explainer

Finding the impostor on a spaceship, two years after release and during a lockdown. Left the language a single word, sus, which is doing better than the game.

Someone left holding an asset after everyone else has sold — the bag, the holding, the loss with a strap. From old trading slang into the internet's vocabulary, and now used about a Funko Pop collection, a streaming service, or an ex.

Staying in bed all day, rebranded as wellness. Named by TikTok, diagnosed by the newspapers, and gone before anyone had to defend it.

Content optimised past the point of meaning, and the mental state of having consumed it. The first internet term that is also a self-diagnosis.

In February 2025 Changpeng Zhao said he would reveal his dog's name, and that he would not launch a coin about it. He revealed the name — Broccoli — and within hours several hundred tokens called Broccoli existed on BNB Chain, one of which reached a reported market value in the hundreds of millions. He had launched nothing. The chain launched everything.

A tool that draws a coin's holders as bubbles sized by holding and joined by lines where wallets have sent each other funds, so that a cluster of connected wallets holding a large share of supply is visible at a glance. The trenches use it to spot bundles; investigators used it in 2025 to show links between the wallets behind several high-profile launches. The chart that made 'same guy' provable.

Russian roulette with a shotgun, a dealer with a face, and a set of items, made by one developer and played by every streamer in early 2024. The record's entry for a game that is one idea, executed perfectly, and a mood.

Buying through many wallets at once so a launch looks popular — the mascot equivalent of a queue outside a shop that the shop paid for. The word the scene uses for the thing it accuses every successful launch of.