Crypto exchange glossary

Only the terms you run into in practice: anything a first transfer does not need never made it in.

A B C D E F G H K L M N P R S T V W

A
AML: A check of coins against lists of thefts and sanctions. Large exchanges run it on deposits, and a transfer they flag stands still until the check is closed.
Address: The string a transfer goes to: 1A1z…, T9yD…. Every network has a format of its own, and an address from another network will not work here.
Airdrop: A free handout of tokens to holders or to those who tried a protocol among the first. A handout that asks for a key or for a transfer "to verify the wallet" is not a handout but a theft.
All-time high: The record price of a coin over its whole history. The distance to that mark speaks about the past and about nothing else.
Altcoin: Any coin other than Bitcoin. There is no judgement in the word — it only draws a border.
B
Block: A portion of transactions that enters the chain as one piece. How often blocks appear decides how quickly the first confirmation arrives.
Blockchain: A shared book of operations, a copy of which is kept by many independent machines. It can be written to, but not quietly corrected, which is why any transfer is open to checking.
Bridge: Moving one and the same asset from network to network — say, USDT from Ethereum to TRON. An exchanger does it in a single order, with no separate bridge wallet to set up.
C
Cold wallet: Keys kept off the internet: a hardware device or paper. Better for storage, awkward for everyday spending.
Confirmation: Every new block laid on top of the one holding your transaction. Several are awaited: the freshest block of a network can still be replaced.
Custodial wallet: The keys are handled by a service, not by you. The convenience ends on the day the service goes down or closes access to the account.
D
DeFi: Lending, exchange and derivatives on smart contracts instead of a company. The code of the rules is open to everyone — together with the errors that sit in it.
E
Exchanger: A service that exchanges one asset for another at its own rate — as a rule without registration and without a balance of yours lying between orders.
Explorer: A site with the full picture of a network's transactions. Enter a hash and read what actually happened instead of trusting somebody else's screenshot.
F
Fixed rate: A rate locked at the moment the order is created. While the transfer crosses the network the amount does not change: the service carries that risk and prices it in.
Floating rate: The rate is taken at the moment of the exchange itself. It works out slightly cheaper, but the exact amount is known only at the finish.
G
Gas: The measure of work in networks such as Ethereum. The fee equals the gas spent multiplied by its price, which is why moving a token costs more than moving the base coin of the network.
H
Hash: A compressed fingerprint of data. The transaction hash (TXID) is the name of your transfer, and support will ask for it first.
Hot wallet: A wallet on a phone or a computer, connected to the network. Handy for spending — so keep in it the amount you spend.
K
KYC: Confirmation of identity. An exchanger usually does without it, but a flag on a transfer or an unusual amount leads to a request for documents.
L
Liquidity: The volume that goes through without shifting the price. The thin liquidity of a rare coin gives a worse rate and a lower ceiling on the amount.
M
Market capitalisation: The price multiplied by the coins in circulation. It shows scale, not quality: a large issuance inflates it without effort.
Memo: An extra field, mandatory in a few networks (TON, XRP, XLM): it tells apart recipients sitting on one shared address. A transfer without a memo has to be pulled out by hand — and that does not always work.
Mempool: The queue of transactions waiting for room in a block. The longer the queue, the less the same fee buys.
Mining: The production of new blocks by computing power. The miner takes the block reward and the fees, and it is exactly that reward a halving cuts in half.
N
Network: The chain a token lives in: one and the same USDT exists in TRON, Ethereum, BNB Chain and others. The sending network has to match the receiving one, otherwise the money does not arrive.
Network fee: Payment to the chain for putting a transfer into a block, in the chain's own coin. It is dictated by the network and its current load, not by your amount at all.
Node: A computer with a copy of the chain that checks incoming blocks. The more independent nodes, the harder it is to substitute the history.
P
Private key: The secret with which coins leave an address. Whoever has seen it can spend them, and an honest service has no need of it under any circumstances.
Proof of Stake: Agreement on blocks through locked coins rather than burnt electricity. A validator puts its own money at stake and loses part of it for cheating.
Proof of Work: Agreement on blocks through spent computing power — the way of Bitcoin. Rewriting history becomes expensive, though not impossible.
R
Reserve: The volume an exchanger is ready to pay out in a direction this very minute. If it falls short of your amount, you either wait or split the order.
S
Seed phrase: Twelve or twenty-four words from which a wallet is restored whole, with all of its keys. Their only place is paper: not a chat, not a screenshot, not a form on a site.
Slippage: The gap between the rate you saw and the one you got: while the order was going through, the price managed to move.
Smart contract: A program inside a chain that runs when it is called. Tokens, bridges, DeFi are all contracts, and an error in a contract turns into an error in money.
Stablecoin: A token pegged to a currency — most often the dollar — by reserves or by a mechanism. People sit out the turbulence in it and carry money from network to network.
Staking: Coins are locked in support of a network and earn a reward for it. Payment comes in the same coin, so the outcome still rests on its price.
T
TXID: The number of a transaction. With it the transfer is found in an explorer and the status is read without anyone's help.
Token: An asset issued inside somebody else's chain — unlike a coin, which has a chain of its own. The fee for moving a token is paid in the coin of that chain.
Transaction: A record of funds moving from address to address. Once it is in a block, cancelling and refunding are impossible.
Two-factor authentication: An extra check at login, usually a code from an app. The account stays yours even if the password has leaked.
V
Validator: A participant of a Proof of Stake network that proposes and checks blocks, risking a stake of its own.
Volatility: The span of price swings over a stretch of time. The wider it is, the larger both the possible profit and the possible loss — in equal measure.
W
Wallet: An application or a device: it keeps the keys and signs transfers. The coins themselves stay in the chain; the wallet holds the right to dispose of them.
Wrapped token: A stand-in for an asset inside a foreign network — WBTC instead of Bitcoin in Ethereum. Its price is exactly the same as that of the backing.

All currencies How these numbers are counted All networks and routes Network charges for USDT Network charges for USDC