The Crypto Quiz! (Part 1!)

Wealthsimple makes powerful financial tools to help you grow and manage your money. Learn more

Hodl on to your wallets, there’s a blockchain flippening on the way! (Are we doing this right?)

You may know about cryptocurrency. And if you do, you may be a little freaked out by how strange and it all seems. It even kind of has a language all its own. To help you discern your satoshi from your DeFi so you can impress all your friends at your next Zoom cocktail party, where you can’t even tell if anyone can hear you because it’s Zoom, we’ve devised this crypto-term quiz. We promise, it’s easy. Or our name isn’t Mt. Gox.

1. To Hodl means...

a. The act of coming together with a group of friends, usually on a football field, draping arms around each other, discussing how you’re going to spend your crypto.

b. When you eat a just-boiled noodle and try to say “hot noodle” with a burning mouth full of pasta and it comes out “hodl.”

c. A term that means you’re “holding” your crypto instead of selling it. But spelled wrong because someone wrote “I AM HODLING” on a message board in 2013 and the internet loves an inside joke.

d. A city in Arizona where it’s illegal to spend crypto on livestock purchases.

2. A Wallet is...

a. A folded piece of leather or a vegan imitation leather where you store a tiny piece of (usually laminated) paper with your Bitcoin password along with a 2009 receipt for frozen yogurt.

b. The place you keep your crypto. Not an actual wallet; a piece of software (like everything). Think of it like the address where your bitcoin (or Ethereum, etc.) lives.

Get the best stories from our magazine every month

Sign up for our email newsletter

c. Contrary to what it sounds like, this is a type of fish native to the Pacific Northwest (it has super sharp teeth) and the name of a local altcoin in the region.

d. This is a digital pocketbook containing one’s defunct crypto, bookmarks for websites that no longer exist, old Hotmail passwords, and all of the photos you’ve deleted from Facebook in the past 17 years.

3. The Cold Storage is...

a. Somewhere in the valley, there’s an underground bunker the size of a Walmart supercenter, kept at Arctic temperatures, in which all of the crypto servers are preserved for the coming apocalypse.

b. A digital place of exile, similar to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, where users who’ve committed crypto fraud are sent to think about what they’ve done.

c. If a wallet is the digital address where you keep crypto, this is like a wallet you keep in a safe deposit box. Cold Storage is digital but it’s not connected to the internet, so none of the very creepy people you hear about sniffing around crypto can get to it.

d. Bulk chest freezers, purchased in hopes that a coming shortage will turn out in your favor. Usually around the holidays, the event is referred to by crypto-rati as the Black Friday Sub Zero Short-Sell Freakout.

4. A Satoshi is...

a. The name of a famous artist known for transcribing the day’s crypto exchange rates onto thousands of individual grains of rice. Often sold at local fairs.

b. A rare Pokémon that, when discovered on Pokémon Go, provides a player with a code to redeem five Pokécoin, which you can redeem for one stuffed animal.

Recommended for you

  • Ask Lizzie: How Do I Know If I’m “Paying My Dues” or “Getting Taken Advantage of”?

    Finance for Humans

  • Our Four Step Plan to Investing in a Crappy Market

    Finance for Humans

  • Is This the Year to Try Wealthsimple Tax? (Um, Probably. Yes)

    Finance for Humans

  • Wealthsimple Explains: The Market Crashed! Should I Buy the Dip?

    Finance for Humans

c. The code name for a conspiracy that revolves around an unproduced sequel to Bridget Jones’s Diary that takes place in 2099, funded entirely by crypto and starring animatronic wallabies.

d. A satoshi, named for the mysterious inventor of bitcoin, is the smallest unit of a bitcoin — one 100 millionth of a unit.

5. A Blockchain is...

a. A community of local users who combine their crypto to fund city-related projects that have been postponed by bureaucracy. Past blockchains have done things like installed bidets in all municipal facilities.

b. It’s like a big spreadsheet, shared by multiple users, that records everything super securely. Every time it gets updated with a new transaction (also called a block), everyone sees the change, and it gets added to the sheet (or chain).

c. A spree of online purchases using crypto, usually taking place between one and three a.m. on Etsy, Wayfair, and wackyinflatables.com.

d. An additional software that protects your crypto from “chains” — infectious viruses that transform crypto into actual money, which is no fun.

6. DeFi means...

a. A Toronto-based metal band that sings about “crypto,” a mythical creature that serves as a metaphor for capitalism.

WEALTHSIMPLE CRYPTO

The simplest way to invest in crypto

Buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Aave, Uniswap, and more — instantly.

inline cta

b. Stands for “decomposing fish”

c. Stands for Devin Fillmoe. A famous user who forgot he had crypto and moved on with his life.

d. Shorthand for “decentralized finance,” it’s an emerging world of financial applications and services open to everyone, so you don’t have to trust a middleman, like a bank or a guy named Bryce.

How did you do? If you passed (or even if you failed), take the second part of our crypto terminology quiz here!

Answer Key: 1. c, 2. b, 3. c, 4. d, 5. b, 6. d

Alex Beggs is the senior staff writer at Bon Appétit. She only plays with Monopoly money.

Money Diaries

"MY UNDERGRADUATE ADVISER TOLD ME I SHOULD JUST FORGET ABOUT THE WHOLE WRITING THING. ‘YOU SHOULD FIND A GOOD MAN AND GET MARRIED,’ HE TOLD ME."

Margaret Atwood

subscribe

Get the best stories from our magazine every month

Sign up for our email newsletter

  • Finance for Humans

    Nine Ways to Be Smart When the Market Goes Down

    Smart investors don’t try to avoid downturns, which are inevitable. Instead, they make sure they’re in a good place when the markets go back up. Because that’s inevitable, too.

  • Finance for Humans

    Why Most Eco-Friendly Investment Funds Really Aren’t That Eco-Friendly

    There are a whole bunch of investment portfolios that claim to be socially responsible and environmentally benevolent. The trouble is that it’s super tough to pick a fund that delivers on its promises.

  • WEALTHSIMPLE CRYPTO

    The simplest way to invest in crypto

    Buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Aave, Uniswap, and more — instantly.

    see-more cta
  • Finance for Humans

    Five Gloriously Silly Things To Do With Your Tax Refund

    Getting a giant refund? Don’t want to be smart and invest it but short on ideas for what to do with it? We’re here to help.

  • Finance for Humans

    Learn to Speak Crypto: Lesson Three

    In our third installment, we’ll learn about the possibility of a whole new (and some say much better) internet, and how to watch out for a common scam.

WEALTHSIMPLE CRYPTO

The simplest way to invest in crypto

Buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Aave, Uniswap, and more — instantly.

full cta

Our best stories, once a month.

Sign up for our newsletter

The content on this site is produced by Wealthsimple Technologies Inc. and is for informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be investment advice or any other kind of professional advice. Before taking any action based on this content you should consult a professional. We do not endorse any third parties referenced on this site. When you invest, your money is at risk and it is possible that you may lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Historical returns, hypothetical returns, expected returns and images included in this content are for illustrative purposes only. By using this website, you accept our (Terms of Use) and (Privacy Policy). Copyright 2022 Wealthsimple Technologies Inc.

;