Chapter 19

    Glossary

    Your crypto institutional marketing dictionary.

    The Buyers

    G-SIB
    Global Systemically Important Bank. JP Morgan, Citi, BNP Paribas, HSBC. If they adopt your infrastructure, the rest follow.
    Asset Manager
    A company that invests money on behalf of clients. BlackRock, Fidelity, Vanguard. They manage trillions and move carefully.
    Family Office
    Private wealth management for ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Often early movers because they have less regulatory overhead than banks.
    Hedge Fund
    An investment fund using aggressive strategies. Many are early movers in crypto because they have high risk tolerance and sophisticated teams.
    Corporate Treasury
    The team inside a company managing cash, debt, and short-term investments. Stablecoin and payments products target this buyer.
    LP Allocator
    A limited partner responsible for deciding where capital gets deployed across funds. They evaluate GPs on deal sourcing, judgment, and process discipline — and increasingly want crypto exposure through regulated vehicles.

    The Compliance World

    AML
    Anti-Money Laundering. A set of laws designed to prevent money laundering. Any product touching financial transactions needs an AML story.
    KYC
    Know Your Customer. The process of verifying who a customer is. Required for most financial products.
    FATF
    Financial Action Task Force. The global body that sets AML and counter-terrorism financing standards. The international rulebook.
    Travel Rule
    A FATF requirement that financial institutions must collect and transmit originator and beneficiary information on transfers. Notabene is built specifically to solve this.
    CARF
    Crypto Asset Reporting Framework. A new tax reporting standard from the OECD. TaxBit's entire product is built around this.
    SOC 2
    A security audit standard certifying an organisation's data security practices. Table stakes for institutional data vendors.
    MiCA
    Markets in Crypto Assets. The EU's regulatory framework for crypto assets, fully in force from 2025.
    GENIUS Act
    The US stablecoin regulatory framework passed in 2025. Cited in the DWF Ventures report as a key driver of institutional momentum.

    The Technology

    Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZK Proof)
    A cryptographic method allowing one party to prove something is true without revealing the underlying information.
    FHE
    Fully Homomorphic Encryption. Allows computations on encrypted data without ever decrypting it. One of the most important privacy technologies for institutional DeFi.
    Selective Disclosure
    The ability to reveal specific verified information to a specific party (a regulator, an auditor) without making it public.
    Tokenization
    Taking a real-world asset and representing it as a digital token on a blockchain. The biggest institutional crypto trend of 2025-2026.
    RWA
    Real-World Asset. An asset from the traditional financial world represented on-chain. US Treasuries, corporate bonds, and real estate are examples.
    Stablecoin
    A cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value, usually pegged to the US dollar. Increasingly used in institutional payments.
    Composability
    The ability of on-chain assets to interact with other protocols. A composable tokenized Treasury bond can be pledged as collateral, stripped for yield, or structured into a product.
    Settlement
    The process of completing a financial transaction. Blockchain's core value proposition for institutions is faster, cheaper settlement.
    Custody
    The safekeeping of financial assets. Institutional-grade custody means storing digital assets securely enough that a bank's risk team will approve it.
    Oracle
    A system that brings real-world data onto a blockchain. Chainlink is the dominant oracle network.
    Layer 1 / Layer 2
    Layer 1 is the base blockchain (Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin). Layer 2 is built on top to increase speed and reduce cost.
    BUIDL
    BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund. A tokenized U.S. Treasury fund holding $2.2 billion with 112 institutional holders. The benchmark for institutional on-chain asset adoption.
    Kinexys
    JPMorgan's blockchain-based platform (formerly Onyx) for tokenized deposit settlements, processing roughly $2 billion per day in cross-border payments and intraday settlement.
    Nostro Account
    A bank account held in a foreign country in the local currency, used to facilitate cross-border transactions. Prefunding nostro accounts locks capital and adds cost to settlement.
    Correspondent Banking
    A network of intermediary banks that facilitate cross-border payments through multi-hop message chains. The legacy settlement architecture that stablecoins are replacing.
    LP (Limited Partner)
    An investor who commits capital to a fund but does not manage it. Family offices, endowments, and pension funds investing in crypto venture funds are LPs.
    GP (General Partner)
    The fund manager who makes investment decisions and manages portfolio companies. LPs evaluate GPs on deal sourcing, judgment, and process discipline.
    CFTC
    Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The U.S. regulator overseeing derivatives markets. Its advisory committee now recommends tokenized money market funds as eligible margin collateral.
    ERC-3643
    A compliance-embedded token standard that bakes KYC, AML, and investor accreditation directly into the token itself, enabling permissioned transfers on public blockchains.
    SWIFT
    Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The dominant messaging network for cross-border bank transfers. Persists despite being slow and expensive because it offers shared governance and regulatory comfort.
    CME Group
    Chicago Mercantile Exchange. One of the world's largest derivatives exchanges, offering regulated crypto futures and options. A key institutional trading venue signalling serious market participation.
    COBOL
    A legacy programming language still running critical banking systems. Persists because rewriting stable systems introduces existential risk — a reminder that enterprises value continuity over innovation.
    Clearinghouse
    An intermediary between buyers and sellers in financial markets that ensures trades settle correctly. One of the legacy middlemen that on-chain infrastructure can replace or streamline.
    Onchain Credit
    Lending and credit products built natively on blockchain infrastructure. A key hook for fintechs positioning on-chain capabilities to institutional buyers.
    DeFi
    Decentralised Finance. Financial services built on public blockchains without traditional intermediaries. Institutional DeFi adds compliance, permissioning, and custody layers on top.
    Infrastructure Arbitrage
    The strategic advantage of owning part of the financial stack rather than renting access from legacy providers. The core thesis behind fintechs moving on-chain.

    The Marketing Terms

    GTM
    Go-To-Market. The strategy for launching and selling a product, covering positioning, channels, sales approach, and pricing.
    ICP
    Ideal Customer Profile. A detailed description of the exact type of organisation most likely to buy your product.
    ABM
    Account-Based Marketing. Targeting specific named companies rather than broad audiences.
    Sales Enablement
    The content, tools, and training that help your sales team have better conversations and close more deals.
    Battle Card
    A one or two page document showing your product vs. the competition. Designed for sales reps, not external distribution.
    Thought Leadership
    Content that positions your executives or company as authoritative experts. Being the source your buyers trust and cite, not going viral.
    Pipeline
    The set of deals currently being worked by the sales team at various stages of the buying process.
    POC / Pilot
    Proof of Concept. A limited trial that allows an institution to test a product before full commitment.
    NDA
    Non-Disclosure Agreement. Institutional buyers often require an NDA before sharing detailed information about their needs.
    Multi-Touch Attribution
    A measurement model that assigns credit for a conversion across multiple marketing touchpoints rather than giving all credit to the first or last interaction.
    First-Touch / Last-Touch Attribution
    First-touch gives all credit to the first interaction that brought a prospect in. Last-touch gives all credit to the final interaction before conversion. Both are incomplete — which is why multi-touch exists.
    UTM Parameters
    Urchin Tracking Module. Tags added to URLs to track which campaigns, channels, and content pieces drive traffic and conversions.
    Systems Integrator
    A consulting or technology firm that helps enterprises connect new solutions with existing infrastructure. Often a gatekeeper in enterprise procurement decisions.
    Rip and Replace
    A go-to-market narrative that positions new technology as a full replacement for legacy systems. Almost always fails in enterprise sales — institutions prefer incremental integration.
    Consultant / Translation Layer
    The intermediary layer of consulting firms, auditors, and advisors that filter and validate new technologies before they reach enterprise buyers. Ignoring this layer is a common founder mistake.
    Demand Generation
    The process of creating awareness and interest in your product through content, events, outreach, and campaigns. In institutional marketing, it is about warming named accounts, not generating mass leads.
    CRM
    Customer Relationship Management. Software (like HubSpot or Salesforce) that tracks every interaction with prospects and customers across the sales cycle.
    Nurture Sequence
    A planned series of content touches sent to a prospect over time to build trust and move them toward a buying decision. Institutional nurture sequences run months, not days.
    Product Champion
    The internal advocate at a target account who believes in your solution and pushes for adoption. They are not the final decision-maker — your job is to arm them with the materials to sell internally.
    Board-Ready One-Pager
    A single-page document designed to survive a boardroom. Includes pilot results, ROI model, reference clients, and risk mitigation — clean enough for a CFO to approve in one meeting.
    Sibos
    The annual global financial services conference organised by SWIFT. A key venue for institutional crypto companies to meet banking decision-makers.
    Clay
    A data enrichment and prospecting tool used to build and enrich target account lists before content creation and outreach.
    HeyReach
    A LinkedIn automation tool for distributing personalised content and outreach to prospects at scale. Used alongside Clay and HubSpot in institutional demand generation.
    Messari
    A crypto research and data platform providing institutional-grade market intelligence, on-chain analytics, and governance research.
    Token2049
    One of the largest global crypto industry conferences, held in Dubai and Singapore. A key venue for institutional networking and deal origination.
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