Cryptocurrency is a confusing business with a language all its own, in part because it is a genuinely new way of doing business and in part, because it was created by programmers and cryptographers, who should never be allowed to name anything regular people will use.
Cryptocurrencies have a lot of uses as an investment, as a currency for payments, as a store of value, as well as others. Like any investment, it’s vital to know what you’re talking about and more importantly, what the person trying to sell you something is really saying. And like any other field of finance, industry, art or basically every human endeavor, it has its own lingo, acronyms and definitions. And especially in matters of law and finance, definitions matter.
Read also: Dai or Die: ‘Payment Stablecoins’ and Why the Taxonomy of Crypto Matters
In this series of articles, we’re going to create a number of glossaries for various parts of the crypto industry, which we’ll combine into a larger reference tool. Today, we’re talking about the regulatory and legal terms — crime included of course — that describe and define cryptocurrencies.
See also: PYMNTS Cryptocurrency Glossary: The Basics
51% attack: The whole point of blockchain technology is that it prevents double spending attacks, in which the same digital asset is spent more than once by a bad actor. Blockchain is described as immutable — unchangeable once written, which is true. Unless someone gains control of more than half of the…
