Frequently Asked Questions

Fiat is a state-issued currency, e.g. US dollar. Fiat currency is not pegged to gold. It has no backing at all.

Cryptocurrency is a digital asset meant to function as a means of exchange. It uses cryptography for its transactions, production of additional units and asset transfer revision. Most cryptocurrencies are Blockchain-based.

Cryptography is the study of methods for privacy, data consistency and authenticity. It is the mainstay of cryptoindustry as a whole. Therefore, it provides for blocking access to personal information, preventing undetected data modification, checking of authentication and other object properties.

Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin. It equals one hundred millionth of 1 Bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC). Satoshi is named after the anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto who, according to some reports, owns about 1,000,000 BTC.

Market cap is the total value of cryptocurrency on the market. It equals to current coin price times the number of all coins issued.

Public key is a free access character string joined with private key. Public key corresponds to Bitcoin address.

Private key is a character string giving access to a wallet or Bitcoin address. Anyone who can get to your private key can also manage your funds.

Distributed ledger is an agreement on data synchronization and reproducibility. In cryptocurrency networks distribution is spread among several networks in many processors. A centralized ledger is completely opposite to a distributed one, since all the data in it after being synchronized and reproducted is managed by a single network or a user.

Pool (mining pool) is computing resources joined together by several miners. The participants of this net distribute gained profits according to amount of efforts each of them made during task solving.

Scam is ICOs created to deceive people. Having successfully raised investments scam makers refuse paying tokens.

Multisignature (multisig, double signature) is a requirement of multiple signatures to confirm a transaction. This method of security is suitable for companies that have a BTC-wallet. If the company wants to ensure that no employee can possibly get an access to a transaction, multisignature provides it with a possibility to seal transaction with signatures of two different employees prior to its confirmation.

Hodl (hold) is just a misprint of the English «hold». The term originates from Bitcointalk forum in the thread called «I AM HODLING» where a user made a spelling mistake while expressing their thoughts on crypto trading. It is often used as a hint to hold off funds and refrain from panic selling.

FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) is a market manipulation strategy of spreading disinformation in order to lower prices. However, real FUD also exsists. For example, news about a possible ban of cryptocurrency is some country may lower its price. 

Token is Blockchain-integrated digital version of some asset.

ATH (all-time-high) is the highest price ever of a cryptocurrency. Buying at an ATH is inadvisable, since ATHs are usually followed by price corrections.   

Node is a 'knot' of a network. Cryptocurrency network must be fully secure in order to be fully functionable. Using several randomly selected nodes the network may solve the double-spending problem which occurs when a user, by accident or on purpose, tries to transfer a single token twice. 

Fork  has several meanings: Accidental fork occurs if updates of a network are not compatible. People using different versions of the software create two different registers: one from the old version and one from the newer version. In this case, developers must quickly eliminate errors that cause incompatibility and decide how to combine two different blockchains. Hard fork is created when developers decide that it is necessary to make changes to the program part of the cryptocurrency, which will create incompatibility between the older and the newer version. When changes are made, all users of this network should be ready to update all applications in order to continue to use their coins correctly.  Often as a result of a combination of two aforementioned cases, a new, based on the old one, cryptocurrency might be created. This new cryptocurrency may also be called fork. For example, a Bitcoin fork Namecoin (NMC) is the first fork in history.

Mining is one of the basic elements in cryptocurrency structure. As a result of mining a transaction block is added to blockchain and coins get issued while a miner (the one who performs mining) gains cryptocurrency as a reward.

Hashrate is processing capacity of hardware for cryptocurrency mining. It is measured in hash per second.

Sharding is scalability solution for blockchain. Generally, every node of blockchain contains full copy of the whole blockchain. Sharding is a method allowing the nodes to have partial replicas of blockchain to increase total capacity of the net and consensus speed.