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Glossary
54 terms you will meet on charts, market pages and in the news, explained in plain English.
A
- All-time high (ATH)
- The highest price an asset has ever traded at on tracked markets. "From ATH" shows how far the current price is below it. Market cap & supply guide →
- Altcoin
- Any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin.
- Ask
- The lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept in the order book. The gap between the best bid and ask is the spread.
- ATR (Average True Range)
- A volatility indicator: the average size of each candle's true range over a period, usually 14. It says nothing about direction. Indicators guide →
B
- Bear market
- A prolonged period of falling prices, often defined as a fall of 20% or more from a recent high.
- Bid
- The highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay in the order book.
- Bollinger Bands
- A moving average with bands a set number of standard deviations above and below it, widening and narrowing with volatility. Indicators guide →
- Bull market
- A prolonged period of rising prices and optimism.
C
- Candlestick
- A chart bar showing the open, high, low and close prices for one period. Candlestick guide →
- Circulating supply
- The number of coins or tokens publicly available and trading now. Market cap uses this figure. Market cap & supply guide →
- Cold wallet
- A wallet whose private keys are kept offline, such as a hardware wallet, reducing exposure to online attacks.
D
- DCA (dollar-cost averaging)
- Investing a fixed amount on a fixed schedule regardless of price. DCA guide →
- DeFi
- Decentralised finance: lending, trading and other financial services run by smart contracts on public blockchains rather than by a company.
- Depth chart
- A chart of cumulative buy and sell orders at each price, showing how much liquidity sits on each side of the order book. Live chart →
- Dominance
- An asset's share of the total crypto market capitalisation. Bitcoin dominance rising means bitcoin is outperforming the wider market. Crypto markets →
- DXY (US dollar index)
- An index of the US dollar against a basket of six major currencies. A stronger dollar often weighs on commodities and crypto. Indices & rates →
E
- EMA (exponential moving average)
- A moving average that weights recent prices more heavily than older ones, so it reacts faster than a simple average. Indicators guide →
F
- Fear and Greed Index
- A daily sentiment score from 0 (extreme fear) to 100 (extreme greed) published by alternative.me, combining volatility, momentum, social media, dominance and trends data. Markets overview →
- Fully diluted valuation (FDV)
- Price multiplied by the maximum (or total) supply: the implied value if every token that will ever exist were circulating. Market cap & supply guide →
- Funding rate
- A periodic payment between long and short holders of perpetual futures that keeps the contract price close to the spot price. Positive funding means longs pay shorts. Derivatives data →
G
- Gas fee
- The fee paid to process a transaction on a blockchain such as Ethereum, paid to validators.
H
- Halving
- A scheduled cut in half of the new bitcoin issued per block, roughly every four years (every 210,000 blocks).
I
- Index price
- A reference price for a futures contract, averaged from several spot exchanges. Derivatives data →
L
- Leverage
- Borrowed exposure that multiplies both gains and losses. 10× leverage means a 10% move against you can wipe out your margin. Liquidation calculator →
- Limit order
- An order to buy or sell at a specified price or better. It rests in the order book until filled or cancelled.
- Liquidation
- The forced closure of a leveraged position when losses use up the margin. Large waves of liquidations can accelerate price moves. Derivatives data →
- Liquidity
- How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. Deep order books mean high liquidity.
- Long
- A position that profits if the price rises.
- Long/short ratio
- The ratio of accounts (or positions) holding longs versus shorts on a futures exchange, a rough gauge of trader positioning. Derivatives data →
M
- MACD
- Moving Average Convergence Divergence: the gap between a 12- and 26-period EMA, with a 9-period signal line and histogram. Indicators guide →
- Maker / taker
- A maker adds a resting order to the book; a taker fills an existing order. Exchanges usually charge takers a higher fee. Trading fees guide →
- Mark price
- The fair price an exchange uses to value futures positions and trigger liquidations, designed to resist short-term manipulation. Derivatives data →
- Market cap
- Price multiplied by circulating supply; the standard way to rank cryptocurrencies by size. Market cap & supply guide →
- Market order
- An order to buy or sell immediately at the best available prices. It is filled quickly but can suffer slippage.
- Max supply
- The hard cap on the number of coins a protocol will ever create, such as 21 million for bitcoin. Market cap & supply guide →
O
- Open interest
- The total number or value of futures contracts that are open and not yet settled. Rising open interest means new positions are being opened. Derivatives data →
- Order book
- The live list of buy (bid) and sell (ask) orders for a market, sorted by price. Live chart →
P
- Perpetual futures
- Futures contracts with no expiry date that use funding payments to track the spot price. The most traded crypto derivative. Derivatives data →
- Private key
- The secret that controls a crypto wallet. Whoever holds it controls the funds; never share it.
R
- Resistance
- A price area where selling has repeatedly stopped rises.
- RSI (Relative Strength Index)
- A momentum oscillator from 0 to 100 comparing recent gains with losses; above 70 is called overbought and below 30 oversold. Indicators guide →
S
- Short
- A position that profits if the price falls, usually via futures or borrowed assets.
- Slippage
- The difference between the expected price of a trade and the price actually paid, common with market orders in thin markets.
- SMA (simple moving average)
- The plain average of closing prices over a set number of candles. Indicators guide →
- Spot
- Buying or selling the actual asset for immediate settlement, as opposed to derivatives such as futures.
- Spread
- The gap between the best bid and the best ask. Tight spreads indicate liquid markets.
- Stablecoin
- A token designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar, backed by reserves or other mechanisms. Examples include USDT and USDC.
- Stop-loss
- An order that closes a position when the price reaches a level you set, limiting the loss. Position size calculator →
- Support
- A price area where buying has repeatedly stopped declines.
T
- Taker buy/sell volume
- The volume of market orders that bought versus sold. More taker buying shows aggressive demand. Derivatives data →
- Total supply
- All coins that currently exist minus verifiably burned ones, including locked coins that are not circulating. Market cap & supply guide →
V
- Volatility
- How much and how quickly a price moves. Crypto is typically far more volatile than major stock indices or currencies.
- VWAP
- Volume-weighted average price, usually reset each day; a common intraday fair-value reference. Indicators guide →
W
- Whale
- An individual or entity holding a very large amount of a cryptocurrency, able to move prices with its trades.
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