Academy · Beginner

Crypto trading

Bitcoin can move several percent in an hour, the market never closes, and a leveraged position can be liquidated rather than stopped out. This category covers what genuinely differs from forex.

  • ✓ 20 lessons
  • ✓ 80 minutes end to end
  • ✓ Free in MarketPro
  • ✓ No sign-up to start reading

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Crypto runs on the same principles as any other market and differs in four specific places. A leveraged position can be liquidated by the venue rather than stopped out at your price. There is no weekend gap because there is no weekend, so a position left open on Saturday is unattended rather than closed. Perpetual futures charge or pay funding every few hours, which is a running cost of simply holding. And custody is a genuine decision: coins in a wallet you control, coins on an exchange, or a CFD where you never hold the asset at all.

This category covers those four, plus what bitcoin and the major altcoins actually are, how exchanges and order books work, stablecoins, and how halvings and network activity get quoted as reasons for a move.

Sizing, stops and patience transfer over from forex unchanged. Volatility assumptions do not, which is why risk management is the category to read alongside this one.

The 20 lessons in order

  1. What Is Crypto Trading? Crypto trades like a currency pair right up until you look at the size of the moves, and that is where imported habits break. Beginner4 min
  2. Bitcoin and the Majors Bitcoin sets the direction for almost everything else, which makes a portfolio of ten coins far less diversified than it looks. Beginner4 min
  3. Crypto Volatility vs Forex The formula for position size does not change between forex and crypto. The stop distance does, and it changes everything… Intermediate4 min
  4. Wallets vs CFDs Spot and CFDs give the same price exposure and fail in completely different ways. Cost and holding period decide which one fits. Beginner4 min
  5. Market Capitalization And Why It Matters Market cap corrects for the accounting artefact that makes one token look cheap and another look expensive when they are worth… Beginner4 min
  6. Altcoins And Token Categories Altcoin means everything that is not bitcoin, which is why the word is useless until you sort tokens by what they are actually… Beginner4 min
  7. Stablecoins Explained Holding a stablecoin is lending an issuer money at zero interest, which makes a parked balance a credit decision rather than cash. Beginner4 min
  8. Crypto Trading Pairs And Quote Currencies Every crypto chart measures the base asset against whatever the quote is doing, and in crypto the quote moves too. Beginner4 min
  9. Order Types For Crypto Traders Every order trades certainty of price against certainty of execution, and crypto charges more than most markets for picking the… Beginner4 min
  10. Order Books And Liquidity In Crypto Markets The order book tells you what you can actually sell and what it will cost, which is the one thing a price chart cannot show. Intermediate4 min
  11. Perpetual Futures And Funding Rates A perpetual never settles, so a payment between longs and shorts does the job that expiry does in an ordinary futures contract. Intermediate4 min
  12. Leverage And Liquidation Risk In Crypto Leverage does not change whether you are right. It changes how far price can move against you before someone else closes the… Intermediate4 min
  13. On-Chain Metrics As A Trading Tool Public ledgers give crypto a complete record of what participants did, which is powerful for context over months and close to… Intermediate4 min
  14. Crypto Market Cycles And Halving Events The halving is a known, scheduled supply cut. The four-year cycle built around it rests on three observations and a decade of… Intermediate4 min
  15. Correlation Between Crypto And Traditional Markets The diversification argument for crypto is conditional, and the condition tends to fail during exactly the stress it was… Intermediate4 min
  16. Trading Crypto's 24/7 Market Structure A market with no closing bell will take every hour you give it, and it moves hardest when the fewest people are awake. Beginner4 min
  17. Slippage And Spreads In Crypto Trading The fee schedule is the smallest part of what trading costs. The spread you cross and the depth you consume are the rest. Beginner4 min
  18. Risk Management For Crypto Positions The rules are the same ones forex uses. Crypto just charges you for breaking them several times faster. Beginner4 min
  19. Tokenomics: Supply And Inflation Schedules A token's issuance schedule is published years in advance, which makes it the one part of the supply and demand equation you can… Intermediate4 min
  20. Custody Risk: Exchanges Vs Cold Storage Whoever holds the keys holds the asset. Everything else is a database entry saying somebody owes you one. Beginner4 min

Guided paths that use these lessons

A path is an ordered run through lessons from several categories, which is how the app sequences them. One path draws on crypto trading.

Crypto Trading Path

What makes crypto different from forex: volatility, custody, funding rates and 24/7 markets.

10 lessons
Trade · Learn · Earn

Take crypto trading with you

All 20 lessons in this category, plus the other 300 in the academy, with a quiz on each one and your place kept. Free on any MarketPro account, in the app or your browser.

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