A practice workbook for crypto beginners
Make the mistakes on play money,
then place your first real trade
Demo trading needs an account, not a deposit. Four stages, one at a time: what to do, what counts as done, and when it is fair to switch to real money.
Get the account open
First blank to fill: this workbook’s referral code
Enter it in the referrer field at sign-up for up to 20% off spot trading fees*.
* The actual share is whatever Binance shows on its own pages at the time, and it can change.
Open a Binance account (carries our referral)That link carries this workbook’s referral code. Signing up through it does not cost you more, subject to Binance’s current terms.
Editor’s pickStart here: open the account, where the code goes, and the two steps that snag people
Sign-up order, which field takes the referral code, and what to check first when verification stalls.
Not sure yet? Read 00 first — it lists everything worth settling before you sign up.
Open the demo account and press every button
Place, cancel, check the fills. What you lose here is play money, so be bold.
Three tests you can score yourself against. Fail one, stay where you are.
How much for the first real trade
Too small and fees look absurd; too large and you start checking the price at night.
Check yourself with four small tools
Cost share, order parameters, readiness list, size ruler. All computed in your browser.
Before you start
4 reads in this stageAccount, ID, security switches. This stage is short, but skip a step and every later one gets harder.
Binance sign-up and the referral code field, before you practise
Sign-up order, where the code goes, what to check when verification fails, and what to do on day one.
Two minutes of checking here saves an afternoon of rework
Where you live, which ID you hold, and what you actually want the account for.
Verification stuck? Sort it by what the screen is showing
Camera never starts, photo bounces back, review never ends — three different problems.
Nothing in the account yet, which is exactly why this is the moment
Two-factor, withdrawal whitelist, anti-phishing code. Easiest while the account is still empty.
Demo account
4 reads in this stagePlay money means you can afford to be wrong. The goal here is not profit — it is knowing what every button does.
How Binance demo trading works: entry points, play money, what you can drill
Where to open it, what it requires, how to reset, and which features simply are not there.
Four of these five gaps you can narrow, and one you cannot
Fills, depth, slippage, fee awareness and nerves. Knowing the gaps tells you what your results are worth.
Your first session: press the buttons in this order
From reading the book to placing a limit order, cancelling it, and finding the fill.
Before demo futures: understand what leverage actually changes
It sets how far the price can move against you before liquidation, not how much you win.
Readiness
3 reads in this stage"How long should I practise" has no fixed answer, but it has testable criteria. Fail one and you know what to work on.
Your demo return is the wrong gauge, so use these three instead
Not your return: whether you can operate without notes, read your own fills, and explain a loss.
Winning on demo, losing live: usually these four things
Position size, fees, fill prices and nerves. Three of them can be fixed before you fund anything.
A practice log worth keeping: five numbers per trade
Demo gives you no export, so the record has to be yours. Five fields is enough.
First real trade
5 reads in this stageOnce real money is involved the question changes from "how do I do this" to "can this money survive my learning".
"Only risk what you can afford to lose" is true and unusable
Work backwards from what you can lose entirely, not forwards from what you hope to make.
Order rejected? Check minimum notional and step size first
"Invalid quantity" is almost never an account problem — it is a parameter problem.
Buy, sell, withdraw: only one of the three cares how small you are
Buy, sell and withdrawal, with the formulas written out so you can redo the maths.
How Binance fees stack, and where the referral rebate sits
Maker/taker, VIP tier, BNB discount and referral rebate are four separate layers.
Switching day: the checklist before you press confirm
Account, size, pair, order type, record keeping — five things to check.
Tools
All fourEverything runs in your own browser. No live prices, nothing uploaded, and every rate is one you type in yourself.
Small-trade cost share
How much the fees take, and how far the price must move to break even.
Order parameter checker
Tells you whether it is the notional or the step size blocking the order.
Readiness checklist
Twelve boxes across the three tests. Tick them honestly.
First-trade size ruler
Works backwards from the loss you can absorb.
About this site
All 18 readsOne subject only: how a beginner can practise for free and then decide whether to risk anything. No coin picks, no signals, no predictions.
About TOFEV
Who writes this, what the pen name means, what we stay out of.
Editorial standards
How topics are chosen, how facts are checked, where AI stops.
Corrections
What we changed and why, logged line by line.