Investing & Digital AssetsInvesting & Digital Assets GlossaryPart 1 of 4
The Business Glossary
31 terms from the Investing & Digital Assets book's The Business part, each defined in a line and linked to the chapter that explains it.
- Account: one customer account at one legal entity, with its type (individual, joint, IRA, custodial, trust, entity, institutional), capabilities and status (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Account party: a party's role on an account (owner, joint owner, custodian, trustee, beneficiary, trusted contact, authorized trader), effective-dated (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Asset event: a corporate action or chain event that changes what a holder owns (dividend, split, merger, spinoff, tender offer, fork, airdrop, token migration, redenomination, delisting), with any holder elections (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Asset network: one instrument deployed on one chain, native or at a contract address, with its token standard, on-chain decimals and whether deposits and withdrawals are enabled (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Capabilities: what an account is approved for beyond cash trading: margin, options (with the firm's level), crypto, staking, futures and event contracts (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Case: a complaint, surveillance alert, AML alert, dispute or regulatory inquiry, with the time notice arrived, the rule's deadline and the outcome (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Chain: a blockchain network as the ledger sees it: its chain ID, native asset and the finality rule deposits wait for (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Disclosure: a record of what was shown or sent to a customer: the template version, the rendered document, the channel and the time (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Distribution costs: what a stablecoin issuer pays exchanges and other partners out of its reserve income for holding and distributing its token; about 60% of Circle's 2025 revenue (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Execution: one fill of an order at a venue, with price, quantity, liquidity flag, capacity and time (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Fee schedule: a versioned set of fee rules (maker and taker tiers, withdrawal fees, advisory rates); every fee names the version that produced it (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Instrument: anything that can be held or traded, cash included: equity, ETF, fund, option, future, bond, crypto asset, stablecoin, tokenized security or event contract, with its identifiers and the precision of its smallest unit (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Journal entry: one balanced movement in the firm's books, in any instruments, with a legal entity, an effective date, a source and an idempotency key (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Journal line: one signed amount of one instrument in one ledger account, with the customer account or wallet it concerns and the date it settles; each instrument's lines in an entry sum to zero (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Ledger account: the role a journal line plays: customer, firm, omnibus, settlement, fees or suspense (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Legal entity: one of the platform's own regulated companies (broker-dealer, RIA, FCM, trust company, money transmitter, stablecoin issuer, EU CASP); every account, wallet and journal entry names one (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Lot closing: a disposal matched to a tax lot, with proceeds, realized gain and the relief method used (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Maker and taker fees: exchange fees that charge an order adding liquidity to the book (maker) less than one removing it (taker), tiered by 30-day volume (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Order: an instruction to buy or sell an instrument, with type, time in force, quantity or notional, and status, keyed by the client's idempotency key (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Party: a person or entity, independent of any account (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Party identity: a verified identifier for a party, with the method, the vendor's result and when it was verified (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Payment for order flow (PFOF): what a wholesaler pays a broker for routing it retail orders; at Robinhood Securities in the second quarter of 2026, 12.35% of the NBBO spread on equities in regular hours (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Position: an account's settled and unsettled quantity of an instrument, rebuilt from the ledger and never written directly (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Reconciliation: a comparison of the ledger with an outside record (DTC, a clearing firm, a custodian, a bank, a chain at a block height, an issuer's supply), with each difference opened as a break (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Reserve income: the yield a stablecoin issuer earns on the assets backing its tokens, which it may not pass to holders as interest (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Reserve return rate: an issuer's reserve income over its average reserve; Circle reported 4.1% for 2025 and 3.5% for the third quarter of 2026 (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Smallest unit: the indivisible unit an instrument's quantities are stored in as integers (cents, satoshis, wei, a fraction of a share), with the exponent kept on the instrument (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Tax lot: one acquisition of an instrument in an account, with its cost basis, wash-sale adjustment, holding-period start and covered status (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Transfer: money or assets moving into or out of an account by ACH, wire, card, ACATS, on-chain transaction, internal move or journal, with its status, hold and journal entry (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Venue: where an order is filled or a trade settles: an exchange, ATS, wholesaler, crypto exchange, DEX, OTC desk or clearing house (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).
- Wallet: a custody wallet the firm controls or uses, with its chain, purpose (hot, warm, cold, deposit, omnibus, staking, gas), key scheme and owning legal entity (The Investing & Digital Assets Business).