Interest Rate
The cost of borrowing money. The rate a central bank sets ripples out into mortgages, business loans and the return on savings.
Glossary
Inflation
The rate at which prices across an economy rise over time, which means each unit of currency buys a little less than it did.
DeFi
Financial services — lending, trading, borrowing, earning interest — delivered by smart contracts on a blockchain instead of by a bank or broker.
Ethereum
A blockchain designed to run programs, not just record payments. Its native token, ether, pays for the computing power those programs consume.
Parameters
The adjustable values inside a model that training tunes. Counts are quoted in billions as a rough proxy for capability.
Inference
Running a trained model to get an answer, as opposed to training, which is the far more expensive process of building it.
Disclosure
Telling readers about any financial interest or relationship that could reasonably affect how a story was reported.
Cross-Chain Bridge
A service that moves value between two blockchains, usually by locking tokens on one side and issuing equivalent tokens on the other.
CBDC
A digital form of a country's own currency issued directly by its central bank, distinct from both cash and commercial bank deposits.