Table of Contents:
#1. FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
)
FUD is a term thrown around fairly freely in the crypto community and among cryptocurrency speculators. However, more often than not, it is improperly used as the root of causality for a particular event that occurs in the cryptocurrency world
.
Terms that are thrown around too freely tend to lose their meaning and in the case of FUD, it sometimes results in projecting personal ignorance onto others.
While uncertainty can be said to have many different meanings, in many cases FUD translates to “knowledge gap” rather than uncertainty. For example, someone might blame a drop in the price of Bitcoin on the FUD in the markets, but if you were to look more closely at the data and transactions, you might discover that two weeks ago a whale dumped a lot of
their currency.
This is an important distinction to make as gaps in knowledge can be filled, and this filling of knowledge gaps proves to be an important experience for people in the crypto space, as those experiences turn out to be valuable lessons that improve their skills as investors.
Uncertainty, however, is a different animal. Uncertainty comes from issues beyond an investor’s control and involves a lack of confidence about a particular issue. A lack of trust is not the same thing as a lack of knowledge. In general, it’s easier to fill a knowledge gap than it is to fill a trust gap
.
#2. Satoshi (The Unit, Not the Person
)
Satoshi Nakamoto is the founder of Bitcoin and seen as an influential figure in the cryptocurrency community. In this particular case, however, we are talking about the smallest unit of a bitcoin.
Named after the founder of Bitcoin, a satoshi is 100 millionth of 1 BTC. Also called ‘sats’ when talking about different satoshis
.
It’s a fairly common mistake to assume that a ‘sat’ is similar to a penny, i.e. 0.01 BTC at the time of writing. Actually, a sat is 0.00000001 BTC. There are those who doubt the importance or potential value of Sats in Bitcoin. If some of the Bitcoin maximalists are right in their speculations about the value of Bitcoin reaching ridiculous heights, this could make the value of the Satoshi more worthy of consideration than they currently are. For example, you might want to achieve a benchmark accrual of 0.50 BTC. This would be 50,000,000 sats, not 50 Satoshis
(or Sats).
One myth that people misunderstand about Bitcoin more than other tokens, is the idea that you must buy Bitcoin in traditional units of money with two decimal places (10 or 25 cents for example).
Some investors, especially new ones, might find success stacking the Sats, which is very affordable and adds up over time. Stack Sats and HODLing are a completely feasible investment strategy, and even if you’re not a Bitcoin maximalist, it could open up a way to further diversify an investment portfolio. Don’t sleep on Sats
.
#3. Web3
The NFT craze that started in 2021 was the real kickoff for discussions about the possibility of web3 and what it would have been like. NFTs are non-fungible tokens that are often associated with placing images on a blockchain, which isn’t necessarily the case
.
An NFT is a receiving signature that proves ownership of a particular digital asset that is not exchangeable (or fungible) with another digital asset.
Web3, as a term, was first used in 2014, just like NFTs, but it didn’t reach the mainstream until 2021. The two seem to be tied together in a way. In his original definition, Gavin Wood, the founder of Polkadot, referred to web3 as a “decentralized online ecosystem
based on blockchain.”
This is the definition to keep in mind when reading about web3 promises.
These days, however, Web3 is thrown around so freely that you could mistake it for something that isn’t.
Web3 is not the centralization of web platforms. This position is deterministic and assumes that there will be no remnants of web2 that persist next to web3, just like there are residues of web1
that persist on web2.
An important distinction is that Web3 might be based on blockchain, but not all blockchains are part of web3.
It can be seen that we are still operating a lot in a web2 environment and this is still where most blockchain technology happens and works. The position that web3 is a complete replacement for web2 is sometimes used as a marketing tactic, and the term web3 itself has been imposed by developers and marketing teams to increase hype
about future projects.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to associate a product with future developments, the buzzword-ification of web3 is something to pay attention to. Especially because buzzwords create hype and hype creates FOMO which, more often than not, leads a hasty investor to find
value in an overpriced market.
Concluding remarks
The most wrong cryptographic terms are FUD, Satoshi, and web3. FUD is often expanded, unintentionally, with a ‘K’ between the ‘U’ and the ‘D’. This K stands for ‘knowledge gap’, since uncertainty isn’t exactly the same thing as a knowledge gap. The uncertainty comes from a lack of trust, not knowledge, which is more often the case with cryptocurrencies
.
Satoshis are one millionth of Bitcoin and can be a good first step in an investment strategy in the crypto space.
Finally, web3 is undergoing buzzword-ification, and no amount of marketing hype should distract from its original meaning described above.
