Cryptocurrency Terms and Definitions

What if a company had no CEO, no head office, and every decision was voted on by its members in public? That is a DAO. This 2026 guide explains what decentralized autonomous organizations are, how governance voting works, what they are used for, and where they fall short.

Two projects can have identical technology and opposite outcomes - because of tokenomics. Supply, distribution, vesting and utility quietly decide whether a token can hold value or is doomed to bleed. This 2026 guide shows you how to read a token's economics before you buy.

A coin priced at a few cents can be worth far more than one priced at thousands of dollars - because price alone is meaningless without supply. Market cap fixes that. This 2026 guide explains what crypto market cap is, how it is calculated, and how to use it wisely.

Hype is the buzz and noisy promotion around a project that everyone is talking about. The term describes the peak of mass interest, which is not always backed by real value.

A HYIP is a high yield investment program that promises enormous returns. Essentially, it is a type of financial pyramid that is dangerous for participants.

A hard cap is the maximum amount of funds a project team plans to raise during an ICO or another token sale. Once this firm threshold is reached, the token sale and the collection of investments stop completely.

Hedging is a way of protecting against an unfavorable change in an asset's price using offsetting trades. In crypto, it is used to reduce the risk of losses on the main position.

Market uncertainty is a state in which there is no clear trend, and price movement looks chaotic and contradictory. In trader slang, such confusing periods are called a WTF situation.

Hamsters is a slang term for inexperienced crypto market participants who make decisions under the influence of emotions and crowd sentiment, buying assets at the peak of the hype and selling them in a panic at the bottom.

A hash is the result of a mathematical function that turns any data into a string of characters of a fixed length. Hashing underpins the security of the blockchain and protects transactions against tampering.