HODL, FOLD, BUIDL, TLT, BTD, BTFD, BTDSTP & BTRSTN Explained

Here’s another post from my Crypto Jargon series where I break down the complex terms used in the blockchain tech and crypto space. The terms today are related to trading or investing in cryptocurrencies, so you will definitely come across them in your research so let’s begin.

Buy The Dip (BTD) which can also be seen as BTFD which stands for Buy The Fu**ing Dip) is a call for action amongst traders. It is used when a coin has experienced a fall in its value and in certain circumstances this is the opportunity to buy it low with the potential of selling it higher later on to make a decent profit.

This is also what the next acronym stands for: Buy the Dip, Sell The Top (BTDSTP): the top is the high price point and the dip, of course, is the low price point. This is basically the core of trading – buy low, sell high. Sounds easy, right? Well, you’d be surprised how many people get it wrong and end up selling lower than they bought. Which is why I’m releasing a course for beginners where I focus on how to avoid this. Watch out for it, it’s coming soon.

Another very popular expression you will see on crypto forums and social media too is BTRSTN – Buy The Rumour, Sell the News – meaning that one should buy a coin when there are rumors about an upcoming development or new release of importance (such as a new wallet or exchange listing or protocol upgrade), and sell it when the news about it is posted in the mainstream (which usually causes a jump in its value).

HODL/HODLING is probably the most famous and exclusively crypto slang, that made it to the mainstream. It literally means “holding”, in other words, “not selling” In recent days it has been appropriated as an acronym for Hold On for Dear Life but in fact, it was born out of a simple mistake. In 2013 a user on Bitcointalk misspelled “holding” a few times during a drunken rant post about being a bad trader and the term went viral.

The post came at a time of a very bad Bitcoin crash from the then ATH of nearly $1200 all the way down to below $400 levels, a drop of more than 67% and it was the only post that brought a bit of fun to the community during those dark days, so it comes as no surprise that it made an impact and thus, a new slang was born. Today we see it used pretty much everywhere, even making its way recently into the US congress.

Ok, on to the next one – FODL – this is not an actual term. It was used in a show called Fast Money on CNBC where Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are often discussed as an attempted antonym to HODL …but it didn’t catch on so it never made it into the crypto space really. It basically means to sell rather than hold.

Another term that was born in response to HODL is BUIDL and this one has a little more weight to it since it was trademarked by Coinbase.com in 2018. It’s a call to arms for building and contributing to the blockchain ecosystem instead of just passively holding.

The BUIDL movement believes that instead of just accumulating or trading cryptocurrencies, people should start contributing proactively in order to help adoption and push crypto into the mainstream.

And the last acronym in this episode is TLT – which stands for Think Long Term – an investment strategy where one is not looking for the quick profits in a short period of time but is focused on a long-term investment horizon which can be months or years. Since cryptocurrencies are still a very new asset class, many investors are thinking long term and expect huge gains in 5 to 10 years time although, for many of the Alts (alt coins) this cannot be a very safe projection since they can have many hurdles along the way that can render them useless and respectively, worthless. So my personal strategy with the alts is to trade them rather than just hodl. However, Bitcoin is surely the one where you can apply the “think long term” strategy.

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