Skip to content

Explaining fiat and digital assets

Etana Team Aug 03, 2020
Fiat and digital assets

Like many industries, the world of digital currencies, cryptocurrency, digital assets, coins, tokens has it's own jargon and technical terms that can be intimidating at first.

Etana's leadership comes from a slightly more traditional but still market-creating financial sector: Forex (FX). At a high level, FX is the trading of international currencies (fiat) and making slim margins trading between them as the values of currencies fluctuate.

That background and strength in technology and finding efficiencies brought Etana to where it is today as a leader in the digital assets and custody market. We use some jargon ourselves, so here is a quick explainer on what we mean by fiat and digital assets. We realize the words won't be familiar to everyone, but their meanings are straightforward!

Fiat

  • Fiat is the financial term that describes any traditional government-backed currency such as US dollars, Euros, Mexican pesos, etc. When you're "depositing fiat" or "funding with fiat" it simply means transferring money from your regular bank account to your Etana Custody account for use on an Exchange.

Digital Assets

  • Digital assets is an all-encompassing term for today's digital currencies or coins. Think Bitcoin, Ethereum and the hundreds of others available to buy and sell. When you are "holding digital assets" or want to "custody digital assets" it simply means you're storing your various types of coin or digital currencies in highly secure wallets that are a part of Etana's platform.