Crypto 101

CRYPTO 101: Cryptionary O – S

September 7, 2020

Two weeks ago, we started learning about crypto terms. We started alphabetically from letter A up to the letter N.

If you haven’t seen the last parts of the cryptionary, here they are:

And to continue with our cryptionary, here are the terms from letters O – S

One Cancels the Other Order (OCO)

This happens when two orders for cryptocurrency are placed simultaneously with a rule in place that whereby if one is accepted, the other is canceled.

Oracles

The Oracle sends the data to and from the smart contract and the outside world as required. Oracles are most commonly found on the Ethereum network.

Overbought

It is when a large number of purchases have been made on a cryptocurrency. The price will increase for an extended period, and at this juncture, it is considered overbought, and a period of selling is expected.

Oversold

When a cryptocurrency has spent significant time being sold without an upward movement, it is considered oversold.

Paper Wallet

When you store your private key on a physical document, make it a paper wallet. It’s also sometimes referred to as cold storage.

Peer to Peer (P2P)

When two or more computers network with each other without a centralized third party being used as an intermediary.

Pre-Sale

This is before an ICO goes public when private investors or community members can buy the cryptocurrency.

Private Key

This is a string of numbers and letters that are used to access your wallet. While a public key represents your wallet, the private key is the password you should protect. The private key is needed when selling or withdrawing cryptocurrencies, as it acts as the digital signature.

Proof of Authority (PoA)

This is a private key that gives the holder the right to create the blocks in a private blockchain. It can be held by a single entity or a set number of entities. This is an alternative to the proof-of-work model. Instead of getting multiple random Nodes to approve a transaction, a group of specific nodes is given the authority to approve.

Proof of Stake (PoS)

This is another alternative to proof of work. This caps the miners’ reward for providing their computational power to the network at that miner’s investment in the cryptocurrency.

Proof of Work (PoW)

To obtain a reward for mining a cryptocurrency, miners must show evidence that their computers added an effort to approve a transaction. A variable is added to hashing a transaction that stresses that effort before a block can be successfully hashed. Having a hashed block verifies that the miner did work and deserves a reward – therefore, proof of work.

Protocols

It is the set of rules that explains how data is exchanged across a network.

Public blockchain

This is a blockchain that can be accessed by anyone via a full node on their computer.

Public Key

This is the unique wallet address, which appears as a long string of numbers and letters. It is used to receive cryptocurrencies.

Pump

It is a term used to refer to an upward price movement, usually compelled by whales capitalizing large sums of money in a cryptocurrency.

Pump and Dump (PND)

It is the frowned-upon practice of buying a lot of one cryptocurrency to drive up its price, encourage others to invest, and then sell the lot when there is a reasonable margin.

REKT

It is short slang for “wrecked” and a term used to describe a bad loss in a trade.

Relative Strength Index (RSI)

This is a type of technical analysis whereby you determine the momentum of price change over time. It looks at recent price changes exponentially, with the most recent changes given more weight than older ones. This produces an overall trend of movement for a cryptocurrency that can determine if the market is overbought (a reading higher than 70) or oversold (a reading lower than 30).

Ring Signature

It is a type of encryption process that retains anonymity for the user. The concept gives the network of nodes the power to approve a transaction on a blockchain without identifying which of the nodes requested the trade. As a result, it cannot be traced.

Satoshi Nakamoto

The individual or group of individuals – it has never been confirmed – who created Bitcoin.

SATS

It is the smallest unit of bitcoin, which is 0.00000001 BTC. The name SATS is shorthand for Satoshi Nakamoto, the fake name used by bitcoin’s creator.

Scrypt

This is an algorithm that encrypts a key in such a fashion that it takes a serious amount of RAM to hash it. The system makes it challenging to attack for hackers. Scrypt is pronounced “ess-crypt”.

Seed

A seed is a phrase or a series of words that can regenerate your wallet ID if you lose it.

Segregated Witness (SEGWIT)

This is the process of separating digital signature data from transaction data. This lets more transactions fit onto one block in the blockchain, improving transaction speeds.

Selfish Mining

When a miner finds or creates a new block in the blockchain and then doesn’t share that information with the network, they are partaking in selfish mining.

Sell Wall

When a large limit order has been placed to sell when a cryptocurrency reaches an absolute value, that is a sell wall. This can prevent a cryptocurrency from rising above that value, as supply will likely outstrip demand when the order is executed.

SHA-256

It is the name of the cryptographic hash function (the hashing algorithm) used by bitcoin. It’s been subsequently used by several altcoins too.

Sharding

This is a way of splitting up the full blockchain history, so each full node doesn’t need to complete it.

Shit Coin

It is a term used to describe a cryptocurrency not expected to have a positive future.

Short

This is also known as short selling, and this is a concept whereby traders sell an asset they don’t have. The hope is that they can then buy the asset at a lower price than which they sold it to complete the deal. Thereby they earn a margin in the interim.

Smart Contracts

When a contract is written in computer code, it is deemed an intelligent contract as opposed to traditional legal language. This programmed contract is set up to execute and carry itself out automatically under specified conditions. When a smart contract is on the blockchain, both parties can check its programming before agreeing to it, and then let it do its thing, confident that it cannot be tampered with or changed.

Soft Fork

It is a fork in a blockchain protocol where previously valid transactions become invalid. A soft fork is backward-compatible, as the old nodes running the old protocol will still consider new trades useful, rather than disregarding them. For a soft fork to work, a mainstream of the miners powering the network will need to elevate to the new protocol.

Software Wallet

It is a common form of the wallet where the private key for an individual is stowed within a computer’s software files. This is the system that is likely to use if you sign up for a wallet online that is not associated with an exchange.

Solidity

This is a programming language similar to JavaScript but focused on developing smart contracts. It’s exported as bytecode, used by the Ethereum Virtual Machine that runs the Ethereum network.

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