HODL, rekt, and the flippening: a field guide to crypto jargon

Crypto grew up on forums, and it talks like it. The result is a dialect where a misspelling from 2013 is standard financial vocabulary and "we're all going to make it" compresses to four letters. Some of it is pure culture, but a surprising amount is load-bearing — you can't read an exchange interface or a project announcement without it. Here's the working vocabulary, sorted by what it's actually for.

The culture layer

HODL — hold through volatility; born as a typo of "hold" in a famously unhinged 2013 forum post, now a whole investment philosophy. Diamond hands / paper hands — those who hold through anything versus those who fold at the first dip. FOMO and FUD — fear of missing out (buying because everyone else is) and fear, uncertainty and doubt (its mirror; note that "FUD" is also used to dismiss perfectly legitimate criticism). Rekt — wrecked; what happens to overleveraged positions. WAGMI / NGMI — we're all gonna make it, and its unkind opposite. To the moon — the price destination perpetually promised, whence "mooning".

The market layer

Whale — a holder large enough to move markets; small fry are shrimp or minnows. Pump and dump — coordinated inflation of a small coin's price to sell into; illegal in regulated markets, endemic in unregulated corners. Bull and bear — rising and falling markets, plus bull trap and bear trap for the head-fakes. ATH — all-time high, tracked on every coin page. The flippening — the perennially hypothesised day Ethereum overtakes Bitcoin by market cap. Altseason — the stretch when altcoins broadly outrun Bitcoin; we measure it daily. Bagholder — the person still holding after everyone else left.

The technical layer (the load-bearing part)

Gas — the fee for using a blockchain, paid in its native coin; our gas calculator turns it into AUD. Seed phrase — the 12–24 words that are your wallet; whoever holds them holds the coins. Cold and hot wallets — offline versus internet-connected storage, the core of the wallet decision. On-chain / off-chain — recorded on the blockchain itself versus happening in an exchange's internal ledger. Bridge — infrastructure moving coins between blockchains; historically one of crypto's most hacked components. Layer 1 / Layer 2 — base blockchains versus the networks built on top for speed and cost; both are filters on our screener. Staking — locking coins to help secure a network for yield, with maths worth reading first.

The danger layer

These terms are warnings — learn them as such. Rug pull — developers drain a project's funds and vanish; the defining scam of small-coin crypto. Honeypot — a token contract coded so you can buy but never sell. Wash trading — faking volume by trading with yourself, common on unregulated venues and in NFT markets. Pig butchering — the long-con romance/investment scam behind much of the crypto ATM problem; the name describes "fattening" the victim with fake gains first. Dusting — tiny unsolicited transfers used to track or phish wallets. If a stranger's investment opportunity requires you to learn vocabulary from this paragraph, the vocabulary is the warning. Our scam playbook covers the full catalogue.

This is the conversational core; the full glossary runs far longer and stays plainer. Crypto's jargon filters insiders from outsiders — which is exactly why the honest sites translate it.

General information only, not financial advice — and if someone uses this vocabulary to sell you something, that's not what it's for.