Research · Trading Glossary
Trading Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the trading terms that start with B.
B
- Back-Running
- Placing a transaction immediately after another to capture the resulting opportunity, such as rebalancing arbitrage.
- Bag / Bag Holder
- A holding / someone left holding a position that has lost most of its value.
- Base Fee
- Under EIP-1559, the protocol-determined per-gas fee that adjusts algorithmically with network demand and is burned rather than paid to block producers.
- Base58Check / Bech32
- Address encoding formats used in Bitcoin. Bech32 (addresses beginning bc1) offers better error detection and lower fees for SegWit outputs.
- Based Rollup
- A rollup whose sequencing is delegated to the Layer 1's own block proposers rather than to a dedicated sequencer.
- Basis
- The difference between a derivative's price and the spot price of the underlying.
- Basis Trade
- Capturing the spread between spot and futures prices, typically as a market-neutral strategy.
- Batching
- Combining multiple operations into a single transaction to reduce cost and guarantee atomic execution.
- Bear Market
- A sustained period of falling prices and contracting risk appetite.
- BEP-20 / TRC-20 / SPL Token
- The equivalent fungible token standards on BNB Chain, TRON, and Solana respectively.
- Bid
- The highest price a buyer is offering.
- BIP-32 / Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) Wallet
- The standard allowing an unlimited tree of key pairs to be derived deterministically from a single seed.
- BIP-39
- The standard defining the wordlist and process for converting entropy into a mnemonic phrase.
- BIP-44
- The standard defining the multi-account, multi-coin derivation path structure used by most wallets.
- Bitcoin Layer 2
- Networks extending Bitcoin's functionality or throughput while settling to the Bitcoin base chain.
- Blacklist / Freeze Function
- The issuer capability to freeze balances at specific addresses, typically for sanctions and law enforcement compliance. Present in most major fiat-backed stablecoins.
- Blast Radius
- The scope of assets and systems affected by a given compromise.
- Blind Signing
- Approving a transaction whose contents cannot be fully rendered or verified on the signing device. A leading contributor to high-value institutional losses.
- Blob
- A large, temporary data package attached to a transaction, priced in a separate fee market and pruned after a short retention window. Introduced to reduce rollup data costs.
- Block
- A batch of transactions plus metadata (timestamp, reference to the previous block, state commitments), appended to the chain as a unit.
- Block Builder
- In separated architectures, a specialized party that assembles an ordered set of transactions and offers it to proposers.
- Block Explorer
- A web interface for querying on-chain data: transactions, addresses, blocks, and contract state.
- Block Explorer API
- Programmatic access to chain data for transaction lookup and monitoring.
- Block Header
- The metadata portion of a block, containing the previous block hash, state root, timestamp, and other commitments. Light clients verify headers rather than full blocks.
- Block Height
- The sequential position of a block, counted from the genesis block at height zero.
- Block Proposer
- The participant selected to construct and broadcast a block in a given slot.
- Block Reward
- The newly issued native tokens paid to the participant that produces a valid block.
- Block Space
- The finite capacity within each block. Block space is the scarce resource that transaction fees bid for.
- Block Time
- The average interval between consecutive blocks. Bitcoin targets ten minutes; Ethereum produces a block every twelve seconds.
- Blockchain
- A distributed database in which records are grouped into blocks, cryptographically linked in sequence, and replicated across a network of independent participants. The linkage makes retroactive alteration detectable and, in practice, economically infeasible.
- Blue Chip
- Informal designation for assets with long operating history, deep liquidity, and broad institutional recognition.
- Bollinger Bands
- Volatility bands placed a set number of standard deviations above and below a moving average.
- Bonding Curve
- A formula defining token price as a function of supply, enabling continuous issuance and redemption.
- BRC-20 / Runes
- Token standards built on Bitcoin using inscription and, in the case of Runes, a UTXO-native design.
- Breakout
- A move decisively through a support or resistance level.
- Bribe (Vote Incentive)
- A payment offered to voters to direct emissions toward a particular pool. Despite the colloquial name, this is a formalized and openly transacted market.
- Bridge
- A protocol enabling assets or data to move between chains.
- Broadcast
- The act of propagating a signed transaction to the network.
- Browser Extension Wallet
- A wallet embedded in the browser that enables interaction with web applications. The dominant retail interface to on-chain applications.
- Bug Bounty
- A standing program rewarding researchers who responsibly disclose vulnerabilities.
- Bull Market
- A sustained period of rising prices and expanding risk appetite.
- Bundle
- An ordered group of transactions submitted together, to be included atomically and in sequence.
- Bundler
- A service that packages UserOperations into a standard on-chain transaction.
- Burn
- The permanent destruction of token units, typically by sending them to an unspendable address or invoking a burn function.
- Burn Address
- An address with no known private key, used to permanently remove tokens from circulation.
- Burn-and-Mint
- A model where the representative token is destroyed on one chain and reissued on another, keeping global supply constant.
- Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
- The broader plan for maintaining critical functions during disruption.
- Buy the Dip (BTD/BTFD)
- Purchasing after a decline.
- Buyback and Burn
- Using protocol revenue to purchase tokens on the open market and destroy them.
- Bytecode
- The compiled, machine-executable form of a smart contract stored on-chain.
- Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT)
- The ability of a distributed system to reach correct agreement even when some participants fail arbitrarily or behave maliciously.
- Byzantine Generals Problem
- The classical formulation of the coordination challenge that BFT systems solve: how independent actors reach consensus over an unreliable channel when some actors may lie.