Definition
In the world of cryptocurrencies, a whitelist is usually associated with initial coin offering (ICO) events to describe a particular group of pre-approved participants who get to participate in the ICO or pre-sale exclusively.
Understanding the term
Initial coin offerings and pre-sales are two of the most common events in the crypto space, through which a new project is released to all of the participants. Emerging crypto projects give a few chosen registered investors a chance to exclusively contribute to the ICO before opening it up to every other participant out there.
Some projects choose to keep the whitelisting phase ongoing in order to welcome more investors who would be interested in participating in the public sale of their tokens.
But whitelisting has another meaning when it is regarding cryptocurrency withdrawal addresses. In this scenario, the term “whitelist” may refer to a list of pre-approved crypto addresses that have been marked as “safe” or “trustworthy” by users. If your address has not been previously whitelisted on an exchange platform, then you will fail to withdraw funds from the exchange account.
Takeaway
In its most basic form, a “whitelist” is a group of investors chosen by a company to participate exclusively in an ICO or pre-sale.