Cryptobabble – A guide to the terminology of the alt-coins

Making sense of nonsense.

Currency as a concept is a headache in a box. A lot of economists are alcoholics and it’s no real wonder. To understand crypto-currency then, is to have the same headache and try treating it by swallowing two tabs of LSD.

This article is going to crack the smoke and blow away the mirrors surrounding Cryptocurrency and try to explain some of what it’s all about.

Altcoin – The best online Crypto-guide and also slang for all cryptocurrencies with the exception of Bitcoin.

Blockchain – A disruptive digital tech designed to act as a tamper-proof ledger. Blockchain technology underpins most cryptocurrencies.

Coin Age – Coin age is a term used to describe how long a trader has possessed their coins. Coin age equates to hours and is the number of coins multiplied by the time held.

Double Spend – Double spend is a term used to describe a dodgy deal. Traders attempt to sell the same coins in multiple transactions. To combat double spend deals, most coins have set protocols which require a set number of accepted transactions for inclusion in the blockchain.

Energy-Multiuse – Another branch of blockchain technology which allows a secondary activity as well as creating currencies. Primecoin is a good example of Energy-Multiuse

Faucet – An artificial dispenser of cryptocurrencies. The original concept was to drip feed free coins in a bid to increase the popularity of a currency. One infamous Bitcoin faucet gave away five free coins simply for registering. This amount today would be worth many thousands of dollars.

GridCoin – An active crypto coin linked to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. Grid coin is an open source project designed for philanthropic purposes.

Hardware Wallet – Also known as Bitcoin safes are stand-alone portable devices. They vary in shape and design but are all designed to protect your cryptocurrencies from hackers. They also make trading as portable as possible.

ICO – Initial Coin Offerings are in layman’s term a sort of crowd-funding campaign designed to facilitate the launch of a new currency. Ethereum was successfully launched via an ICO.

Jet coin – A cryptocurrency designed to promote sports and athletics.

Kimoto’s Gravity Well – This one’s a beauty. It’s a modified piece of code added to a Cryptocurrency algorithm to level the playing field if a coin has been the victim of aggressive mining.

Lightning Network – An after-market fix which was designed to solve the lag and power issues associated with Bitcoin and Litecoin’s increasingly power-hungry blockchains

Mining Pool – Individual mining is a thing of the past due to the complexity involved in finding blocks. Miners now work together, although there are a number of different ways to sort out the money.

Nodes  – Nodes are essential parts of the blockchain. They are the core of how coins like Bitcoin operate, instead of a single ledger, Bitcoin’s ledger is spread throughout thousands of nodes each with a complete blockchain. This makes the system more secure and the more nodes there are, the less chance there will be of double spends.

Orphan block – An orphan block is a legitimate block that has not been accepted by the blockchain. These can occur when two miners each produce valid blocks within a very tight timescale.

Paper Wallet – Paper Wallet refers to the offline storage of Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies. They can take the form of paper, gift cards and even special coins. They involve the use of a printed code key.

QR CODES – Retailers who accept crypto-currencies as payment will often have scan-able QR codes to facilitate payment.

Ripple – One of the few cryptocurrencies not based on Bitcoin and the one with the largest market Cap.

Scrypt – Scrypt is the algorithm behind a number of cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin, Gridcoin and Dogecoin

Tangle – The tangle is a new system similar to Blockchain but without the need for miners. It is the core principle behind the next generation coin IOTA. 

Unspent Transactions Outputs (or UTOX)– Any coins that have not been spent or traded are Unspent Transaction Output. This is one of the ways Bitcoin and other protocols keep track of coins.

Virgin Coins – When miners successfully create coins, these coins are known as virgin coins because they have never been traded or spent.

Wedge – Wedge is the name given to visual patterns on trading platforms. There are a number of different types and some traders try to use them to predict patterns so they can gain an advantage in the market.

X-coin – An active Scrypt based crypto-currency launched in 2017 

Young Currencies – Cryptocurrencies are often referred to in the media as young currencies.

Zero Confirmation Transactions – As an industry in its infancy, Cryptocurrencies are not short of hazards. One of these is the considerable delay it can take to confirm a transaction. To combat this some exchanges are now promising Zero Confirmation Transactions to speed the process. Unfortunately, these transactions are an easy target for the double spenders (see above).