The slang you will hear
Ape, bags, paper hands, CTO, rug, ngmi: a plain-English decoder for the words you will see in every chat, with the warnings hidden inside them.
The trenches have their own language. Half of it is jokes. The other half is shorthand for things that happen a hundred times a day. You don't need to talk like this, but you do need to understand it, because the warnings are hidden in the slang.
Translate this message
A typical post in a Telegram group: 'gm. dev sent it to 200k, now 80k. top 10 hold 35%, paper hands shook out. cto incoming, aping 0.5. 3x from here or ngmi. nfa'
- Step 1: 'gm': good morning. Everyone says it.
- Step 2: 'dev sent it to 200k, now 80k': the coin hit a $200,000 market cap and fell to $80,000. That's a 60% drop.
- Step 3: 'top 10 hold 35%': the 10 biggest holders own 35% of the supply. Traders leave out the launch curve or trading pool, which holds tokens so people can trade and often shows up as the biggest holder of all. If those ten sell, the price falls hard.
- Step 4: 'paper hands shook out': the quick sellers have left. That's the writer's hope, not a fact.
- Step 5: 'cto incoming': they say a community takeover is coming, which usually means the original dev walked away. Check the dev's wallet before you believe it.
- Step 6: 'aping 0.5': they are buying 0.5 SOL worth, fast.
- Step 7: '3x from here or ngmi': they think it triples to $240,000, or holders are 'not gonna make it'.
- Step 8: Put plainly, if the post is even true: a coin that already fell 60%, a dev who may have left, a third of the supply in ten wallets, and a stranger who wants you to buy. Check each of those yourself.
Buying and selling
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Ape, aped | Bought fast, with little research. |
| Bags | The tokens you hold. A bag holder is stuck with a coin that fell. |
| Send it, sent | The price going up hard. |
| Dump, nuked | The price falling hard. |
| Bleed | A slow fall over hours or days. |
| Take profit (TP) | Selling some or all to lock in a gain. |
| Exit liquidity | The late buyers that early holders sell to. |
Numbers
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Mcap | Market cap: price times supply. |
| ATH | All-time high, the highest price a coin ever reached. |
| 2x, 10x, 100x | The coin doubled, went up ten times, a hundred times. |
| Liq | Liquidity: the money in the trading pool that lets you buy and sell. |
| Down bad | Losing most of what you put in. |
People
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Insider | Someone who knew about a coin before the public and bought first. |
| Cabal | A group of wallets or traders working together to move a coin. |
| Anon | An anonymous person. Most devs are anons. |
| Degen | Short for degenerate. A high-risk trader, said with pride. |
A coin's life
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Bonded, graduated, migrated | The coin filled its launch curve and moved to a normal trading pool. |
| Rug, rug pull | The dev or insiders take the money and the price collapses. |
| Honeypot | A coin you can buy but can't sell. |
| CTO | Community takeover: holders run a coin the dev abandoned. |
| Vamp | A relaunch of a coin that already ran, by someone else who claims to fix what went wrong the first time (say the dev sold, or fees went to a stranger). |
| Narrative, meta | The theme that's hot right now, like animals, AI or politics. |
Moods
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| gm, gn | Good morning, good night. |
| WAGMI, NGMI | We're all gonna make it. Not gonna make it. |
| LFG | Let's go. Pure hype. |
| FUD | Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Often used to dismiss real warnings. |
| FOMO | Fear of missing out. The feeling that makes people buy tops. |
| Cope | Making excuses for a losing trade. |
Check what you learned
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This guide is for learning. It is not financial advice. Most memecoins go to zero and most people who trade them lose money. Only ever trade what you can afford to lose.