The Language of Cryptocurrencies: Frequent Words, Neologisms, Acronyms, and Metaphors

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have been the latest technological revolution in the world of finances. Although this revolution has not been completed yet, and as a payment method is still limited, their popularity has vastly increased since 2020 due to speculation about their value. As in any other field, any revolution in economics, technology, education, or society implies another parallel language revolution. This is how the introduction of cryptocurrencies has led to the emergence of some new forms of language. This quantitative case study aims to analyze the characteristics of that crypto language and identify some of the most usual words, acronyms, metaphors, and other popular expressions within this field. To achieve this purpose, a glossary published by the company Bit2Me was used along with the Google search bar, which provided the number of appearances on the net. Results showed that some neologisms had been created, acronyms prevailed over some words and expressions, and the use of animal metaphors was a usual practice. These results contribute to the field of electronic finances by showing that the community of cryptocurrency users have created their own linguistic rules to communicate among them with the use of specific words, as detailed in this paper.