Glossary

A service that collects prices from many exchanges and publishes its own version of them. ChainRegistry doesn't use one. It reads each exchange itself and does its own arithmetic, so every price here can be traced back to the venues that produced it.

The method a chain uses to agree on new blocks, such as SHA-256 proof of work for Bitcoin. Coin pages show it when the registry has it on record, and members can fix it with a correction.

The highest price on record for a coin, and the day it happened. It comes from the daily highs in the coin's history, and a live price that beats it takes over at the next sync. A day's high more than three times that day's close is treated as a glitch in one exchange's archive and skipped.

The lowest price on record, found the same way as the all-time high: a day's low under a third of that day's close doesn't count. Bitfinex printed $0.01 for bitcoin in 2013. We don't count that as the all-time low.

The post where a project first introduced itself, often a thread on the BitcoinTalk forum. A coin page links to it when the registry has one on record, and members can add a missing one with a correction.

The registry's figures as JSON, for your own code: coins, prices, daily history and exchanges. Public reads need no key and allow 120 requests a minute from one address.

Filling in a coin's past from an exchange's archive of daily candles. Bitfinex's archive reaches back to 2013, so that's where Bitcoin's history starts; from then on the registry records each day itself. It works through a few coins every two minutes, so a new coin's chart can be short for a while.

The two halves of a trading pair. In BTC/USDT, BTC is the base, the coin being priced, and USDT is the quote, the money it's priced in. The registry reads pairs quoted in US dollars, dollar stablecoins, BTC or ETH, and skips pairs quoted in euros, pounds or other currencies.

The usual gap between two blocks on a chain: about ten minutes for Bitcoin. A coin page lists it in its About panel when the registry has it on record.

Bitcoin's share, in percent, of the combined market cap of every ranked coin. It's the BTC figure in the top bar, and it's on the home page too.

One bar of an exchange's price history: the open, high, low and close over a fixed stretch of time, plus the volume traded. The registry reads daily candles to backfill a coin's past, and hourly ones for its last ten days.

How far the price moved over the last hour, day or week, in percent. The 24-hour figure is the volume-weighted average of what the exchanges report for the coin's pairs. The 1-hour and 7-day figures compare the current price with what the registry recorded an hour or a week earlier.

How many coins exist and can change hands today, leaving out ones that are locked up or not yet issued. Exchanges don't publish it well, so the registry takes it from a fixed order of sources, listed under supply source. Multiply it by the price and you get the market cap.

Where a token lives on a chain, written as a long string such as 0x… on Ethereum. Coin pages list one per chain as the exchanges' currency lists give them, so check the project's own site before you send anything.

A fix a member sends in for a coin's profile: a link, a social account, a creation date, a supply figure. An administrator reviews each one before it shows. An approved supply figure outranks every other source except an administrator's own.

A coin's last price of a UTC day. Today's close is rewritten at every sync until midnight UTC, then it stays. Past closes are never deleted, and together they make up a coin's history table.

The rule a chain follows for issuing new coins. For eight coins (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, BSV, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Monero, Zcash and Ethereum) the registry works out the circulating supply itself, from a dated starting figure and the daily issuance, with each halving dated in advance.

Live means the exchange answered the registry in the last two hours without an error. Unavailable means its last read failed or is older than that, and pending means it hasn't been read yet. An exchange that refuses the server's location is asked again an hour later rather than every five minutes.

A website that shows a chain's blocks, transactions and addresses. Coin pages link to the explorers the registry has on record, under Links.

The ranked coins drawn as a star map. A coin sits further right the more it traded in 24 hours, higher or lower by its 24-hour change, and larger by its market cap. The rings around it show how many exchanges price it.

The numbered labels on the site's panels, borrowed from technical manuals. They give each panel a short name, so a question can say exactly which one it's about.

The first day the registry has a price for a coin. When a project hasn't published its own creation date, the coin page shows this date instead.

What a coin would be worth at today's price with its whole supply counted. The registry multiplies the price by the total supply, or by the max supply when no total is known. The gap between FDV and market cap is supply that isn't circulating.

The day a coin's chain produced its first block, or its token was created. It's the Created line on a coin page, from the registry's own notes or a member's correction.

A scheduled cut in the number of new coins a chain issues with each block. Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, BSV, Litecoin and Zcash all have them. The registry's emission schedules carry the expected dates of the coming ones, so the supply figure slows on about the right day.

A token built to move several times as much as another coin each day, with a name such as ETH3L or BTCUP. The registry skips them, so they get no page and no rank.

Each coin's logo is copied once onto the registry's own server: from an exchange's currency list, from the coin's own website, or from Google's favicon service for that site. A coin with none gets a round mark tinted by its ticker. Your browser never loads an image from anywhere else.

Circulating supply times the registry price, and what the ranking sorts by. A coin nobody publishes a supply for has no market cap, so it's ranked by volume after the coins that have one.

The /market page: the top 100 coins as tiles sized by market cap and shaded by their 24-hour change, with the Field and the day's totals. It's the ranking as a picture.

The most coins that can ever exist, when the project sets a limit: 21 million for Bitcoin. Many coins have no limit, and their pages show ∞.

The coins that rose or fell the most in the last 24 hours, among the top 300 by rank. The home page shows five each way; sort the ranking by 24-hour change for the full lists.

A pair whose price sits more than 25% from the volume-weighted median of a coin's prices. When a coin has three or more pairs, outliers are left out of the registry price, because they usually mean a broken feed or a different token with the same symbol.

One coin trading against one quote on one exchange, such as BTC/USD on Kraken. A coin's price is the VWAP of its pairs read in the last 20 minutes, and each coin page lists them with each one's price set against the registry's.

The short line that says where a page's figures came from: the UTC time of the last read, how many exchanges answered out of how many, and the snapshot code. It opens the price tape and sits in the footer.

The line of exchange nodes under the live panel on the home page: one node for each exchange read live, up to ten, each with a four-letter code such as KRKN for Kraken. The node read most recently is lit and shows the top coin's price.

A coin's place by market cap. To hold one, a coin needs a price from the last two hours and at least $1,000 traded in 24 hours; coins without a published supply come after the rest, by volume. Thinner coins and tokenized assets keep their pages but get no rank.

The price ChainRegistry gives a coin: the VWAP of its pairs across the exchanges, with outliers left out. It's recomputed every five minutes, and it's the big figure at the top of every coin page.

The registry's chain mark inside a dial of 60 ticks, ten of them lit. The words on its lower arc give the number of exchanges live and the year the daily history begins. You'll see it in the short intro when you first open the site, and in the brand kit.

The share of thumbs up among members' votes on a coin, from 0 to 100%. Each member gets one vote per coin and can change or withdraw it. It shows what members think, nothing more.

An eight-character code that names one complete read of the exchanges, shown in the provenance stamp. Two pages with the same snapshot were built from the same read. The current one is 9fcdd61f.

The small line next to each coin in the ranking: its price over the last seven days, one point every three hours from the registry's own hourly ticks. Coins too new for that get a line through their daily closes instead.

How far apart the exchanges' prices for one coin are. A coin page sets each exchange's price against the registry price in percent, and the spread is the distance from the lowest to the highest, outliers aside. A wide spread usually points to thin trading or a feed that lags.

A token designed to hold one US dollar, such as USDT or USDC. When the registry converts a pair's price to dollars it counts one of these as exactly $1, while the stablecoin's own market price is listed like any other coin's.

Where a coin's supply figure came from. The registry tries, in order, an administrator's figure, a member's approved correction, an emission schedule, its own dated supply table (moved to the back once it's more than 120 days old), then a figure Gate.io or Bitstamp publishes. The coin page names the source under the figure.

The short code a coin trades under, such as BTC. Different coins can share one, so a new pair joins an existing coin only when its price is within 25% of that coin's. Otherwise it becomes a coin of its own, provided it trades at least $100 a day.

One pass of the registry over the exchanges. Every five minutes it reads each exchange's tickers, matches the pairs to coins and recomputes every price, cap and rank. The top bar says how long ago the last one finished.

The scrolling strip under the header with the top 24 coins' prices and 24-hour changes, led by the provenance stamp. It stops while you hover over it or move focus into it, and its Pause button stops it outright.

A price point the registry records for itself. The top 250 coins get one every five minutes, kept for 8 days, and every ranked coin gets one an hour, kept for 10. Charts of the last day and week are drawn from them.

An exchange's running summary of one pair: the last price, 24-hour volume, 24-hour change, high and low. Each sync starts by reading the tickers of every exchange that answers. People also say ticker for a coin's symbol.

A token that tracks a stock, an index, a metal or a currency rather than a crypto project. The registry keeps them on file but out of the cryptocurrency ranking. An administrator can also hide a coin from the ranking, and its page then says why.

The market caps of every ranked coin added together. It's the Cap figure in the top bar and the big number on the home page.

Every coin that exists right now, including ones that are locked, held in reserve or not yet circulating. It's what FDV is built on.

How reliably an exchange answered the registry over the last 24 hours, from the record of every read. The Exchanges page draws it as 24 cells, one per hour, beside the share of those hours in which reads returned prices. An hour with no read counts as lost.

An exchange, seen as a source of prices. The registry reads 12 of them through their own public APIs and gives each a four-letter code, such as KRKN for Kraken or CNBS for Coinbase.

The dollar value of a coin traded in the last 24 hours, added up across every pair the registry reads for it. Pairs quoted in BTC or ETH are converted at the registry's own price for those two.

An average where each price counts in proportion to how much traded at it. If $9 million of bitcoin traded at $80,000 on one exchange and $1 million at $80,100 on another, the VWAP is $80,010. It's how the registry price is made.

The coins you've starred, gathered on one page that only you can see. Star a coin from its row in the ranking or from its own page; you need to be signed in.