CRYPTO TRADING GLOSSARY
56 essential terms every Unity Academy member, and every serious crypto trader, should know.
A
Altseason 🔗
A market phase in which altcoins broadly outperform Bitcoin. Often defined as ETH-BTC and total altcoin market cap rising while BTC dominance falls.
B
Backtest 🔗
Running a strategy against historical data to estimate its expected behavior. Useful but biased; live performance always differs.
Bear market 🔗
A sustained downtrend, typically defined as a drawdown of 20%+ from recent highs over a multi-month timeframe.
Block 🔗
A bundle of transactions added to a blockchain. Block time varies by chain (Bitcoin ~10 min, Ethereum ~12 sec).
BOS (Break of Structure) 🔗
A price action concept describing the moment when price breaks a prior swing high or low, signalling a likely shift in directional bias.
Bull market 🔗
A sustained uptrend, typically a multi-month rally of 20%+ from prior lows. Crypto bull markets historically follow Bitcoin halving events.
C
Candle 🔗
A visual representation of price over a fixed period showing open, high, low, and close. Body colour indicates whether close was above (green) or below (red) open.
CEX (Centralized Exchange) 🔗
A custodial trading venue (e.g., Coinbase, Kraken, Binance) where the operator holds your funds and matches orders.
CHoCH (Change of Character) 🔗
A price action term for the first counter-trend break in market structure, often the earliest signal of a trend reversal.
Circulating supply 🔗
The number of tokens publicly available and tradable. Excludes locked, vested, or reserved tokens.
D
DeFi (Decentralized Finance) 🔗
Financial services (lending, swapping, derivatives) running on smart contracts without a central operator.
DEX (Decentralized Exchange) 🔗
A non-custodial swap venue (e.g., Uniswap, Curve) where trades execute via on-chain smart contracts and you keep custody throughout.
Drawdown 🔗
The percentage decline from a portfolio peak to a trough before a new peak is made. Max drawdown is the deepest such decline.
E
Edge 🔗
A statistical advantage that produces positive expected value over many trades. Edge is small, repeatable, and earned, not bought.
EMA (Exponential Moving Average) 🔗
A moving average that weights recent prices more heavily, reacting faster than a simple moving average.
Entry 🔗
The price at which a trade is opened. A planned entry is the level at which a setup becomes valid; an actual entry is the fill price.
Expectancy 🔗
Average $ won or lost per trade over a sample. Positive expectancy multiplied by frequency equals account growth.
F
Fee tier 🔗
Pricing band for exchange fees, typically based on 30-day volume. Higher tiers pay lower fees.
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) 🔗
Emotional impulse to enter a fast-moving market late. Among the top causes of late-cycle losses.
FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) 🔗
Negative narrative pressure, sometimes coordinated, on a token or market. Can be manipulative or genuine; experienced traders evaluate substance.
Funding rate 🔗
Periodic payments between long and short positions on perpetual futures, anchoring the perp price to spot. Positive funding means longs pay shorts.
Futures 🔗
Contracts to buy/sell an asset at a future date or price. In crypto, perpetual futures (perps) are the dominant instrument; they have no expiry.
FVG (Fair Value Gap) 🔗
A three-candle imbalance pattern where price moved fast enough to leave an unfilled gap; often a future support/resistance zone.
H
HODL 🔗
Long-term hold strategy. Originally a typo of "hold" from a 2013 forum post, now a recognized strategy.
I
Impermanent loss 🔗
Loss experienced by liquidity providers in AMM pools when token price ratios diverge. Becomes permanent on withdrawal.
L
Leverage 🔗
Borrowed exposure that amplifies gains and losses. 5x leverage means your P&L moves 5x the underlying.
Liquidation 🔗
Forced closure of a leveraged position when collateral falls below maintenance margin. Avoid by sizing conservatively and respecting stops.
Liquidity sweep 🔗
A move past a prior swing high or low that triggers stops and then reverses, often used by larger participants to fill orders.
Long 🔗
A position that profits if price rises. Buy first, sell later (in spot) or open a long perpetual contract (in futures).
M
MACD 🔗
Moving Average Convergence Divergence, a momentum indicator showing the relationship between two EMAs of price.
Margin 🔗
Collateral held by an exchange against a leveraged position. Initial margin opens the trade; maintenance margin keeps it open.
Market cap 🔗
Token price times circulating supply. A common but imperfect proxy for project size; ignores locked/vested supply.
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) 🔗
Profits extractable by reordering, including, or excluding transactions in a block. Affects on-chain trade execution.
Momentum 🔗
The rate of price change. High momentum means strong directional movement; low momentum suggests range or exhaustion.
O
On-chain 🔗
Data, transactions, or activity verifiable on a public blockchain, as opposed to off-chain CEX or private records.
Order block 🔗
A consolidation zone preceding an aggressive directional move, often acting as future support or resistance when revisited.
OracleAlgo 🔗
Unity Academy proprietary TradingView indicator stacking trend, momentum, reversal, and risk layers into a unified overlay.
P
Paper trade 🔗
Simulating trades without real capital. Useful for validating strategy mechanics; less useful for emotional preparation.
Perp (Perpetual contract) 🔗
A futures contract with no expiry. Funding rates anchor it to the spot price. The dominant crypto derivative.
Position sizing 🔗
The act of calculating how large a trade should be given account size, stop-loss distance, and risk-per-trade rules.
R
R:R (Risk:Reward) 🔗
Ratio of potential loss to potential gain. A 1:3 setup risks 1 unit to make 3. Higher R:R compensates for lower win rates.
RSI (Relative Strength Index) 🔗
Momentum oscillator measuring the speed and magnitude of price changes; ranges 0, 100. Above 70 often called overbought, below 30 oversold.
S
Sharpe ratio 🔗
Risk-adjusted return metric: excess return divided by standard deviation. Higher is better; >1 is good, >2 excellent.
Short 🔗
A position that profits if price falls. In crypto, opened by selling a perpetual contract.
Slippage 🔗
Difference between expected fill price and actual fill price, especially on large orders or thin liquidity.
SL (Stop-Loss) 🔗
A pre-set order to close a trade at a defined loss. Non-negotiable on every trade for disciplined traders.
Spot 🔗
Direct purchase of the underlying token, settled immediately. No leverage, no funding, no expiry.
Stablecoin 🔗
A token pegged to a fiat reference (usually USD). Examples include USDC, USDT, DAI. Used for trading, payments, and on-chain capital parking.
Swing trade 🔗
A trade held for days to weeks. Lower frequency than day trading, larger stops, larger targets.
T
Tokenomics 🔗
The economic design of a token: supply schedule, distribution, vesting, burns, incentives.
TP (Take-Profit) 🔗
A pre-set order to close a trade at a defined profit level. Disciplined traders place TP at trade entry, not after.
TVL (Total Value Locked) 🔗
Aggregate value of assets deposited into a DeFi protocol. A health metric; higher TVL generally means more user trust and depth.
W
Wallet 🔗
A non-custodial application or device storing private keys that control on-chain assets. Hot wallets are online; cold wallets are offline.
Whale 🔗
A market participant large enough to move price with single trades. On-chain analysis often tracks whale wallets.
Win rate 🔗
Percentage of trades that close in profit. Win rate alone is meaningless; combine with average R per trade for full picture.
Wyckoff 🔗
Classical price-action framework describing market cycles in four phases: accumulation, markup, distribution, markdown.