Visual Crypto, Vol. 1: Acronyms

(Note: I previously published this post on Medium on Sep 9, 2018).

Being a cryptonewbie is fun. You’re starting from zero, fresh-eyed as Bambi. You’re down for all things decentralization, and Twitter hasn’t hated on you yet. It’s like the first day of school when your pencils are sharp and your notebooks smell fresh, except everyone is speaking a different language.

When I took a job at a crypto company three weeks ago, I had to google “securities,” I thought miners were people, and I secretly pronounced “ETH” as “Eh-Teh-Ha” (after this famous architecture school).

Now I ask a million questions, read a lot of books, and save an aspirational amount of articles to Pocket. There’s still a ton to learn, but I’m starting to take for granted what it’s like to be a cryptonewbie. Before I officially level up, I want to help other newbies chart these acronym-laden territories with the help of some visual flashcards. If there’s one thing crypto has a lot of, it’s acronyms. So sharpen your pencils, and don’t forget to pack your flashcards:

Token Curated Registry (TCR): a list curated by a group of people who each have tokens and a monetary stake in the integrity of the list.

Decentralized Exchange (DEX): A place to swap token among peers without having to store money in a centralized location; this allows for greater privacy but less regulation.

All Time High (ATH): The highest record price of a cryptoasset during trading, for example Bitcoin’s ATH hit a price of $20,089 on Dec 17, 2017.

Moving Average (MA): A moving time window of averages used to gauge a general trend despite frequent price fluctuations.

Know Your Customer (KYC): One of many anti-money laundering laws requiring state sanctioned identification for participation on exchanges; KYC is designed to prevent banks from being used for nefarious purposes.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML): Beginning with the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, banks were required to report activity indicative of possible criminal behavior to the government while also preventing circulation of dirty money through various measures.
“KYC is just one small part of AML. Saying ‘AML/KYC’ is like saying ‘Vegetable/Broccoli’. AML encompasses a ton of other requirements.” — Katherine Wu

Proof-of-Work (POW): POW is a method used to group transactions into blocks and blocks into chains. Computers known as miners “use PoW to compete with one another to get the privilege to add blocks of transactions to Bitcoin’s blockchain.” Successful miners receive bitcoin and contribute to a distributed, cryptographic and immutable database. — quote from “Cryptoassets” by Chris Burniske & Jack Tatar

Proof-of-Stake (POS): A consensus mechanism designed as an alternative to proof-of-work; rather than distributed miners cryptographically verifying the authenticity of a transaction, proof of stake depends on a group of authenticators with a vested stake in keeping validations honest.

Non-Fungible Token (NFT): Unlike cash — where one dollar is essentially identical to another — each NFT has unique and irreproducible characteristics, making it digitally scarce. NFTs cannot be divided into smaller parts, and tend to become collectibles, a famous example of which is Cryptokitties.

Initial Coin Offering (ICO): ICOs are the crypto version of IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). When a new coin, token, or commodity is launched, its “coin” or “symbol of value” is sold to those willing to invest in it, resulting in crowdfunding. ICOs have start & end dates, raised obscene amounts of money in 2017, and can be contentious purveyors of hype.

That’s all for Volume 1. Please credit if you share these designs, and let me know if I’ve gotten anything wrong—I am a cryptonewbie after all! Stay tuned for Volume 2 of Visual Crypto. 🎨

—Faye Hays
Head of Design at Messari + Practicing Visual Artist