Crypto Trading Glossary
The derivatives and market-structure terms behind Liquid State, defined in plain English — the same concepts our briefs and the live Edge terminal are built on.
Everything here is information and education, never financial advice.
Basis
The difference between an asset's futures price and its spot price, often expressed as a percentage.
Breakout
When price moves decisively beyond a defined support, resistance, or range boundary.
Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD)
The running total of the difference between buy-initiated and sell-initiated volume, showing whether aggressive buying or selling has dominated over a period.
Drawdown
The decline from a peak value to a subsequent trough, usually expressed as a percentage.
Funding Rate
A periodic payment between long and short holders of a perpetual futures contract that keeps its price tethered to spot.
Leverage
Using borrowed funds to control a position larger than the trader's own collateral, amplifying gains and losses.
Liquidation
The forced closing of a leveraged position by an exchange when collateral can no longer cover the position's losses.
Liquidity
How easily an asset can be bought or sold near the current price without causing a large move.
Long/Short Ratio
A measure comparing the number or size of long positions to short positions among a set of traders.
Mark Price
An exchange-calculated price for a perpetual contract, based on a spot index rather than the last trade, used to determine unrealized PnL and liquidation.
Market Maker
A participant that continuously posts buy and sell orders, providing liquidity and earning the spread.
Market Structure
The pattern of highs and lows that describes whether a market is trending, ranging, or transitioning.
Mayer Multiple
The ratio of Bitcoin's current price to its 200-day moving average, used to gauge deviation from trend.
Moving Average
A line that smooths price by averaging it over a chosen number of periods to reveal the underlying direction.
MVRV Z-Score
A Bitcoin valuation measure that normalizes the gap between market cap and realized cap using historical standard deviation.
Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL)
An on-chain metric measuring the network's aggregate unrealized profit or loss as a share of total market cap.
Open Interest
The total number of outstanding derivative contracts that have not yet been closed or settled.
Order Book
A real-time list of outstanding buy and sell orders for an asset, organized by price level.
Perpetual Futures
A derivative contract that tracks an asset's price with no expiry date, held near spot via funding payments.
Pi Cycle Top Indicator
A Bitcoin cycle-timing signal comparing the 111-day moving average to twice the 350-day moving average.
Position Sizing
The process of deciding how large a position to take relative to total capital and risk tolerance.
Puell Multiple
A Bitcoin mining-economics metric comparing daily miner revenue in USD to its trailing one-year average.
Range
A period when price oscillates between relatively stable upper and lower boundaries without trending.
Realized Capitalization (Realized Cap)
An on-chain valuation measure that values each coin at the price it last moved, rather than at today's market price.
Realized Volatility (Historical Volatility)
The annualized standard deviation of an asset's past returns over a defined lookback window — a backward-looking measure of how much price has actually moved.
Relative Strength Index (RSI)
A momentum oscillator that measures the speed of recent price changes on a scale from 0 to 100.
Slippage
The difference between the expected price of a trade and the price at which it actually executes.
Spent Output Profit Ratio (SOPR)
A ratio showing whether coins moved on-chain today are, on average, being sold at a profit or a loss.
Spot vs. Futures
The distinction between buying an asset outright (spot) and trading a contract based on its price (futures).
Stablecoin
A cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value, usually pegged to a fiat currency such as the US dollar.
Stop-Loss
A pre-defined price level at which a position is automatically closed to cap the loss if the market moves against the trade.
Support & Resistance
Price levels where buying or selling interest has historically been strong enough to slow or pause moves.
Trend
A sustained directional bias in price, characterized by a sequence of higher or lower swings.
Volatility
A measure of how much and how quickly an asset's price moves over a given period.
Volume Profile
A chart showing how much trading volume occurred at each price level over a chosen period.
VWAP (Volume Weighted Average Price)
The average price of an asset over a session, weighted by volume traded at each level — used as an intraday benchmark and execution reference.