Speak crypto

Plain-English definitions for Solana, Bitcoin Ordinals, and the culture around crypto art.

92 terms

Culture & slang

GM / GN: Good morning / good night. The universal crypto greeting.
WAGMI / GMI: We're all gonna make it / gonna make it. Collective optimism.
NGMI: Not gonna make it. Said of a doomed play or project.
ser: “Sir,” but cutesy. A sign of respect, sometimes mock.
LFG: Let's f***ing go. Pure hype.
IYKYK: If you know, you know. An insider nod.
DED: “Dead,” from laughing, or from a wrecked bag.
wen: “When,” as in wen mint, wen moon. An impatient ask.
wen moon: Copypasta asking when the floor will skyrocket.
sus: Suspect; shady.
cope / copium: Denial after a loss. The opposite of FOMO.
left curve: A play so dumb it loops back to genius; conviction over overthinking.
IRL: In real life.
KOL: Key Opinion Leader. A crypto-Twitter influencer.
anon: An anonymous person. The default identity in crypto.
based: Authentically, unapologetically yourself. A compliment.
few: “Few understand.” A wink that you're early.
probably nothing: Sarcasm for something obviously big.
touch grass: Go outside. Log off.

floor / FP: Floor price. The cheapest listed piece in a collection.
bullish: Expecting price to go up; feeling positive.
bearish: Expecting price to go down; feeling negative.
FOMO: Fear of missing out. Buying because everyone else is.
HODL: Hold On for Dear Life. Refusing to sell through the swings.
diamond hands: Holding through volatility. Strong conviction.
paper hands: Selling at the first dip. Weak conviction.
sweep: Buying up the cheapest listings off the floor.
whale: A wallet big enough to move the floor.
aped in: Bought heavily and fast, often sweeping, with little research.
degen: A degenerate gambler who apes NFTs and coins with little research.
secondary: The resale market (Magic Eden, Tensor) after a mint sells out.
ATH: All-time high price.
market cap: Floor times supply. A collection's rough total value.
blue chip: An established, “safe” collection.
grail: A dream piece you would never sell.
bag / bagholder: Your holdings; a bagholder is stuck holding a loser.
jeet: To flip for a tiny profit and dump; a paper-handed seller.
conviction play: Believing enough to go (almost) all-in.
delist: Asking holders to remove listings to thin supply and lift the floor.
dump: Sell hard, tanking the price.
rekt: Wrecked. Badly down on a position.
FUD: Fear, uncertainty, doubt. Talking a project down.
DYOR: Do your own research.

NFT: Non-fungible token. A unique on-chain token, often art or a PFP.
PFP: Profile picture. A collection made to be your avatar.
mint: Creating a new NFT on-chain, before it reaches secondary.
mint pass: A token that grants the right to mint later.
allowlist / whitelist (WL): A guaranteed or early spot to mint.
1:1 / 1 of 1: A unique, single-edition artwork.
edition: Multiple identical copies of one piece.
reveal: When placeholder art is swapped for the real art after mint.
rug / rug pull: Devs abandon a project (delete socials), leaving worthless NFTs.
deriv / derivative: A copycat riding a successful collection's brand.
trait / attribute: A feature of a piece (background, eyes) that drives rarity.
rarity: How uncommon a piece's traits are; it drives desirability.
provenance: The on-chain ownership history of a piece.
snapshot: A record of holders at a moment, used for airdrops and rewards.
airdrop: Free tokens or NFTs sent to qualifying wallets.
royalties: A creator fee paid on each secondary sale.
burn: Permanently destroying a token by sending it to a dead address.
token gating: Granting access, like Discord roles, based on what a wallet holds. That's what Gatehouse does.

BTC: Bitcoin. The original chain.
sat / satoshi: The smallest unit of Bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC). The canvas for Ordinals.
Ordinals: Bitcoin's NFT protocol: data inscribed directly onto individual sats. See the early inscriptions.
inscription: The content (image, text) written onto a sat. A Bitcoin NFT.
rare sats: Sats with special properties collectors prize (see the categories below).
vintage sats: Sats from Bitcoin's earliest era and blocks.
block 9 sats: Sats from block 9, among the earliest spendable, Satoshi-era coins.
pizza sats: Sats traceable to the famous 10,000-BTC Bitcoin Pizza transaction.
rarity tiers: common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary, mythic, from Ordinal theory.
Runes: A fungible-token standard on Bitcoin, like memecoins on BTC.
UTXO: Unspent transaction output. The “coin” a wallet actually holds.
BRC-20: An earlier experimental fungible-token standard on Ordinals.
ordinal theory: The numbering scheme that gives every sat its own identity.
recursive inscription: An inscription that pulls in data from other inscriptions.

SOL / Solana: A fast, low-fee chain and a major hub for NFT art.
SPL token: Solana's fungible token standard.
Metaplex: The standard and toolkit behind most Solana NFTs.
cNFT / compressed NFT: A cheap, state-compressed Solana NFT.
Candy Machine: Metaplex's mint program.
Magic Eden / Tensor: The major Solana NFT marketplaces.
Formfunction / Exchange Art: Fine-art Solana marketplaces, now dormant; much of the best art still sits in wallets.

DeFi: Decentralized finance. On-chain lending and trading without banks.
gas / gas wars: Network transaction fees; a gas war is when demand spikes them.
seed phrase: The secret recovery words for a wallet. Never share them.
cold / hardware wallet: An offline wallet (like a Ledger) for safe storage.
hot wallet: A connected, everyday wallet (Phantom, Xverse).
bridge: Moving assets from one chain to another.
memecoin: A token with no utility, driven by hype and community.
honeypot: A scam token you can buy but can't sell.
on-chain: Recorded directly on the blockchain.
smart contract: Self-executing code that runs on-chain.