XPayIndustry WIKIBack to home
XPAY KNOWLEDGE

Industry WIKI

Digital assets and currencies

Understand assets, networks and trading mechanics with sources you can check.

Assets

$Libra cryptocurrency scandal

On February 14, 2025, Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, promoted a cryptocurrency project called $LIBRA. The price of the meme coin spiked following Milei's promotion but then suffered a severe price drop, leading to allegations of a rug pull scam and $251 million in losses for investors. This scandal has been dubbed Cryptogate. The Economist called it the "first big scandal" of

Trading basics

$Trump

$Trump (stylized in all caps) is a meme coin cryptocurrency associated with United States president Donald Trump, hosted on the Solana blockchain. One billion coins were created; 800 million remain owned by two Trump-owned companies, after 200 million were publicly released in an initial coin offering (ICO) on January 17, 2025. Less than a day later, the aggregate market value of all coi

Banking

1988–1992 Norwegian banking crisis

The 1988–1992 Norwegian banking crisis was the largest financial crisis that occurred in Europe since the end of World War II within Norway. The crisis emerged from a backdrop of financial deregulation, which unleashed a wave of perilous credit operations and a subsequent lending frenzy. The elimination of lending rate constraints led Norwegian banks to partake in high-risk activities, r

Banking

1990–1994 Swedish financial crisis

The 1990–1994 Swedish financial crisis took place in Sweden when the deflation of a housing bubble caused a severe credit crunch and bank crisis and a deep recession. Similar crises took place in countries around the same time, such as in Finland and the Savings and Loans crisis in the United States. The causes of the crisis were similar to those of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–

Banking

1990s Finnish banking crisis

The 1990s Finnish banking crisis was a deep systemic crisis of the entire Finnish financial sector that took place mainly in the years 1991–1993, after several years of debt-based economic boom in the late 1980s. Its total taxpayer cost was roughly 8% of the Finnish GNP, making it the most severe of the contemporary Nordic banking crises. The crisis has been attributed to a combination o

Trading basics

1991 Indian economic crisis

The 1991 Indian economic crisis was a balance-of-payments crisis in which India's foreign-exchange reserves fell to a level barely sufficient to pay three weeks of imports. It followed a decade of large fiscal deficits and rising external borrowing and came to a head in 1990-91 because of rising oil prices during the Gulf War, political instability that prevented the government from pass

Trading basics

1994 bond market crisis

The 1994 bond market crisis, or Great Bond Massacre, was a sudden drop in bond market prices across the developed world. It began in Japan and the United States (US), and spread through the rest of the world. After the recession of the early 1990s, historically low interest rates in many industrialized nations preceded an unexpectedly volatile year for bond investors, including those tha

Banking

2002 Uruguay banking crisis

The 2002 Uruguay banking crisis was a major banking crisis that hit Uruguay in July 2002. The crisis unfolded after years of heavy dollarization since the 1950s when chronic inflation and weak confidence in the peso led Uruguayans to prefer U.S. dollars. This left the economy highly exposed to external shocks. The crisis was caused by a considerable contraction in Uruguay's economy and b

Banking

2003 Myanmar banking crisis

The 2003 banking crisis of Myanmar was a major bank run in private banking that hit Myanmar (Burma) in February 2003. It started with a decline in the trust for private financial institutions following the collapse of small financial enterprises and proliferating rumors about the liquidity of major private banks. Leading to a bank run on the Asia Wealth Bank, the crisis quickly spread to

Trading basics

2023 United States banking crisis

The 2023 United States banking crisis was a series of bank failures and bankruptcies that took place in early 2023, with the United States federal government ultimately intervening in several ways. Over the course of five days in March 2023, three small-to-mid size U.S. banks failed, triggering a sharp decline in global bank stock prices and swift response by regulators to prevent poten

Finance

Accounting liquidity

In accounting, liquidity (or accounting liquidity) is a measure of the ability of a debtor to pay their debts as and when they fall due. It is usually expressed as a ratio or a percentage of current liabilities. Liquidity is the ability to pay short-term obligations.

Trading basics

Acquisition of Credit Suisse by UBS

On 19 March 2023, Swiss bank UBS Group AG agreed to buy Credit Suisse for CHF 3 billion (US$3.2 billion) in an all-stock deal brokered by the government of Switzerland and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority. The Swiss National Bank supported the deal by providing more than CHF 100 billion (US$104 billion) in liquidity to UBS following its takeover of Credit Suisse's operati

Assets

Alameda Research

Alameda Research was a cryptocurrency trading firm founded in September 2017 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Tara Mac Aulay. In November 2022, Alameda's sister cryptocurrency exchange FTX experienced a solvency crisis that resulted in both companies filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That same month, anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal that FTX had loaned more than half of its custome

Assets

Algorand

Algorand is a proof-of-stake blockchain and cryptocurrency. Algorand's native cryptocurrency is called ALGO.

Banking

Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763

The Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763 in the Netherlands followed the end of the Seven Years' War. At this time prices of grain and other commodities were falling sharply, and the supply of credit dried up due to the decreased value of collateral goods. Many of the banks based in Amsterdam were over-leveraged and were interlinked by complex financial instruments, making them vulnerable to

Trading basics

Augur (software)

Augur is a decentralized prediction market platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. Augur is developed by Forecast Foundation, which was founded in 2014 by Jack Peterson, Joey Krug, and Jeremy Gardner. Forecast Foundation is advised by Ron Bernstein, founder of now-defunct company Intrade, and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Assets

Auroracoin

Auroracoin (Abbreviation: AUR; sign: ᚠ) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency launched in February 2014 as an Icelandic alternative to bitcoin and the Icelandic króna. The unknown creator or creators use the pseudonym Baldur Friggjar Óðinsson (or Odinsson). They stated that they planned to distribute half of auroracoins that would ever be created to all 330,000 people listed in Iceland's nat

Banking

Australian banking crisis of 1893

The 1893 banking crisis in the Australian colonies involved the collapse of a considerable number of commercial banks and building societies, and a general economic depression. It occurred at the same time as the US Panic of 1893 (1893–1897).

Banking

Bank failure

A bank failure occurs when a bank is unable to meet its obligations to its depositors or other creditors because it has become insolvent or too illiquid to meet its liabilities. Failing banks share commonalities: rising asset losses, deteriorating solvency, and an increasing reliance on expensive noncore funding.

Banking

Bank run

A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may fail in the near future. It may occur when, in a fractional-reserve banking system (where banks normally only keep a small proportion of their assets as cash), a large volume of customers seek to withdraw a greater amount of cash from deposit accounts with a financia

Banking

Baring crisis

The Baring crisis or the Panic of 1890 was an acute recession in the United States. Although less serious than other panics of the era, it is the 19th century’s most famous sovereign debt crisis, and the 17th largest decline in U.S. stock market history.

Assets

Bitcoin

Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown person published a white paper under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its open-source implementation. From 2021 to 2025, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender curren

Trading basics

Bitcoin in El Salvador

El Salvador was the first country in the world to use bitcoin as legal tender, after it was adopted as such by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in 2021. It has been promoted by Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who claimed that it would improve the economy by making banking easier for Salvadorans, and that it would encourage foreign investment. In 2022, more Salvadorians

Trading basics

Bitcoin protocol

The bitcoin protocol is the set of rules that govern the functioning of bitcoin. Its key components and principles are: a peer-to-peer decentralized network with no central oversight; the blockchain technology, a public ledger that records all bitcoin transactions; mining and proof of work, the process to create new bitcoins and verify transactions; and cryptographic security.

Fiat currencies

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) is a cryptocurrency that is a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Satoshi Vision was created in November 2018 by a group of individuals led by Craig Steven Wright, who has claimed since 2015 to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the original bitcoin.

Trading basics

Bitconnect

Bitconnect (stylized bitconnect and also spelled BitConnect, ticker code BCC) was an open-source cryptocurrency from 2016 to 2018 that was connected with a high-yield investment program, a type of Ponzi scheme. After the platform administrators closed the earning platform on January 16, 2018, and refunded the users' investments in BCC following a 92% coin value crash, confidence was lost

Assets

BitFuFu

BitFuFu Inc. (Nasdaq: FUFU) is a Bitcoin miner and mining services innovator headquartered in Singapore.

Assets

Blockchain

A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they e

Networks

BNB Smart Chain (blockchain platform)

BNB Smart Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain) is a public blockchain platform that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and provides smart contract functionality. The platform's native cryptocurrency is BNB. The system is part of the broader Binance ecosystem founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and Yi He.

Networks

Cardano (blockchain platform)

Cardano is a public decentralized blockchain platform which uses the cryptocurrency, ADA, to facilitate transactions.

Networks

Chia Network

Chia Network is a proof-of-space and proof-of-time-based blockchain. It issues the digital currency Chia (XCH). It was founded in 2017 by Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, and Ryan Singer. Its headquarters are in South San Francisco, California.

Banking

Chinese Banking Liquidity Crisis of 2013

The Chinese Banking Liquidity Crisis of 2013 was a sudden credit crunch affecting China's commercial banks evidenced by a rapid rise on 20 June 2013 in the Shanghai interbank overnight lending rates to a high of 30 percent from its usual rate of less than 3%. The ensuing panic affected gold markets and stock. China's regulation of the foreign exchange market had caused a decline in inflo

Payments & settlement

Circle Internet Group

Circle Internet Group, Inc. is a payments technology company. Founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in 2013, it is currently headquartered in New York City and issues two types of stablecoin: USDC, which has a conversion rate pegged to the U.S. dollar, and EURC, which is euro-denominated. It also issues USYC, a tokenized money market fund.

Fiat currencies

Classical dichotomy

In macroeconomics, the classical dichotomy is the idea, attributed to classical and pre-Keynesian economics, that real and nominal variables can be analyzed separately. To be precise, an economy exhibits the classical dichotomy if real variables such as output and real interest rates can be completely analyzed without considering what is happening to their nominal counterparts, the mone

Assets

Coinye

Coinye (formerly Coinye West), is a scrypt-based cryptocurrency. Cease and desist letters were issued against it for its use of American rapper Kanye West as its mascot despite West having no affiliation with the project. The project was abandoned by the original developers following West's filing of a trademark infringement lawsuit against them.

Trading basics

Commodity price shocks

Commodity price shocks are times when the prices for commodities have drastically increased or decreased over a short span of time.

Networks

Confidential Consortium Framework

Originally developed in 2019 by Microsoft under the name Coco and later rebranded to Confidential Consortium Framework (CCF), it is an open-source framework for developing of a new category of performant applications that focuses on the optimization of secure multi-party computation and data availability. Intended to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology by enterprises, CCF ca

Banking

Copper Panic of 1789

The Copper Panic of 1789 was a monetary crisis of the early United States that was caused by debasement and loss of confidence in copper coins that occurred under the presidency of George Washington. Following the American Revolutionary War, several U.S. states began minting their own coins, largely using copper. As copper was relatively easy to counterfeit, counterfeiters in states whic

Assets

Cryptocurrencies in Europe

The general notion of cryptocurrencies in Europe denotes the processes of legislative regulation, distribution, circulation, and storage of cryptocurrencies in Europe. In April 2023, the EU Parliament passed the Markets in Crypto Act (MiCA) unified legal framework for crypto-assets within the European Union.

Finance

Cryptocurrencies in Puerto Rico

With the arrival of several figures led by Brock Pierce following the passing of hurricane Maria in 2017, cryptocurrency became an issue of media and economic interest in the Caribbean archipelago of Puerto Rico. These traders relocated to the island motivated by the tax incentives provided by Act 20-2012 and Act 22-2012 (both now part of as Act 60–2019) and the tropical setting. They cl

Assets

Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is a type of digital asset that uses distributed ledger, or blockchain, technology to enable a secure transaction.

Assets

Cryptocurrency and crime

Cryptocurrency has been used extensively in criminal activities, such as investment and romance scams (often called "pig-butchering"), ransomware payments, thefts and exchange hacks, money laundering and sanctions evasion, darknet-market transactions, and off-chain coercion to obtain private keys. Law enforcement notes that investment fraud and laundering are frequent criminal uses of cr

Finance

Cryptocurrency bubble

A cryptocurrency bubble is a phenomenon where the market increasingly considers the going price of cryptocurrency assets to be inflated against their hypothetical value. The history of cryptocurrency has been marked by several speculative bubbles on a boom to bust cycle.

Assets

Cryptocurrency exchange

A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency excha

Assets

Cryptocurrency in Australia

Cryptocurrency in Australia refers to the use and regulation of digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and various other altcoins within the country of Australia. Australia has been recognized as a relatively progressive country regarding cryptocurrency adoption and regulation.

Fiat currencies

Cryptocurrency in Iran

Cryptocurrency in Iran has emerged as a pivotal response to economic pressures and global isolation. In 2026, Iran had a total US$7.8 billion cryptocurrency market, and a number of exchanges such as Nobitex. Iran's interest in cryptocurrencies began in 2017 when international sanctions obstructed Iran's access to the global financial markets. In 2019, the government legalized cryptocurr

Assets

Cryptocurrency in Nigeria

Cryptocurrency in Nigeria describes the extent of cryptocurrency use, social acceptance and regulation in Nigeria. Nigerians are one of the major global users of cryptocurrencies.

Assets

Cryptocurrency tumbler

A cryptocurrency tumbler or cryptocurrency mixing service is a service that mixes potentially identifiable or "tainted" cryptocurrency funds with others, so as to obscure the trail back to the fund's original source. This is usually done by pooling together source funds from multiple inputs for a large and random period of time, and then spitting them back out to destination addresses. A

Assets

Cryptocurrency wallet

A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or an online service which stores the public and/or private keys for cryptocurrency transactions. In addition to this basic function of storing the keys, a cryptocurrency wallet more often offers the functionality of encrypting and/or signing information. Signing can for example result in executing a smart contract, a cryptocu

Networks

CryptoKitties

CryptoKitties is a blockchain game developed by Canadian studio Dapper Labs. The game allows players to buy, sell, and create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using Ethereum. These NFTs represent virtual cats. The game's popularity in December 2017 congested the Ethereum network, causing it to reach an all-time high in the number of transactions and slowing it down significantly.

Assets

CryptoNote

CryptoNote is an application layer protocol designed for use with cryptocurrencies that aims to solve specific problems identified in Bitcoin.

Trading basics

CryptoPunks

CryptoPunks is a non-fungible token (NFT) collection on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was launched in June 2017 by the Larva Labs studio, a two-person team consisting of Canadian software developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson. The experimental project was inspired by the London punk scenes, the cyberpunk movement, and electronic music artists Daft Punk. The crypto art blockchain

Finance

Currency crisis

A currency crisis is a type of financial crisis, and is often associated with a real economic crisis. A currency crisis raises the probability of a banking crisis or a default crisis. During a currency crisis the value of foreign denominated debt will rise drastically relative to the declining value of the home currency. Generally doubt exists as to whether a country's central bank has s

Stablecoins

Dai (cryptocurrency)

DAI (or DAI, formerly Sai or SAI) is a stablecoin token on the Ethereum blockchain which uses smart contracts designed to control supply to keep its value as close to one United States dollar as possible. DAI is maintained and regulated by MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization composed of the owners of its governance token, MKR, who may propose and vote on changes to certain

Assets

Dash (cryptocurrency)

Dash is an open source cryptocurrency. It is an altcoin that was forked from the Bitcoin protocol. It is also a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a subset of its users. It was previously known as Xcoin and Darkcoin.

Fiat currencies

Debasement

A debasement of coinage is the practice of lowering the intrinsic value of coins, especially when used in connection with commodity money, such as gold or silver coins, while continuing to circulate them at face value. A coin is said to be debased if the quantity of gold, silver, copper or nickel in the coin is reduced.

Networks

Decentralized application

A decentralised application (DApp, dApp, Dapp, or dapp) is an application that can operate autonomously, typically through the use of smart contracts, that run on a blockchain or other distributed ledger system. DApps provide a function or utility to their users with less human intervention. Control over some DApps is distributed over holders of tokens that represent ownership over a DAp

Networks

Decentralized autonomous organization

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a software system for organization of other computer programs handled through a decentralized ledger technology like a blockchain. These systems are used most commonly to handle voting and finances, among other processes. The precise legal status of this type of organization system is unclear.

Assets

Decentralized finance

Decentralized finance (often stylized as DeFi) provides financial instruments and services through smart contracts on a programmable, permissionless blockchain. This approach reduces the need for intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks. DeFi platforms enable users to lend or borrow funds, speculate on asset price movements using derivatives, trade cryptocurrencies, insure

Fiat currencies

Deflation

In economics, deflation is an increase in the real value of the monetary unit of account, as reflected in a decrease in the general price level of goods and services exchanged, measurable by broad price indices.

Trading basics

Demand shock

In economics, a demand shock is a sudden event that increases or decreases demand for goods or services temporarily.

Stablecoins

Diem (digital currency)

Diem (formerly known as Libra) was a permissioned blockchain-based stablecoin payment system proposed by the American social media company Facebook. The plan also included a private currency implemented as a cryptocurrency. The launch was originally planned to be in 2020, but only rudimentary experimental code was released.

Fiat currencies

Digital currency

Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital currencies include cryptocurrency, virtual currency and central bank digital currency. Digital currency may be recorded on a distributed database on

Assets

Digital Currency Group

Digital Currency Group Inc. (DCG) is an American investment company focusing on the digital currency market and decentralized technologies. It is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. The subsidiaries include Grayscale Investments, Yuma, Foundry, Luno, and Fortitude Mining. It also formerly owned the now-inactive Genesis Global Holdco and CoinDesk.

Networks

Distributed ledger

A distributed ledger (also called a shared ledger or distributed ledger technology or DLT) is a system whereby replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data is geographically spread (distributed) across many sites, countries, or institutions. In contrast to a centralized database, a distributed ledger does not require a central administrator, and consequently does not have a single (

Networks

Distributed ledger technology law

Distributed ledger technology law ("DLT law") (also called blockchain law, Lex Cryptographia or algorithmic legal order) is a loosely defined emerging field of law resulting from the recent use of distributed ledger technology in business and government. Those smart contracts which were created through interaction of lawyers and developers and are intended to also be enforceable legal co

Assets

Dogecoin

Dogecoin ( DOHJ-koyn or DOHZH-koyn, Abbreviation: DOGE; sign: Ð) is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is considered both the first "meme coin", and more specifically the first "dog coin". Despite its satirical nature, some

Payments & settlement

Double-spending

Double-spending is the unauthorized spending of the same money (either digital or conventional) more than once. As with counterfeit money, double-spending leads to supply inflation by creating a new amount of copied currency that did not previously exist. It can also devalue the currency and diminish user trust in the currency.

Trading basics

Economic expansion

An economic expansion is an upturn in the level of economic activity and of the goods and services available. It is a finite period of growth, often measured by a rise in real GDP, that marks a reversal from a previous period, for example, while recovering from a recession. The explanation of fluctuations in aggregate economic activity between expansions and contractions ("booms" and "bu

Trading basics

Economic stagnation

Economic stagnation is a prolonged period of slow economic growth, typically measured in GDP per capita growth or median income growth, which is usually accompanied by high unemployment. Under some definitions, slow means significantly slower than potential growth as estimated by macroeconomists, even though the growth rate may be nominally higher than in other countries not experiencing

Networks

EOS.IO

EOS.IO is a blockchain protocol based on the cryptocurrency EOS. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second. It was developed by the private company Block.one and launched in 2017. The platform was later released as open-source software.

Assets

Equihash

Equihash is a memory-hard Proof-of-work algorithm introduced by the University of Luxembourg's Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) at the 2016 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium. The algorithm is based on a generalization of the Birthday problem which finds colliding hash values. It has severe time-space trade-offs but concedes vulnerability

Networks

Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (abbreviation: ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-source software.

Trading basics

Ethereum Classic

Ethereum Classic is a blockchain-based distributed computing platform that offers smart contract (scripting) functionality. Ethereum Classic was created in a hard fork with the mainline Ethereum blockchain, and maintains the original, unaltered ledger prior to the attempt to reverse a hacking attack on the Ethereum-based DAO in July 2016. It is now the largest smart contract platform sec

Trading basics

EToro

eToro Group Ltd. is an Israeli multinational company that operates an electronic trading platform and social trading system. The company is organized in the British Virgin Islands and headquartered in Bnei Brak, Israel.

Fiat currencies

Everything bubble

The "everything bubble" refers to the impact on the values of asset prices, including equities, real estate, bonds, many commodities, and cryptocurrencies, due to quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan. The policy itself and the techniques of direct and indirect methods of quantitative easing used to execute it are sometimes referred to a

Assets

Filecoin

Filecoin (⨎) is a cryptocurrency intended to be a blockchain-based cooperative digital storage and data retrieval method. It was developed by Protocol Labs and shares some ideas from InterPlanetary File System allowing users to rent unused hard drive space. Filecoin is an open protocol and uses a blockchain to record participation in the network. Transactions are made using the blockchai

Finance

Financial contagion

Financial contagion refers to "the spread of market disturbances—mostly on the downside—from one country to the other, a process observed through co-movements in exchange rates, stock prices, sovereign spreads, and capital flows". Financial contagion can be a potential risk for countries who are trying to integrate their financial system with international financial markets and instituti

Trading basics

Financial crisis

A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. A broader reduction of economic activity affecting the whole economy is known as an economic crisis. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Ot

Finance

Financial Revolution

The Financial Revolution was a set of economic and financial reforms in Great Britain after the Glorious Revolution in 1688 when William III invaded England. The reforms were based in part on Dutch economic and financial innovations that were brought to England by William III. New institutions were created: a public debt (first government bonds were issued in 1693) and the Bank of Englan

Assets

Firo (cryptocurrency)

Firo, formerly known as Zcoin, is a cryptocurrency aimed at using cryptography to provide better privacy for its users compared to other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Finance

Flash crash

In modern finance, a flash crash is a very rapid, deep, and volatile fall in security prices occurring within a very short time period followed by a quick recovery. Flash crashes are frequently blamed by media on trades executed by black-box trading, combined with high-frequency trading, whose speed and interconnectedness can result in the loss and recovery of billions of dollars in a ma

Networks

Fork (blockchain)

In blockchain, a fork is defined variously as:

Banking

Funding liquidity

Funding liquidity is the availability of credit to finance the purchase of financial assets. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) defines funding liquidity as "the ability of a solvent institution to make agreed-upon payments in a timely fashion". In practice, funding liquidity refers to whether a bank or financial institution can meet its payment obligations at a given point in time.

Assets

Galaxy Digital (company)

Galaxy Digital Inc., doing business as Galaxy, is an American financial services and infrastructure company headquartered in New York City. The company focuses on digital assets, cryptocurrency, blockchain infrastructure, and artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data center infrastructure. Its digital asset businesses include over-the-counter trading, lending, investmen

Assets

Genesis (cryptocurrency company)

Genesis is a cryptocurrency intermediary for institutional investors, with Digital Currency Group (DCG) as its parent company.

Stablecoins

GENIUS Act

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) is a United States federal law that aims to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that are backed by assets considered to be reliable such as a national currency or a commodity. Stablecoins are typically used to transfer funds between diff

Banking

Ghana banking crisis

The Ghana banking crisis was a severe banking crisis that affected Ghana between August 2017 and January 2020. The Bank of Ghana (BoG) allowed several indigenous banks to be taken over by private companies between August 2017 and January 2019 after Nana Akufo-Addo was elected president in December 2016. Most of the indigenous banks had been at the risk of defaulting on their loans, as th

Trading basics

Global recession

A global recession is a recession that affects many countries around the world—that is, a period of global economic slowdown or declining economic output. Since World War II, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has identified five such recessions, with the COVID-19 recession being the most severe.

Assets

Hedera (distributed ledger)

Hedera Hashgraph, commonly known as Hedera, is a distributed ledger which uses a variant of proof of stake to reach consensus. The native cryptocurrency of the Hedera Hashgraph system is HBAR.

Assets

Helium Network

The Helium Network is a wireless system composed of two distinct networks: one for Internet of things (IoT) devices using LoRaWAN and another for mobile phone coverage using Wi-Fi hotspots.

Banking

History of banking in the United Kingdom

Banking in the United Kingdom began in the Kingdom of England in the 17th century. The first activity in what later came to be known as banking was by goldsmiths who, after the dissolution of English monasteries by Henry VIII, began to accumulate significant stocks of gold.

Banking

History of investment banking in the United States

Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke established the first modern American investment bank during the Civil War era. However, private banks had been providing investment banking functions since the beginning of the 19th century and many of these evolved into investment banks in the post-bellum era. However, the evolution of firms into investment banks did not follow a single trajectory. Fo

Networks

Hyperbridge

Hyperbridge is a cross-chain interoperability bridge that uses cryptographic protocols to facilitate the transfer of assets and data between different blockchains. Hyperbridge was launched on Polkadot mainnet in 2024 by Polytope Labs. The protocol is designed with a decentralised verification system which eliminates traditional reliance on blockchain validators, addressing the limitation

Networks

Hyperledger

Hyperledger (or the Hyperledger Project) is an umbrella project of open source blockchains and related tools that the Linux Foundation started in December 2015. IBM, Intel, and SAP Ariba have contributed to support the collaborative development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers. It was renamed the Hyperledger Foundation in October 2021. In September 2024, Hyperledger Foundation and

Assets

Initial coin offering

An initial coin offering (ICO) or token sale is a form of capital raising in which a project issues and sells digital tokens using blockchain technology, typically in exchange for cryptocurrency or fiat currency. The tokens may grant access to a product or service, represent participation rights within a network, or function as speculative digital assets traded on cryptocurrency markets.

Assets

Initial exchange offering

An Initial exchange offering (IEO) is the cryptocurrency exchange equivalent to a stock launch or Initial public offering (IPO). An IEO is the process of digital asset (e.g. coins or tokens) procurement through an established exchange for the purpose of raising capital for start-up companies. Exchanges act as a middleman between investors and the startup, profiting from fees generated by

Finance

Inverted yield curve

In finance, an inverted yield curve is a yield curve in which short-term debt instruments (typically bonds) have a greater yield than longer term bonds. An inverted yield curve is an unusual phenomenon; bonds with shorter maturities generally provide lower yields than longer term bonds.

Assets

IOTA (technology)

IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger and cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of things (IoT). It uses a directed acyclic graph to store transactions on its ledger, motivated by a potentially higher scalability over blockchain based distributed ledgers. IOTA does not use miners to validate transactions, instead, nodes that issue a new transaction on the network must approve two

Assets

KodakCoin

KodakCoin (stylized KODAKCoin) was a Kodak-branded blockchain cryptocurrency, used to plan payments for licensed photographers. It was also able to generate individualized cryptocurrency for its users through Kodak KashMiner, a Bitcoin-mining computer. Critics characterized Kodak's association with the cryptocurrency as a "desperate money grab."