A beginner's glossary of crypto terms

Crypto conversations are full of terms that sound intimidating until someone explains them plainly. Here's a quick reference to the ones you'll run into most often.

The basics

Blockchain — a shared, continuously growing record of transactions, copied across many independent computers rather than stored in one central place.

Wallet — software (or hardware) that lets you hold and manage digital assets. A self-custody wallet means you alone control it; a custodial account means a company controls it on your behalf.

Seed phrase — a sequence of words that generates your wallet's private keys. Anyone with it can access your funds, so it needs to be backed up carefully and never shared.

Self-custody — holding your own private keys rather than trusting a third party to hold assets for you.

Stablecoins and value

Stablecoin — a digital asset designed to track the value of a real-world currency, aiming for price stability rather than growth.

Peg — the target relationship a stablecoin is designed to maintain with the currency it tracks (for example, DePix is designed to track the Brazilian Real 1:1).

Volatility — how much an asset's price moves up and down over time. Stablecoins aim for low volatility; many other crypto assets have high volatility.

Networks and transactions

Liquid Network — a Bitcoin-linked sidechain built for faster settlement and for issuing assets like stablecoins.

Confirmation — the point at which a transaction has been processed and recorded by the network, making it part of the permanent record.

Swap — exchanging one digital asset for another, often directly within a wallet.

Trust and verification

KYC — "Know Your Customer," a basic identity verification process used to reduce fraud and confirm a real person is behind an account.

Trust level — a system where new accounts start with lower limits that increase over time as the account builds a track record, protecting against fraud on brand-new accounts specifically.

Keep this one bookmarked — it's the kind of list that comes in handy the next time an unfamiliar term shows up mid-conversation.