Crypto glossary in plain English
How to use this
Every term used across the course in one plain line, grouped by module. Tax and law terms are as of November 2026.
Module 1: Crypto in India, From Zero
- Blockchain
- A shared ledger that many computers keep copies of, so no single company holds it.
- Wallet
- An app or device that holds the keys that let you move your coins.
- Stablecoin
- A coin built to stay near one dollar, such as USDT.
- VDA
- Virtual digital asset, the tax-law name for crypto.
- FIU-IND
- India's Financial Intelligence Unit; exchanges serving Indians must register with it.
- TDS
- Tax cut at source: 1% on crypto sales above the threshold, credited against your tax.
- Schedule VDA
- The ITR schedule where crypto gains are reported.
- P2P
- Peer-to-peer trade where you pay another person directly, which can freeze bank accounts.
Module 2: Reading the Market
- Candle
- One time slice drawn from four numbers: open, high, low, close.
- Wick
- The thin line above or below a candle's body, showing the extremes.
- Support
- A price zone where buyers have repeatedly stepped in.
- Resistance
- A price zone where sellers have repeatedly stepped in.
- Breakout
- A close beyond a range's edge, which fails more often than beginners expect.
- Volume
- How much traded in a time slice.
- Moving average
- The average of recent closes, redrawn each candle.
- RSI
- A 0 to 100 gauge of how strong recent gains were against recent losses.
Module 3: Your First ₹500: Buying, Holding, Selling
- KYC
- Know Your Customer: ID checks an exchange must do.
- UPI
- India's instant bank-to-bank payment rail, used to deposit rupees.
- Market order
- An order that fills now at whatever price is available.
- Limit order
- An order that fills only at your price or better.
- Order book
- The live list of buy and sell offers.
- Bid / ask
- The best buy price and the best sell price.
- Spread
- The gap between the best bid and the best ask, paid on every round trip.
- Slippage
- The difference between the price you expected and the price you got.
- Trade journal
- Your own record of each trade, needed to fill the ITR.
Module 4
- Custody
- Who holds the keys to your coins.
- Self-custody
- Holding your own keys.
- Seed phrase
- The 12 or 24 words that rebuild a wallet; anyone with them owns the coins.
- Private key
- The secret number that signs transactions.
- Hot wallet
- A wallet connected to the internet.
- Hardware wallet
- A device that keeps the key offline.
- Network
- The blockchain a transfer travels on; sending on the wrong one can lose the coins.
- 2FA
- A second login check such as an authenticator code.
- Whitelist
- A list of approved withdrawal addresses.
- Phishing
- A fake message or site made to steal your login or keys.
Module 5
- Perpetual contract
- A futures contract with no expiry.
- Leverage
- Controlling a larger position than your deposit.
- Margin
- The deposit that backs a position.
- Initial margin
- The deposit needed to open a position.
- Maintenance margin
- The minimum equity below which liquidation starts.
- Liquidation
- The forced closing of a position when margin runs out.
- Funding
- The periodic payment between longs and shorts.
- Mark price
- The fair price used to trigger liquidation.
- Index price
- An average of spot prices across venues.
- Long / short
- A bet on a price rising / falling.
- Take profit
- An order that closes a position at a target.
- Stop loss
- An order that closes a position at a loss limit.
- Open interest
- How many futures contracts are still open.
- Funding rate
- The payment between longs and shorts that keeps a perpetual near spot.
- Isolated margin
- Margin set aside for one position; the most you can lose on it is that margin.
- Cross margin
- One shared pot of margin that backs every open position at once.
- Order ticket
- The form on an exchange where you enter side, quantity, price and leverage.
Module 6
- Risk per trade
- The rupees you lose if the stop is hit.
- R-multiple
- A result measured in units of risk.
- Expectancy
- The average result per trade in R.
- Win rate
- The share of trades that make money.
- Drawdown
- The fall from an account's peak.
- FOMO
- Fear of missing out, which drives chasing.
- Revenge trading
- Trading to win back a loss.
- Stop-day rule
- A rule to stop trading after a set loss.
- Position size
- How much you buy, set from risk and stop.
Module 7
- Signal
- A written trade idea with entry, stop and targets.
- Entry
- The price or zone at which a signal opens.
- Reward-to-risk
- Distance to target divided by distance to stop.
- Ledger
- The full timestamped record of signals and results.
- Sample size
- The number of trades behind a statistic.
- Survivorship bias
- Seeing only winners because losers disappear.
- Paper trading
- Trading a system with pretend money.
- Tax drag
- The part of a gain lost to tax.
Module 8
- Section 115BBH
- The tax section that taxes VDA gains at a flat 30%.
- Cess
- A 4% add-on to the tax.
- Section 194S
- The section that requires 1% TDS on VDA transfers.
- Form 26AS
- Your tax-credit statement where TDS appears.
- AIS
- Annual Information Statement, a wider record of your reported income.
- Schedule FA
- The ITR schedule for foreign assets.
- Advance tax
- Tax paid in instalments before the year ends.
- ITR-2 / ITR-3
- The return forms for capital income and business income.
- Airdrop
- Free tokens sent to your wallet.
Module 9
- SIP
- A fixed amount invested on a fixed date every month.
- Nifty 50
- India's index of 50 large listed companies.
- ETF
- A fund traded like a share that holds an asset.
- LRS
- The scheme that lets residents remit money abroad within a yearly limit.
- Halving
- The scheduled cut of Bitcoin's new supply, about every four years.
- DeFi
- Lending and trading run by smart contracts.
- Depeg
- A stablecoin falling away from its target price.
- Rebalancing
- Resetting your mix of assets to your target.
- Allocation
- The share of your money in each asset.
Educational & illustrative only — not investment advice. Drishti Pro publishes AI-generated trade ideas and their public track record for information. Crypto is volatile and you can lose money. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Do your own research.