase, derivation paths, and the correct wallet format.

Bitcoin's 2017 capacity and malleability fix. Addresses start with 3 or bc1.

Control of the keys or authorization policy needed to use an on-chain account, with responsibility for protecting and recovering that authority.

The delay between an event, its appearance in sentiment inputs, and publication of a score or trading signal.

The rules used to select, transform, and combine observations into a measure of market mood.

Single Euro Payments Area. Euro credit transfers and direct debits across participating countries.

The layer that makes transfers final and resolves disputes. For many L2s that layer is Ethereum.

The asset in which a contract's realized obligations or profit and loss are paid, which may differ from its quote or collateral currency.

The moment a payment can no longer be unilaterally reversed under the system's rules.

The chance one side delivers and the other does not, classic in cross-border and OTC crypto.

A 256-bit hash function from the SHA-2 family. Bitcoin uses it for proof of work and address hashing.

Excess return per unit of volatility. A simple way to compare strategies after adjusting for swing size.

A position that profits if price falls, typically via a borrowed asset or a derivative.

A forced buy-back cascade when shorts are liquidated into a rising tape.

U.S. bank active in crypto deposits that failed in the 2023 regional-bank crisis, cutting a fiat on-ramp.

Asking you to sign a typed-data message that grants operatorship or transfers assets.

The 2023 regional bank failure that hit startup and crypto firm deposits and stressed USDC confidence.

An early darknet market that used Bitcoin and shaped the crime-and-privacy narrative around crypto.

Crypto-friendly bank that wound down after deposit flight and the 2022 to 2023 stress, ending SEN network lore.

Attackers port your phone number to intercept SMS 2FA. Use app or hardware 2FA for exchanges.

The stablecoin and governance ecosystem developed from MakerDAO, including USDS, its sUSDS savings-vault representation, and the SKY governance token.

The difference between the expected price and the fill price, usually worse in thin markets or large orders.

Code deployed on a blockchain that executes deterministically when called.

Automated or coordinated accounts increasing the apparent reach, repetition, or popularity of cryptocurrency messages.

A tighter rule set that old nodes still see as valid, so the network can upgrade without a clean split.

A high-throughput proof-of-stake chain that uses Proof of History for ordering and hosts a large DeFi and memecoin culture.

Russia's domestic SWIFT alternative for bank messages.

Posting large orders you intend to cancel to trick others about supply or demand.

Trading the actual asset for immediate settlement, not a future or perpetual.

Earning the bid-ask as a market maker, before inventory and adverse-selection costs.

A crypto asset designed to track a reference value, such as a currency; its market price can still move away from that target.

Know issuer, reserves, attestation, and redemption path before treating a dollar token as cash.

An Ethereum validity rollup with Cairo-based execution and native smart-contract accounts; proofs establish valid state transitions while transaction receipts separately report execution and settlement status.

Builders of Starknet and STARK proving technology.

A payments-focused ledger and cousin of the XRP design, used for remittances and tokenized fiat.

Security token offering. A regulated-style issuance of tokenized securities, contrasted with unregistered ICOs.

A trigger that becomes a sell (or buy) if price trades through a level, used to cap a losing position.

An asset held to preserve purchasing power across time. Crypto SV narratives compete with gold and bonds.

A payments company that has returned to crypto settlement and stablecoin payouts for merchants.