Glossary · Crypto slang
What is Rekt?
Slang spelling of "wrecked" — describes losing big on a trade, usually via liquidation or a rug pull. "Got rekt" is the universal admission that a position blew up.
Last updated April 30, 2026
Where the term comes from
The spelling comes out of online gaming culture (Counter-Strike, StarCraft) where "wrekt" or "rekt" became the standard way to mock someone whose character just got destroyed. Crypto Twitter adopted it sometime around 2017, when leverage trading on BitMEX produced a steady stream of public liquidations to laugh at.
There's even a website, rekt.news, that tracks the largest DeFi exploits and protocol failures — its existence is a kind of folk acknowledgment that getting rekt is a near-universal experience.
Example
Three common "got rekt" stories you'll see weekly on crypto Twitter:
- Liquidation. Trader opens a 10x long on ETH at $3,500. ETH drops 11% to $3,115 and the position is force-closed at a loss of the entire margin. "Rekt."
- Rug pull. Buyer apes into a memecoin a friend recommended. Token does 5x in 24 hours, then the deployer drains the liquidity pool and the price goes to zero. "Got rekt by the rug."
- Bear-market HODL. Bought a top-50 altcoin in late 2021 at the cycle peak. Three years later it's down 95% and the project's social channels have gone quiet. "Permanently rekt."
Why it matters
The casualness of the term is part of how the culture metabolizes losses. Posting "got rekt" with a self-deprecating image is more socially acceptable than admitting "I lost $40k." The humor lets people share war stories that would be too embarrassing to discuss at a normal poker table.
That casual tone has a downside: it normalizes blowups. A new trader watching CT might absorb the message that getting rekt occasionally is just part of the game, when in reality the people losing position-ending amounts are losing money those people don't have to lose.
The healthy reading of "rekt" culture: the smart traders you should learn from are the ones who got rekt early, with small amounts, and let those experiences calibrate their position sizing for life. The unhealthy reading: rekt is just a meme, can't happen to me, here's another 10x leveraged long. Both readings are common.