Like every community that builds there tends to be a language that pops up and words that are thrown around by the members. Cryptocurrency is no different and I'm sure you have seen some of the same terms pop up as you have read posts and comments.
HODL
A lot of people think this stands for Hold On For Dear Life. However that is actually not that case. Hodl just means hold. That is it, as in hold on to your coins. The reason it started was on a reddit thread back in the day when Bitcoin was really cheap and really volatile. On a bad day in the market one of the reddit users got drunk and spelt hold as hodl. From there is spread to be used by people hoping to hold on and moon one day. Although Hold On For Dear Life is not where the meme started, language does evolve, so if more people use it for the word hodl then that could also be a new acceptable meaning. But the history states it is just a drunk man stressed about their investment. We all can relate in crypto :p
FOMO
This term isn't exclusive to cryptocurrency but it really fits in the world of crypto. FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out. This can be what drives you to go to that party on Friday night as you don't want to miss out on how good it could be. FOMO is rampant in social media but when it comes to crypto it is tied in with your investments. People FOMO when they think a coin will explode in the very near future and want to rush in to make sure they don't miss out on the profits. This feeling on FOMO is usually strongest when the coin is already going up so a lot of times you buy in at the wrong time and loss money when the coin drops back down. This is a good way to get rekt, which brings us to our next word.
Rekt
No one wants to get rekt. As you can probably guess this is just a different way of spelling wrecked. This means that you lost a lot of money. When you fomo into a coin and hodl hoping it will do well but the market crashes from an exit scam then you are officially rekt. This happens in crypto as projects go under and I'm sure we all have a story or two of an investment we thought would go well only to leave us broke when the project went under.
Shill
Shilling is promoting the crap out of a coin (probably one you own) to others it hopes they will buy it and bring the price up. People will also shill their referral links so they can make more money when people use it. Shilling doesn't mean the person is being dishonest in their sales just that they are excessively promoting something. Mentioning something once or twice or writing a review for it is good, commenting in every body's post that you need to buy this great coin is shilling.
FUD
FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. This is the opposite of shilling and is down as a way to discourage people to buy a coin or worse to encourage people to sell their coin. IF you are wondering why people would so this there are two reasons:
- You own a lot of a coin that is a competitor to the coin you are FUDing and do not want to see them overtake the price of your coin.
- You want people to sell the coin so they will drive the price down and you can pick up the coin for yourself as a cheaper price.
Both are pretty shady tactics but they are used and happen quite often so be careful when you see people overly-spread bad news about a project and ask yourself why they care so much. It is the same with shilling, when it comes to crypto you need to be careful as people's money are invested in these projects and a lot of biases will pop up.