Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Started

How much fake money do I get to trade with?

Everyone starts out with $10,000 USD worth of credit (fake money).

So paper trading means simulated trades?

Yes.  Our platform is for simulating cryptocurrency trades, often called "paper trading".

Is there an option to trade with real money?

Not at this time.  We want to give users a safe place to test their strategies ideas, or trading bots before risking real money.

Which cryptocurrency tokens are supported by your platform?

We try to include all of the Coinbase USD pairs.  When they add new pairs, we try to update our list as quickly as possible to include the latest additions.  Click here to view the current list we support.

Do I have to trade USD pairs only?

Yes.  We support simulated trading of Coinbase-listed tokens, and just the USD pairs.

For example, you can trade BTCUSD, ETHUSD, SOLUSD, and more than 200 others.  But if you try to trade ETHBTC for example, we would reject that trade.  In fact, our Manual Trading page only lists the USD pairs we support.  Sending us trading alerts from other platforms like Tradingview is where you need to be careful to select Coinbase traded USD pairs only.

What is the difference between Manual and Webhook trades?

Manual trading is the easiest way to get started.  Go to the Manual Trades page, select a cyptocurrency, and key in how much you want to buy with your $10,000 USD (fake money).

Webhook trading is how you can send us trade signals (buy or sell) from another website or trading tool.  We give each user an API endpoint to point their trading signals toward.  On the popular Tradingview platform, this is done with an strategy "alert".  Since this is an advanced form of simulating a trade, we have tutorials for this in our Knowledge Base to help you.

Why is your price data up to 15 minutes delayed for Free-Tier users?

We pull the latest prices from Coinbase every 15 minutes.  So the prices you see on chart.observer are not as accurate as real-time quotes.  We plan to offer more accurate data in the Pro Trader subscription, coming soon.

Advanced Topics

What is the difference between Manual and Webhook trades?

Manual trading is the easiest way to get started.  Go to the Manual Trades page, select a cyptocurrency, and key in how much you want to buy with your $10,000 USD (fake money).

Webhook trading is how you can send us trade signals (buy or sell) from another website or trading tool.  We give each user an API endpoint to point their trading signals toward.  On the popular Tradingview platform, this is done with an strategy "alert".  Since this is an advanced form of simulating a trade, we have tutorials for this in our Knowledge Base to help you.

Can I send you trading signals from another site or trading tool?

Yes.  Each user gets a unique "webhook" URL if they want to pass buy and sell signals to our platform.  This is an advanced feature that lets you test your automated trading algorithms (trading bots).  Please see the knowledge base article on Automated Trading for more information.

Why do my webhook sell orders close the entire position?

When sending us a signal from another website or trading tool, it is often very difficult for those systems to remain aware of just exactly how many tokens you have to sell.  Many users will send us a SELL alert from Tradingview, using the "webhook" feature.  But since Tradingview doesn't have a way to know how many tokens you have on our platform, we sell all thetokens in your open positions.

For example:
Let's say your Tradingview strategy has sent us 3 alerts to buy 10 ETHUSD over a period of a few days.  Then your strategy sends us an alert to sell ETHUSD.  We sell all 30 of your ETHUSD that you have open on the chart.observer platform.  Remember, these are simulated trades.

There may be times when you decide to use our Manual Trades page to sell some of your ETH, for example.  When the alert comes to us from Tradingview to sell your ETH, Tradingview wouldn't know that you have already sold some.  Therefore, we can't rely on a number of tokens sent from other platforms.  This is why we sell all, when we receive a "webhook" alert to our API.  But you can sell a portion of your tokens with our Manual Trades page.

What is meant by a long position?

In trading terminology, a long position simply means you are buying first, before you sell.  It has nothing to do with the amount of time you hold on to a trade. This is the most common type of trading, and it is the type of trading we support on our platform.  When somebody says "short" selling, they mean they are selling first, then buying back later to cover the trade. We so not currently support shorting, or leveraged trades.

Do you support short-selling?

Not at this time.  All trades are long positions, meaning you are buying first, then selling.

Does your platform simulate leveraged trading?

We do not currently support leveraged trades.  All users are given $10,000 USD (fake money) to test their trading strategies, ideas, or trading bots. We simulate spot trading, in long positions.