Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage.
You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Web Trader MT5
All
Decentralized
Decentralized is any system, network, or structure in which control and decision-making are distributed among many actors instead of a single actor. In conventional finance, the banks, exchanges, and regulators sit at the center. They are the custodians of the records, the enforcers of the rules, and they can freeze, reverse, or block transactions.
A decentralized system eliminates that central place of control. No single entity owns the ledger, nor is it authorized to approve transactions or even to close things down.
Decentralization is the ethos of blockchain and crypto. A distributed network of nodes authenticates the transactions, records are publicly shared, and no government or corporation can make a unilateral change.
Ideally, decentralization lies on a spectrum. There are systems more and less decentralized than others, and true decentralization is more difficult to achieve than it might seem. Power tends to concentrate over time, even in systems designed to prevent it.
Example: Bitcoin is regarded as being highly decentralized since no single company, government, or individual is in charge of its network. There are thousands of nodes worldwide that independently validate transactions. Compare that to a stablecoin run by one company with the ability to freeze wallets; technically, it is a blockchain, but centralized in the ways that matter the most.
Defend a level
Defend a level refers to when a large player, a central bank, a major institution, or sometimes a loose group of traders, recursively interferes with a particular price in order to prevent it from being violated. The level in question might be a round number with psychological significance, a key technical level that many people are watching, or an exchange rate that a government or central bank has decided it does not want to see broken.
The defense mechanism comprises either absorbing selling pressure (assuming that the level is support) or selling into buying pressure (assuming that the level is resistance).
It may be maintained for a long time, but it tends to cause tension: the more aggressively any level is defended, the bigger the move will be when it finally causes the level to be overrun.
Example: It took years for the Swiss National Bank to allow the EUR/CHF floor to drop to 1.20 before it began intervening whenever the franc seemed to be strengthening along those lines. It was maintained, until in January 2015, the SNB suddenly and without warning forfeited the defense.
The franc shot up almost 30 percent within a few minutes. A number of brokers became bankrupt. It was a good wake-up call that defended levels of work right until the point that they no longer do so.
DeFi
DeFi is short for Decentralized Finance, and it refers to financial services and products built on decentralized blockchain networks, without relying on traditional financial institutions such as banks, brokers, and exchanges.
It’s a concept of replicating basic financial activities like loans, borrowing, trading, and interest-earning using smart contracts that can be automatically executed on a public blockchain.
No loan officer is signing this new loan application, no broker is signing this new trade, and no bank is holding your deposit. The code does it all!
DeFi experienced tremendous popularity between 2020 and 2022, as billions were invested in lending protocols, decentralized exchanges, and yield farming strategies, among others. It’s also been targeted by hackers, with smart contract exploits resulting in billions of dollars in losses across the industry.
DeFi regulatory status remains highly unsettled, and consumer protection, money laundering, and systemic risk have become concerns for authorities worldwide.
Example: A user wants to gain interest on their crypto assets without moving them to a centralized exchange. They deposited tokens into a DeFi lending protocol that will automatically lend those funds to the borrower, and the interest earned on that loan will be sent to the borrower without any company involved and no application for an account required, and all controlled by a smart contract.
Deflation
Deflation is a continual, widespread decrease in the overall level of prices in an economy. This is distinct from inflation, and while it might appear to be a good deal, deflation is typically more dangerous. With falling prices, both consumers and businesses have an incentive to plan not to spend, at least in the short term; why buy today what will cost less tomorrow?
This creates a downward spiral of decreasing demand, falling prices, further delay, and more people delaying the purchase. This vicious cycle is known as a deflationary spiral, and is very difficult to break once it has taken hold.
The anxiety over monetary policy has been so strong because of the apparent lack of efficacy of traditional policy tools, such as cutting interest rates, when rates are already near zero.
The 1990s and 2000s were a period of being trapped in a deflationary environment, and thus, the way central banks around the world approached price stability was shaped by that experience.
Example: Prices in the U.S. fell dramatically and continued to decline during the Great Depression years of the 1930s. Businesses cut back on pay, investment, and banks cut back on lending.
All those reactions were reasonable at an individual level. Still, as a whole, they made the situation worse; a typical deflationary trap which only took years and the intervention of the government in general to overcome.
Delisting
Delisting is the removal of a company’s shares from a stock exchange, making the shares no longer capable of being actively traded on that venue. It may occur either voluntarily or involuntarily, and the situations are very crucial.
A voluntary delisting is typically something structural: a takeover, a buyout, a move to go private or a consolidation to a single exchange.
This is not the case with involuntary delisting. The exchanges have ongoing responsibility in the financial reporting and minimum share prices, market capitalization, and the standards of governance. Those companies that constantly violate those requirements receive a warning, then suspension, then removal.
Such delisting is practically always an indication of great distress. Delisting a stock does not necessarily mean shareholders lose the money they invested in the underlying company, but liquidity is lost, and with it, easy price discovery. It becomes challenging to sell, valuation is obscured, and recovery is unpredictable.
Example: A small-cap mining firm on the AIM in London is repeatedly late in submitting its accounts and sees its share price plummet to a level below the lowest conceivable. The stock is finally suspended, and later delisted. The shareholders are left with equity in a company having no public market, no visible price, and no obvious way out.
Delta
An indicator of how sensitive an option’s price reacts to changes in an underlying asset’s price.
Start trading with A globally leading broker
Want to start trading?
We use cookies to understand how you use our website and to give you the best possible experience. You can find out more by viewing our Cookie Policy.
