Guide
Crypto Slang Explained: HODL, FUD, ATH and What They Are Doing
Every subculture builds a vocabulary. This one built a vocabulary that quietly makes an argument, and knowing which words are carrying it is more useful than the definitions.
The core set
HODL: hold, from a 2013 typo, meaning to keep an asset through a decline. FUD: fear, uncertainty and doubt, used to label negative information. ATH: all-time high, the highest price ever reached. FOMO: fear of missing out, the impulse to buy because a price is rising. DYOR: do your own research, usually appended to a recommendation as a disclaimer.
Those five cover most conversations. The rest is decoration, and much of it is generated weekly and forgotten just as fast, which is worth knowing before treating fluency in it as evidence of anything.
Whale, shrimp, bagholder
A whale holds enough to move the price. A shrimp holds very little. A bagholder is left with an asset after everyone else exited, and it is the only one of the three that is purely pejorative, and the one people are most reluctant to apply to themselves.
Rug pull, exit scam, soft rug
A rug pull is the team removing liquidity so the token cannot be sold. An exit scam is the same act applied to a business rather than a token. A soft rug is abandonment without theft, which is legally different and financially identical.
Diamond hands, paper hands
Praise for holding through a decline and contempt for selling. The pair is the clearest example of vocabulary that encodes an argument: one behaviour is a virtue, its opposite is a weakness, and no circumstance is admitted where selling was correct.
Moon, ape in, degen
To moon is to rise sharply. To ape in is to buy a large position quickly without research. A degen embraces that as an identity. The self-deprecation is real and it also normalises the behaviour it describes.
What the vocabulary is doing
Consider what has a word and what does not. There is a term for selling too early and none for holding too long. Rich language for enthusiasm and a single dismissive label for scepticism. A word that turns a decline into a purchase opportunity and no equivalent for a decline that simply continued.
That asymmetry is not accidental and it is not exactly a conspiracy either. It is what happens when a vocabulary is developed by people who are long. Using it fluently means importing its assumptions, which is fine as long as you can see them.
The one worth watching
FUD. It is the word that converts a factual claim into a motive, and it is deployed most heavily against the most specific criticisms. When a concrete statement (a missed deadline, a wallet movement, an unanswered question about reserves) is answered with the label rather than with a rebuttal, the label is the rebuttal, and it is not one.
The terms that describe real mechanics
A handful are not attitude but vocabulary for things that actually exist. Gas is the fee paid for computation on a network. Slippage is the gap between expected and executed price. Airdrop is a distribution of tokens to addresses meeting some condition. Staking is committing an asset to secure a network in return for a yield.
These are worth learning properly, because each names a mechanism with consequences. Confusing them with the attitudinal vocabulary is easy, since both arrive in the same sentences from the same people, and the difference is whether the word points at something that would still be there if everyone stopped talking.
The words that describe a market structure
A second group of terms is doing something different from the cheerleading vocabulary. They name real features of how this market is arranged, and they are worth knowing because the features are worth knowing.
A whale is a holder large enough that their trading moves the price rather than following it. That is a statement about depth, not about wealth, and it is why the same position size is a whale on one asset and unremarkable on another. Liquidity is the related idea from the other direction: how much can be bought or sold before the price shifts against you. Slippage is what you pay when the answer is not much.
Unlock refers to a scheduled release of supply that was allocated but not yet circulating, usually to a team or to early investors. Burn is the opposite operation, sending units to an address nobody can spend from. Both are checkable against the chain rather than against a claim, which puts them in a different class from most of the vocabulary on this page.
Rug pull names an outcome instead of a mechanism, and that vagueness is a problem. Withdrawn liquidity, an abandoned project and an outright theft all get the same label, and they are different events with different warning signs. The useful habit is to ask which of the three someone means before treating their account as a precedent.
A note on how fast it turns over
Most of this vocabulary has a half-life measured in months. Terms appear, saturate and become markers of having arrived at a particular moment rather than of understanding anything. The core set at the top of this page has lasted a decade; almost everything invented since has not.
Which is a reason not to work at fluency. Being able to read the vocabulary is useful; adopting it is how a reader ends up importing a set of assumptions along with the words, and the assumptions outlast the slang.
Questions this raises
Where did HODL come from?
A misspelling. In December 2013, during a sharp decline, a forum user posted a rambling late-night message titled "I AM HODLING" explaining why he was not selling. The typo was adopted immediately, and a backronym (hold on for dear life) was invented afterwards to explain a word that started as a mistake.
Is FUD always a criticism?
It is used as one. Originally it named a real sales tactic, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about a competitor, but in crypto it has drifted into a way of dismissing negative information regardless of accuracy. When the word appears in response to a specific factual claim, that is worth noticing.
What does "wen" mean?
Deliberately misspelt "when", used to ask about a delivery date the asker suspects will not be met. It is a joke and a complaint at once, which is roughly the register of this whole vocabulary.
Why does the slang matter at all?
Because it carries assumptions. Calling a decline a discount, a holder a diamond hand and a seller weak is a vocabulary that praises one behaviour and shames its opposite, and it is used most heavily by people who benefit from you not selling.
Primary sources
- CoinMarketCapOne of the trackers whose figures differ, and why.
- Bank for International Settlements on crypto marketsCentral-bank analysis of market structure.
- FTC: cryptocurrency and scamsConsumer agency guidance on the recurring patterns.