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ipedia - your finance and crypto dictionary

  Q-terminologies 

 

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Rally

A rally typically refers to a period of price increase of a specified asset

 

Simply, a rally is called out when the price of a cryptocurrency, stock, bonds, or other assets, digital or real, makes a sustained price uptrend, this may also be called bullish as the sentiment of potentially profitable investment assets.

 

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Regulation

To regulate simply means to control, thus, regulation is the governance or control of a system following a set of defined rules. 

 

The cryptocurrency space is however not regulated, considering the decentralized nature of most of its products and services, which makes it highly difficult to control.

 

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Recession

A recession typically occurs when there's a decline in nations' spending activities, most often influenced by financial or economic crises such as inflation.

 

A recession is often declared when there's a prolonged downturn in economic activity, typically a two-quarters(six months) decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

 

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Rekt

Rekt is simply a term translating to "wrecked" or "wasted".

 

In the cryptocurrency ecosystem, when the word "rekt" is being used, it's usually a reference to losing money, traders and investors often express their losses as "being rekt".

 

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Resource Credit(RC)

A resource credit(RC) is what makes the hive blockchain feeless. 

 

Some may argue that it isn't entirely feeless, following this, however, considering that it's not a direct balance charge, it's suitable to say hive is indeed feeless.

 

Typically, a resource credit is a rechargeable credit, like your phone battery, only that you don't need electricity to power it, just need to seize transactions for a while and it recharges automatically, so we could say "time" is the energy to be expended?

 

In simpler terms, resource credit is what a user spends when he performs a transaction on the hive blockchain, this fee is typically attached to each hive token, meaning that holding a hive coin on the blockchain gives you a proportionate amount of resource credit to operate on the network.

 

However, each newly created account is equipped with a limited amount of resource credit, which is, of course, rechargeable.

 

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Return On Investment(ROI)

Return on investment(ROI) is typically the profits made at the end of an investment or the contract dividends payment.

 

ROI can however be pre-determined or calculated based on the product interest data. The interest to be earned may be presented on an annual percentage rate (APR) or annual percentage yield (APY).

 

ROI is calculated in this format: the current value of investment minus the cost of the investment divided by the cost of investment, ROI is often represented in percentages.

 

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Revenue

Revenue is simply the money, profits, or income generated from a business operation. Typically, revenue is calculated by multiplying an average sales price by the number of sold units.

 

Company revenues are a direct representation of the health of its operations, it also serves as an investor's go-to metric to draw investment conclusions, revenues are part of any company's quarterly report, most often in the income statement.

 

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Rug Pull

A rug pull is an event where a project team decides to discontinue a service thereby withdrawing funds or assets, most generally called "liquidity". 

 

The term "rug pull" is derived from the idea of pulling a rug from under a person, basically translating to removing or withdrawing support.

 

Most commonly seen amongst supposed decentralized finance(Defi) projects, where a decentralized exchange(Dex) is usually assigned some liquidity to enable trade, in the case of a rug pull, the said liquidity is removed.

 

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Satoshi(sats)

Satoshi or simply sats is the smallest unit of bitcoin, the term is derived from the cryptocurrency founder or founders "Satoshi Nakamoto". 

 

Typically, 100 million Satoshi makes one bitcoin, just as 100 cents make a dollar.

 

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Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonymous name of the developer or developers of bitcoin

 

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has not been revealed to date, however, the credits for inventing Bitcoin have been given to the identity or identities behind this name.

 

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Scalability

A scalable network is typically able to adjust seamlessly to changes in conditions, performing well regardless of the expansion of workload or increased processing requirements.

 

Scalability can be applied similarly to the financial markets, the services and products, and generally the economy. Scalability simply implies "good performance regardless of changes".

 

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Secondary Markets

A secondary market is typically a financial market in which financial products are offered to the general public. 

 

As we've studied the basics of a primary market, a secondary typically acts as an extension for assets sold in the primary markets.

 

Taking cryptocurrencies into consideration, centralized exchanges are an example of a secondary market, whereas crypto projects may previously have primary markets like team-developed exchange mediums for trades of its tokens or coins, often accessible to a limited number of people.

 

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Securities and Exchange  Commission (SEC)

The Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC), is a U.S independent agency, of the federal government.

 

The primary job of the SEC is to enforce laws against financial market manipulation, thereby regulating the products sold.

 

As the name implies, the SEC was created by congress to regulate securities and ensure investors' protection.

 

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SHA-256

SHA is an acronym for Secure Hashing Algorithm. SHA-256 is a hash function that is used to produce a 256-bit long hash for plaintext.

 

This algorithm is applied in mining on the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin blockchain uses double SHA-256, implying that the hash function is applied twice.

 

SHA-256 helps secure the Bitcoin blockchain, by using a one-way function that encrypts data, the protocol attains immutability through the expenditure of miners' computational work.

 

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Sharding

Sharding is a method of data distribution involving the splitting of one data set amongst different databases, solely with the aim to attain scalability.

 

Sharding typically helps delegate a network's workload, aiding better operations and functionality.

 

Ethereum is expected to apply this to its blockchain (speculated to be 2023) following the merge.

 

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Shilling

Shilling is generally the act of advertising or promoting a cryptocurrency or asset. This may be with good or bad intentions, however, most shillings are targeted at vulnerable investors looking for quick gains.

 

Following this, it becomes a game for bad actors to heavily promote projects for the purpose of executing a pump and dump scheme.

 

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Sidechain

A sidechain is a second-layer network primarily proposed to help pre-existing networks scale.

 

Typically, a sidechain can interact with the mainchain or mainnet, directly allowing for transactions to be made across both blockchains.

 

With smart contracts integration, sidechains can facilitate transactions on the specified network, using a model that reads, locks, and creates coins to finalize transactions.

 

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Smart Contract

A smart contract is simply an automated program, following a set of execution rules, typically by which program conditions are met.

 

Smart contracts typically live on the blockchain, compatible protocols run these automated programs for diverse reasons. 

 

Considering the inner workings of a decentralized exchange (DEX), the backend of things has a smart contract automating the process of a swap or trade.

 

Smart contracts were first introduced on Ethereum, now several other networks have smart contract capabilities.

 

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Speculation

Speculation generally involves arriving at a theory holding no firm grounds.

 

In the cryptocurrency ecosystem, it is applied to risk-on decisions made on a potentially bad investment whilst trying to consider the potential gains, it's like being in the middle of a circle and hoping you fall on the good side.

 

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Spot Price

A spot price is simply the present market price of a specified asset.

 

This of course is dependent on the time and the market as spot prices are often not uniform across all marketplaces considering the size of the digital assets markets.

 

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Stablecoin

A stablecoin is a digital asset, most often seen in the cryptocurrency space, thus addressed as one following the utility of blockchain and its associated technologies like distributed ledger technology(DLT).

 

Typically, a stablecoin is meant to sustain a defined price value, as such, an underlying peg is defined as a target value of a stablecoin.

 

Most currently circulating stablecoins are directly pegged to the dollar and are centralized. However, there are a number of decentralized stablecoins also pegged to the dollar whilst there are also algorithm stablecoins pegged to a different crypto asset to maintain a dollar value.

 

To sum it up, there are also stablecoins aiming only to sustain the value of the underlying cryptocurrency, meaning, the goal is to trade at an equal price value as the pegged asset.

 

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Staking

Staking in the cryptocurrency ecosystem is done for different purposes. 

 

Staking generally means locking up a cryptocurrency asset for a defined period of time.

 

A number of reasons for staking cryptocurrencies include earning rewards, and considering products like yield farming, also, staking could be done in order to participate in mining activities and decentralized governance.

 

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Store Of Value

A store of value is typically an asset that can acquire and retain value over time.

 

Most often referenced as assets that sustain a range of purchasing power, a store of value is primarily pictured as a hedge asset against financial crises such as inflation.

 

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Target Hash

A target hash is a string of numbers and letters that miners expend computational power to guess, in order to verify a block and earn block rewards.

 

Typically, miners on a proof-of-work(PoW) blockchain like Bitcoin, compete to verify blocks by running heavy hardware and solving for a  hash.

 

Considering that the Bitcoin blockchain uses a double SHA-256 hashing algorithm, this hash is a tough one to solve, thus, miners instead solve for a target hash(by generating a "nonce"-number only used once) which is shorter than a 256-bit long string.

 

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Tax

Tax is simply a  levy imposed by the government on individuals or corporations.

 

Tax gatherings are used to finance government activities like building roads, schools, hospitals, and more.

 

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Technical Analysis(TA)

Technical Analysis(TA) is the study of investment assets to engage in trade activities.

 

Typically, technical analysis has to do with the study of price movements and asset market volumes.

 

Investors and traders use technical analysis to determine trend patterns, following historical records or data to draw trade or investment conclusions.

 

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Technology

An attempted summary of what technology is would place it as the application or integration of scientific knowledge and principles to aid human life scale in a number of ways.

 

From basic systems to complex inventions, technology has evolved into autonomously operating structures, helping the world adapt and grow more flexibly with most workloads or jobs outsourced to machines, devices, or computers.

 

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Testnet

A testnet is a cryptocurrency blockchain used specifically for testing features that are likely to be applied or ported to the mainnet.

 

Typically, a testnet is a separate blockchain where developers test out features, algorithms, or programs without worries about the effects of faults or damages that would affect the network considering it's not deployed on the mainnet. 

 

A testnet allows for the close examination of programs and their behavior to tackle any potential problems in order to ensure safe rollouts for public use.

 

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Token

A token is a type of cryptocurrency, typically not minable like coins, however, tokens hold a value attributed to an underlying quality.

 

Tokens can represent different things, such as company shares or stocks, they have various utilities depending on the network and project.

 

Most tokens are cryptocurrencies issued by companies whereas utilities or their value are derived therein. BNB of the Binance exchange is an example of a token, where BNB can be used to earn trading fee discounts. 

 

That said, BNB is a fungible asset, which is interchangeable with another like a dollar bill, however, there are specified tokens that are not, called non-fungible tokens(NFTs).

 

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Tokenization

Tokenization is simply the act of integrating tokens into a system, simply creating a non-sensitive representation of data.

 

Tokenization involves the replacement of sensitive data or information with a non-sensitive form to be functional or operational in a database or system without compromising its underlying data.

 

Tokenization also includes the creation of utility assets or company-backed assets called tokens on a blockchain

 

The purpose for this may include the delegation or selling of ownership as in the case of stock or share tokens, and also in the aspect of digital product sales like arts sold as NFTs.

 

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Total Value Locked(TVL)

The Total Value Locked(TVL) in a protocol is simply the total cryptocurrency value held on the specified network.

 

Typically a TVL is determined by the currently available deposits in a protocol, most often on a DeFi platform where revenues are drawn from staking fees, liquidity pool swap fees, and sometimes specified product deposit fees to reward participants.

 

TVL has grown to be a tool to draw conclusions on a network and projects' financial health, following other metrics like market capitalization and circulating supply.

 

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Trade

To trade is simply to buy or sell something, trading encompasses this action. Trading activities in the financial sector involve the buying and selling of financial assets, these assets may be real or digital assets.

 

The word trading has a broad spectrum, which means there’s more to it than what can be written on paper or in a few words, notwithstanding, tradable assets include stocks, bonds, cryptocurrency, NFTs, ETFs, and many more.

 

Trading methods differ in many ways, solely dependent on the sector or ecosystem. In the cryptocurrency space, we have spot trading, futures trading, margin trading, arbitrage, and many more.

 

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Trader

A trader is simply one who engages in trading activities. When there are two or more assets or items suitable for trade or exchange, individuals may decide to venture into a trade that fits their needs, the people involved in these activities are called traders.

 

Cryptocurrency traders typically trade crypto, most often for short-term profits as opposed to investors who are more interested in longer-term goals.

 

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Trading Pair

For any asset to be tradable, there must be a trading pair. Considering that trade is the buying and selling of anything, for a trade to be successful, there must be something to receive on both ends in exchange for the other.

 

That said, a trading pair is basically a market pair of two different assets that are exchangeable for each other, Consider Bitcoin and Ethereum trading pairs as BTC/ETH, whereas BTC can be exchanged or traded for ETH and vice versa.

 

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Trading Volume

Trading volume typically refers to the amount of money flowing into a specific asset market.

 

Looking at cryptocurrency exchanges where crypto assets are traded, the trading volume hereon represents the amount of traded assets in that market and trading pair, most often calculated on a 24hrs basis.

 

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Transaction

A transaction is simply a record of data translating an agreement between a buyer and a seller of goods and services.

 

Typically, transactions are finalized trade agreements, in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, transactions are recorded on a distributed ledger called the blockchain when finalized.

 

Transactions are of different kinds, notwithstanding, the exchange of goods and services for value or money is often the case for it.

 

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Transaction Fee

Transaction fees are simply charges imposed on transactions done via a third-party medium, platform, or network.

 

Typically, we understand that a face-to-face trade or exchange of goods and services usually has no added cost than what is agreed upon amongst the transacting body.

 

However, when a transaction is performed via a network or institution like banks, fintech companies, or even in cryptocurrencies via wallets or cryptocurrency exchanges, these types of transactions incur fees as they are made using a system of service.

 

These fees are paid to the network in exchange for the service of being a channel for transactions. Typically, transaction fees paid for cryptocurrency transfers are often paid to miners who keep the network or database secure by verifying transactions following various cryptographic mechanisms or algorithms.

 

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Transaction Per Second(TPS)

Transactions per second (TPS) simply refers to the number of transactions a network can handle in seconds count.

 

When dealing with blockchain and its ever-expanding technology, usually, a network is rated for scalability based on various things all constituted to how flexibly it serves the user base.

 

Considering this, TPS is a common metric to define a blockchain's scalability. A blockchain has a defined limit to how many transactions can be recorded on its distributed ledger.

 

With Bitcoin, we have approximately 5 TPS with a block being minable every 10 minutes, with Ethereum, the numbers with TPS are double, and block mining time is way smaller.

 

Several other networks can handle more transactions per second, whilst many see it as a security measure for Bitcoin, other people see it as a necessity for building a scalable network.

 

The lighting network which is a scalable framework for Bitcoin is estimated to be able to handle about 40 million transactions per second.

 

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