AI Crypto Trading Glossary

A stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar — the main unit of account and settlement in crypto trading. Bot P&L, point cards and deposits are usually denominated in USDT.

Buying and selling the asset itself for immediate delivery — you hold exactly what you buy, with no leverage or liquidation risk. The most basic form of trading.

A futures contract with no expiry; you can go long or short with leverage, and a funding rate keeps the contract price anchored to spot. Most AI bots run strategies on perps.

Using margin to amplify a position — e.g. 5x opens 5 units of exposure per 1 unit of capital. It magnifies gains but equally magnifies losses and liquidation risk.

Long = buy, betting price rises; short = sell first and buy back, betting price falls. AI hedging strategies often hold both sides at once.

When a leveraged position loses enough that margin is insufficient, the exchange force-closes it. The deadliest risk in futures — platform-level circuit breakers (like Equity Guard) exist to reduce its odds.

A periodic fee longs and shorts pay each other on perpetuals to pull the contract price back toward spot. When positive, longs pay shorts; when negative, the reverse.

The gap between your intended price and the actual fill price — larger in volatile or thin markets. A hidden cost to factor in when judging a bot's real returns.

A maker adds liquidity (lower fee); a taker removes it (slightly higher fee). High-frequency bots are sensitive to this difference.

A market order fills immediately at the best available price (possible slippage); a limit order sets a price and only fills if reached (may not fill).

A program that analyzes the market and places orders automatically via exchange API, running 24/7 and removing emotion. See how they differ in the review hub.

Trading driven by mathematical models and rules rather than gut feel. An AI bot is one automated form of quant trading.

Placing layered buy/sell orders across a price range to buy low and sell high repeatedly as price oscillates. Great for ranging markets, weak in strong trends. Which to use? See Grid vs DCA.

Buying in equal installments to lower average cost and de-emphasize timing. Bots commonly use DCA to layer into dips. Compare in Grid vs DCA.

Doubling down after a loss, hoping one bounce recovers everything. Smooth short-term but with extreme tail risk — heavy size in a one-way market can blow up. Check whether a "bot" is essentially Martingale.

Capturing low-risk profit from price gaps between markets/contracts, e.g. spot-futures basis or cross-exchange spreads.

Automatically mirroring a trader/signal provider's actions. Convenient, but it outsources the decision to a stranger — an extra layer of human risk (see the Cryptohopper review).

A buy/sell cue from an analyst or algorithm. Signal quality varies wildly — a bad signal will execute losing trades within your trading permissions.

Testing a strategy against historical data. Caution: a good backtest ≠ live profit; overfitting is common — look at real live data.

The credential authorizing a bot to operate your exchange account. Critical: grant trading permission only, never withdrawal — the first line of fund safety.

An isolated account under your exchange main account. Running a bot in a sub-account isolates capital and risk from your main account.

Auto-closes a position when price hits a set loss level, capping the worst-case loss per trade. The most basic bot risk control.

Auto-closes a position at a set profit level to lock in gains and avoid "winning then giving it all back".

The largest peak-to-trough drop — how bad it gets at its worst. Reflects real risk far better than headline return alone.

How much capital goes into each trade. Even a great strategy can be zeroed by one extreme move if sizing is reckless (e.g. all-in on one bet).

Holding opposite positions to offset risk. AI multi-strategy often hedges both directions, capturing profit on both sides of a choppy market.

A platform-level circuit breaker: when account-wide drawdown hits a threshold, all bots stop and positions close to prevent blow-ups. Most third-party bots lack this layer (see the methodology).

A trade's potential loss vs potential gain. The key to long-term profit isn't a high win rate — it's a sound payoff ratio.

A return annualized/monthlyized into a percentage. Beware "APY" marketing that linearly extrapolates short-term highs — crypto is volatile and past ≠ future.

Share of profitable trades. High win rate looks good but misleads — if each win is tiny and one loss is huge, a high win rate still loses money. Read it alongside payoff.

How much excess return you get per unit of risk — a measure of how *steadily* you earn. Higher means better risk-adjusted return.

Net gain ÷ capital. When comparing bot costs, fold in subscription/point-card/trading fees and look at the net ROI.

Reinvesting profit to generate further profit. Powerful long-term, but it also amplifies drawdowns — many bots offer an auto-compound toggle.

The total assets locked in a protocol/platform — often used to gauge a DeFi project's scale and market trust.

The same USDT can be sent over different networks with vastly different fees and speeds. Pick the wrong one and funds can be lost — always verify before transferring (see the USDT network guide).

The network fee for an on-chain transaction, set by chain congestion and the network used. TRC20 is usually cheapest; ERC20 can be costly at peak times.

A hot wallet is online and convenient but more exposed; a cold wallet is offline and safer for long-term storage. An exchange account is essentially a custodial hot wallet.

Funds stay in your own exchange account and you control withdrawals; the bot only places orders via API. Versus custodial (deposit into a platform wallet), this avoids operator-runaway risk — a core auto-fail rule in our methodology. Full breakdown: Custodial vs Non-custodial.

The ultimate control credential for a wallet. Anyone who has it can move your assets — never screenshot, upload, or hand it to any "support agent".

An exchange's identity-verification process, required for compliance. Completing KYC unlocks full deposit/withdrawal and futures permissions.

CoinTech2u's billing vehicle. From 20 USDT, deducted proportionally only when a position closes in profit — losses cost nothing, unlike subscriptions that charge monthly regardless of results.

The platform takes a percentage only when you actually profit. Incentives are aligned: if you don't earn, neither does the platform. Versus flat fees: Subscription vs Profit-share.

CoinTech2u's strategy-engine positioning: the platform manages multiple strategies and switches dynamically with the market, so users need not tune parameters or vet signal providers.

Publishing the platform's real profit / active-trader data, read hourly straight from the official system, cross-checkable at /live-proof against the official leaderboard.