Glossary
In short: A plain-English A–Z of the terms used across this site — stablecoins, settlement, and cross-border treasury, defined in one or two sentences each.
Atomic settlement — A transaction where both sides happen at the same instant, or neither does. It removes the risk that one party pays and the other doesn't.
Backing / reserves — The real assets (cash and short-term government debt) an issuer holds to support every stablecoin it has issued. One dollar held for every dollar token.
Basis point — One hundredth of one percent (0.01%). Used to describe the small fees captured on large payment flows.
Blockchain (distributed ledger) — A shared digital record of who owns what, maintained by many parties at once rather than a single institution, so everyone sees the same ledger at the same time.
CBDC (central bank digital currency) — A digital version of a national currency issued directly by a central bank, such as the digital tenge or digital ruble.
CLARITY Act — A US bill (advancing, not yet law) that defines which regulator governs the digital-asset market — the rulebook for the marketplace.
Correspondent banking — The traditional system where a cross-border payment passes through a chain of intermediary banks, each adding fees, delay, and compliance checks.
Cross-border payment — Moving value from a payer in one country to a recipient in another.
Custody / custodian — The safekeeping of assets on someone's behalf. A custodian holds funds or tokens; GDT is non-custodial and never holds client funds.
De-risking — When banks withdraw from markets or clients they consider too risky or costly to serve, shrinking correspondent-banking access in emerging markets.
Digital asset — An asset that exists in digital form on a blockchain, including stablecoins and other tokens.
Dollar (USD) scarcity — A shortage of US dollars in an economy, common in emerging markets with capital controls or weak reserves, making it hard for businesses to pay international suppliers.
Fiat currency — Government-issued currency such as the US dollar, naira, or peso.
FX (foreign exchange) — The conversion of one currency into another, and the market in which that happens.
FX queue — A backlog where a central bank rations access to scarce foreign currency, so companies wait weeks or months for an allocation of dollars.
GENIUS Act — The first US federal law (signed July 2025) regulating payment stablecoins — the rulebook for the money: full reserves, audits, redemption rights, no interest to holders.
Hawala — An informal, trust-based system for moving value across borders without money physically crossing the border, settled later between brokers. Fast and cheap, but with no custody, contracts, or audit trail.
Issuer — The company that creates and backs a stablecoin (Tether for USDT, Circle for USDC) and stands behind its redemption.
KYC / KYB — "Know Your Customer" / "Know Your Business": the identity and due-diligence checks regulated firms must perform before onboarding clients.
Liquidity — The availability of funds or a currency to complete a transaction when needed. Deep liquidity means value can be moved reliably and at good prices.
Mint / redeem — To mint is to create new stablecoins when dollars are deposited; to redeem is to convert stablecoins back into dollars.
On-ramp / off-ramp — The point where money enters the digital-asset system (on-ramp: local currency → stablecoin) or exits it (off-ramp: stablecoin → local currency), usually through a regulated provider.
Orchestration (treasury orchestration) — Coordinating and routing value across multiple regulated providers and rails through a single platform, owning the workflow rather than the underlying execution. This is GDT's category.
Peg — The fixed value a stablecoin is designed to hold, almost always one US dollar.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) — Value or trades moving directly between two parties without a central intermediary, common where formal channels are restricted.
Rail — A network over which value moves — traditional rails (SWIFT, card networks) or digital rails (stablecoin settlement on a blockchain).
Rehypothecation — Reusing assets that have been posted as backing or collateral for another purpose. Regulated stablecoin reserves are prohibited from being rehypothecated.
Remittance — Money sent home by workers abroad to family in their home country; a major cross-border flow for many emerging economies.
Reserve currency — A currency widely held by governments and institutions for international trade and savings. The US dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.
Sanctions / sanctioned jurisdiction — Government-imposed restrictions barring dealings with certain countries, entities, or individuals (e.g. Russia). Compliant businesses do not serve sanctioned flows.
Settlement — The final step of a transaction, where value actually changes hands and the obligation is complete.
Settlement risk — The danger that one party in a transaction delivers value while the other fails to — closed by atomic settlement.
Shariah-compliant finance — Financial products structured to comply with Islamic law, a precondition for mainstream adoption in much of the Muslim world.
Smart contract — Self-executing code on a blockchain that automatically carries out the terms of an agreement when conditions are met.
Stablecoin — A digital token designed to hold a steady value, almost always pegged one-to-one to a national currency — most commonly the US dollar — and backed by reserves.
SWIFT — The global messaging network banks use to instruct cross-border payments. It carries the message, not the money, and underpins correspondent banking.
Tokenisation — Representing an asset — a bank deposit, a bond, a dollar — as a digital token on a blockchain so it can move on faster rails.
Treasury / treasury management — The corporate function responsible for managing a company's cash, currencies, liquidity, and payments.
USDC — A US-dollar stablecoin issued by Circle (launched 2018), known for its regulatory and transparency focus and strong institutional adoption.
USDT — A US-dollar stablecoin issued by Tether (launched 2014), the largest and most widely used, especially across emerging markets.
VASP (virtual asset service provider) — A regulated business that handles digital assets — exchanges, custodians, on/off-ramps — licensed and supervised under a country's framework.
Volatility — How much an asset's price moves. Stablecoins are built to have none; that is the entire point.
Wallet — Software that lets a person or business hold, send, and receive digital assets like stablecoins.
Working capital — The cash a business needs to fund day-to-day operations. In USD-scarce markets it is often trapped in local currency, unavailable to deploy.
Missing a term you'd like defined? This glossary grows over time. The concepts above are explained in depth across our Basics, Problem, and Adoption sections.