TOOL · GLOSSARY
The words you will run into
Hitting a word you do not know and stalling there is the most common source of beginner frustration. 42 terms, grouped by stage. Search, or filter.
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KYC / identity verification
The process of proving who you are, usually a document plus a liveness check. Until it clears, the stocks tab does not appear.
Liveness check
Turning your head, blinking or reading digits to prove a real person is at the camera. Failures are usually environmental — backlight, reflective glasses, a dim room.
Referral ID
A field on the sign-up form. It has to be filled before the account is created; adding it later almost never works.
Two-factor authentication
A second code beyond your password at login or withdrawal. Prefer an authenticator app over SMS, which SIM-swap attacks can defeat.
Anti-phishing code
A string you choose that then appears in every genuine email from the platform. Anything claiming to be official without it goes in the bin.
Withdrawal whitelist
Once on, withdrawals only go to addresses you added in advance. Even someone inside your account cannot send funds elsewhere.
P2P
Peer-to-peer trading. The platform escrows the seller’s coin and arbitrates disputes, but the money moves directly between two people.
Stablecoin
A crypto asset tracking a fiat value, commonly USDC or USDT. Not a bank deposit — its value rests on the issuer’s reserves and ability to redeem.
USDC
The settlement currency for Binance stock orders. Hold something else and the system converts at submission.
USDT
Usually the deepest local-currency book on P2P. For buying stocks you may need to convert it to USDC.
Funding / spot account
Different pockets inside the platform. Orders draw from specific ones; assets parked elsewhere show as an insufficient balance.
Internal transfer
Moving assets between your own accounts on one platform. Does not touch a chain and normally costs nothing.
Network / chain
The route an on-chain transfer takes. Both ends must match; coins sent on the wrong network are generally unrecoverable.
Fractional share
Less than a whole share. Five dollars buys a slice of a several-hundred-dollar stock, held and paid dividends proportionally.
Market order
Fills immediately at whatever the market offers. In thin sessions it can fill well away from the price you saw.
Limit order
Fills only at your price or better. The cost is that it may not fill; the benefit is that you fence the price in.
Bid and ask
The highest price someone will pay and the lowest someone will sell at. The wider the gap, the thinner the liquidity.
Liquidity
How many people are trading at that moment. Plenty means tight spreads and fills near the shown price; few means the opposite.
Regular hours
9:30 to 16:00 US Eastern. Where most volume happens and liquidity is best.
Pre and post market
Trading windows outside regular hours. Spreads are typically wider and moves sharper.
24/5 and 24-hour
Extended trading arrangements. The 24-hour window covers only a subset of instruments — go by what your account shows.
Daylight saving
The US changes clocks twice a year, shifting the offset to your zone by an hour. The weeks around each switch are where timing mistakes cluster.
Average fill price
Multiple fills averaged out. Note it usually excludes the platform fee, so your real break-even is slightly higher.
T+1 settlement
Settlement completes on the next trading day after the trade. It counts trading days, not calendar days, so weekends and holidays stretch it.
Unsettled funds
Sale proceeds before settlement completes. They can trade spot or buy more stock, but cannot go to futures or be withdrawn.
Trading day
A day the market is open. Excludes weekends and market holidays — the unit settlement is counted in.
Market holiday
A day the exchange is closed. Some are fixed dates, some float by rule, and some are announced ad hoc.
Withdrawal
Turning assets back into money you can spend. On this route: sell, receive USDC, wait for settlement, convert back through P2P.
Withholding tax
Tax deducted at the point of payment rather than settled by you later. The US statutory rate on dividends to non-residents is 30%.
W-8BEN
The form declaring that you are not a US person and claiming a treaty rate. Without it, only the top rate can be applied.
Tax treaty
An agreement between two jurisdictions dividing taxing rights. Whether it helps you depends on your residency and the specific article.
Tax residency
A tax concept, not the same as citizenship or where you live. Usually determined by presence, domicile and centre of economic interests combined.
Ex-dividend date
Buy after it and you miss that payment. You must hold before it to receive the dividend.
ADR
The form a non-US company uses to list on US markets. Holding one may incur a depositary fee.
Depositary fee
Charged by the depositary bank to ADR holders, typically once or twice a year at a small per-share amount.
Risk control
Automated restrictions applied by a platform or bank to unusual activity. Trading, withdrawal or receiving funds may be paused.
Account freeze
A bank account restricted from use. Receiving funds of questionable origin on the P2P sell side is a common trigger.
Beneficial owner
You are not the registered nominee holder, but the economic rights — dividends, corporate actions — are yours.
Custody
The role of actually holding your securities. On this route a US-licensed broker does it; Binance states in its terms that it does not.
Introducing broker
The intermediary that routes your order to the executing party. Here it is a Binance entity regulated in ADGM.
Tokenised stock
An on-chain token tracking a share price. Not the same as directly buying shares, and the rules differ.
Asset segregation
Keeping a platform’s own assets separate from client assets. A baseline requirement in securities and worth confirming.
No matchTry different wording. If a term is genuinely missing, write to us and we will add it.
How to use this
What problem it solves
This route straddles two fields — crypto and securities — each with its own vocabulary. The usual beginner failure is not that an operation is hard, it is that a sentence contains three unfamiliar words, so the sentence gets skipped, and the consequence shows up later during a real transaction.
How to operate it
Search directly, or press a stage button to see only that part of the journey. Both combine. Everything filters in your browser, no requests.
How definitions are written
One sentence covering what it is and what it means for you, not an academic definition. Anything involving platform figures — withholding rates, fee tiers — carries a source and a checked date. Numbers that change are governed by whatever the platform or authority shows at the time.
Why this is not a ticker mapping table
The original plan for this slot was a mapping between tokenised stock tickers and their underlying symbols. In building it we found the full list could not be verified item by item from public sources, and a partly-wrong ticker table is more dangerous than none — placing the wrong order is expensive. So it became a glossary, which we can get completely right.
Who needs it
Anyone doing this for the first time, and anyone arriving from the equities side who finds the crypto vocabulary foreign (or the reverse). Before opening an account, skim the Account and Funding groups.
Related
Once the words make sense, start with the account walkthrough. If you only want to know what it costs, use the cost calculator.