Cryptocurrency Glossary / dictionary

A Bag Holder is someone who refuses to sell a losing cryptocurrency even though the value never stops dropping. He may have bought high and held on while everyone else seemed to be selling. A Bag Holder usually has unrealistic hope that the price will turn around, but it never does. Sometimes bagholders resist selling simply out of pride. In the end, he is usually left with nothing except the (empty) "bag." The term seems to have many non-investment-related origins, from the 1800s in Brittan to Americans in the soup lines during the great depression.

"BCH" is the cryptocurrency symbol for the "bitcoin cash" cryptocurrency. Note that this is different then BTC ("bitcoin") cryptocurrency. Most people consider BTC to be the original bitcoin. BCH was created due to a software fork in BTC in 2017. The current price of BCH is here.

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"BDPL" means "Blockchain Defensive Patent License". It is a type of license agreement that can be entered into by honest cryptocurrency miners. This agreement could, in theory, help to reduce the likelihood of 51% attacks. See more here: https://blockchaindpl.org/

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A Bear refers to a long term downward trend of an investment market or a segment (like cryptocurrencies) to decrease in value. This can be an actual current market downward trend or the anticipation of a down market. It is usually used for something that drops more than a certain percent (usually 20%). The term can refer to the market itself or an investor. It can be used as in: "It is a bear market", or "The Market is Bearish right now." "He is a bitcoin Bear" means an investor who thinks that the price of bitcoin will go down soon and substantially. A Bear can "short" a market to try to make a profit when it is going down. Bearish is the opposite of being a Bull or Bullish.

This is when an investor makes a bad investment decision based on an anticipated long-term decline in an investment (like cryptocurrency), but that decline never significantly occurs. That bearish decision on the investor's part could be to sell an asset or "short" it. In either case, if the price downturn is a short-lived small drop and then the price goes back up, then the investor can lose money. The investor who sold (or shorted) is said to be caught in the Bear Trap. This is the opposite of a Bull Trap.

"BIP" means "Bitcoin Improvement Proposal". A proposal defines a specific improvement in the design of the cryptocurrency software. It was originally a reference to bitcoin software. It typically relates to some new feature of a specific currency. Each BIP has a number associated with it which indicates the exact feature which is being referred to. Such as BIP 123. BIPs are always related to the currency software, but can also impact wallets, exchanges, and mining rig design.  BIPs, among other things, can give a currency more security or more/improved features.

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Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to finally reach mainstream adoption. It is a distributed virtual digital currency whose value is based purely on supply and demand.  The original designers of bitcoin described it this way: “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. “ The first coin was created in 2009 by a person or group of people named Satoshi Nakamoto. As of 2019, bitcoin is the most valuable and most successful cryptocurrency ever created and it has created an entire industry of competing cryptocurrencies. But bitcoin is FAR more than this simple description.  Learn lots more about bitcoin here.

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"Bitcoin Maximalism" refers to the philosophy that bitcoin and its network will ultimately prove to be the only cryptocurrency that the world will ever need. All other currencies and their networks and blockchains will be unnecessary and useless competition. Maximalists believe in more than the simple idea that bitcoin is best - they also think that all other currencies should not even exist since they a waste of time and effort in their competition with bitcoin. To this end, bitcoin will make all other coins extinct.

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Block lattice architecture allows faster transacting between users. Individual users own their own blockchains that are protected by the users' private keys. What makes this architecture faster is that the global network doesn't have to update every transaction made because each user updates their own blockchains. This makes a shared ledger like bitcoin's into a synced network of individual networks, which makes for a faster transaction time.

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A blockchain is where all cryptocurrency transactions are stored. Transactions include information such as the amount and the address of the "to" and "from" currency wallets involved. The individual transactions are organized into larger blocks of data that are validated and then added to the blockchain. The blocks of transaction data are linked serially together in a chain -hence the term "blockchain." Each block contains information about the previous block making it very hard for a hacker to cheat and change old transactions. Typically blocks are validated and added to the chain by miners. Every cryptocurrency is based on some type of blockchain. Sometimes a cryptocurrency will have its own unique blockchain, or sometimes it will ride on some other preexisting blockchain. Blockchains are (typically) decentralized, and often some portion of the stored transactions is always viewable by the public.

"BTC" is the cryptocurrency symbol for the "bitcoin" cryptocurrency. Most people consider this to be the original bitcoin.  Many other "altcoins" have been spawned (forked) from bitcoin. Probably the most well-known spawn (fork) is bitcoin cash. The symbol for bitcoin cash is BCH. The current price of BCH is here.

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Means "Buy The Dip". It refers to the investment technique to buy a cryptocurrency only when the price goes down. The assumption and belief is that the price will ultimately go back up after the purchase. This is common with a volatile investment so that the investor doesn't feel like he is overpaying. It is related to the plan to "Buy-Low-Sell-High". 

"BTG" is the cryptocurrency symbol for the "Bitcoin Gold" currency. Note that this is different from the original bitcoin cryptocurrency. Bitcoin Gold was created by a fork from bitcoin in October 2017. This means that the software of BTG was based on bitcoin but then it diverged with the intent of providing different and/or improved features. The current price of BTG is here.

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The term Bull (Bullish) refers to a long term upward trend of an investment market or a segment (like cryptocurrencies) to increase in value. This can be an actual current market upward trend or the anticipation of an upmarket. The term can refer to the market itself or an investor. It can be used as in: "It is a bull market", or "The Market is Bullish right now." "He is a bitcoin Bull" means an investor who thinks that the price of bitcoin will go up soon and substantially.  But sometimes Bulls can be caught in a "Bear Trap". A Bull, or Bullish, is the opposite of being a Bear or Bearish.

A "Bull Trap" is when a bad investment "buy" decision is made in anticipation of a long-term significant increase in an investment (like cryptocurrency). That Bullish decision to buy becomes a trap if the price upswing never substantially occurs. If the price instead goes down, then the investor is said to be caught in a Bull Trap and loses money. A Bull Trap is the opposite of a Bear Trap.

To Burn refers to intentionally making a certain amount of cryptocurrency permanently unusable. The Burn is accomplished by sending cryptocurrency to a specialized public address, called the "Burn Address," in a transaction that can't be reversed. That address has no known private keys, making it impossible to spend those burnt coins, nor put them back into circulation in the future. Since the burn address is public, anyone can verify that the coins have been permanently destroyed, making the Burn 100% transparent. Burning coins increasing the relative scarcity of that currency and, potentially, increasing its value due to that scarcity. Burning can be done by anyone, with any coin for any reason. Still, it is usually only done for specific coins, by particular people, and for practical reasons. Typically a Burn is done by an issuer of an ICO coin after the initial purchase period is over. The remaining coins will often be burned at that point. This is to assure initial investors that unpurchased coins won't later flood the market, thereby devaluing their investment. Burning coins is vaguely similar (but different) to why a company buys back its own stock.  

"BYOB" means "Be Your Own Bank". (Not Bring Your Own Booze 🙂 ) This refers to the concept that by using cryptocurrencies you do not need to rely on any government, nor bank to spend, withdraw or transfer your money. Your money is under your total control. It is yours to keep and spend as you wish and no one can restrict you. But it also means that you are in full charge of security too. If your currency gets stolen, then there will be no one to help you recover it.

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