Demo trading setup

Demo (paper) trading is the default for every bot on TMIYC. You get the same signals, the same ticket shape, the same fills — just with a simulated balance instead of real money. Everyone should paper-trade a strategy for at least 14 days before going live.

Create a demo account

Open Settings → Demo accounts → New. Pick a venue (Bybit paper or Binance paper), starting balance (default $10,000, max $1,000,000), base symbol (USDT recommended), and an optional nickname. Confirm to create.

Under the hood we spin up a deterministic mock wallet backed by the live order-book mid-price with configurable slippage (default 5 bps taker, 0 bps maker). Funding rates for perpetuals use the real venue feed.

Clone a master bot onto it

Go to Bots → Master fleet and pick a strategy.
Click Clone to my account and select your demo wallet.
The clone inherits the master's parameters; tweak leverage, risk per trade, or pairs if you want.
Click Start. The first tick usually fires within 60 seconds.

Read the equity curve

The Bots page shows a per-bot equity chart. Look for:

Positive drift over ≥100 trades (not just a handful of lucky entries)
Max drawdown tolerable for your risk profile — our default filter flags bots above −25%
Sharpe ≥ 1.0 for momentum, ≥ 1.5 for mean-reversion (heuristic only)
Win rate × R:R together, not separately — a 35% win rate with 3R winners beats a 70% win rate with 0.5R

Compare against the benchmark

Each strategy page shows a BTC buy-and-hold benchmark over the same window. If the bot can't beat HODL after fees, it's not worth running live — even if the equity curve looks nice in isolation.

When you're ready to go live

Connect an exchange API key (see the Bybit / Binance articles), then use Promote to live on the bot page. We clone the bot settings to a new live bot and start it paused; you have to explicitly click Go live to send the first real order.

Keep the demo running in parallel — comparing the two equity curves is the fastest way to catch live-vs-paper drift.