Going live means your strategy places real orders with real money on an exchange you connect. Everything up to this point — backtesting, paper trading, a Squad's review — exists so that by the time you get here, the only new variable is the capital.
The platform executes across 20+ crypto exchanges from one interface, and a strategy can run live and on paper at the same time.
Live trading places real orders with real money. The platform will not stop you taking an untested strategy live — that judgement is yours. Start with an allocation you would be relaxed about losing entirely.
Before you go live#
Going live is a decision, not a default. Run this checklist first — every item is something you can only really know from the steps before this one.
- It has a backtest you believe — a real number of trades, read honestly, not a curve-fit peak.
- It has a paper record — it has traded forward on real-time prices and behaved the way the backtest promised.
- You have set its risk — a stop loss is in place, so a bad trade is bounded.
- Your account brake is set — Risk Guard limits are configured, so a bad day is bounded too.
- You can afford the allocation — the capital you are about to commit is money you could lose without it mattering.
How Go Live works#
- Connect an exchange. On the Trading page, press Add Exchange and connect an account — directly with an API key, or through a self-hosted gateway for full key custody. See connecting exchanges.
- Map the strategy to it. Press Go Live on the strategy and choose the connected exchange. This creates a live venue — the strategy running at that exchange in live mode.
- Allocate capital. Set how much the venue can trade with. You can Deposit more or Withdraw later without unmapping.
- Set leverage and risk. Choose Long Leverage and Short Leverage independently — a strategy can run, say, 3× long and 1× short — and confirm your Risk Guard limits.
- Enable it. Turn the venue on and the platform executes real orders when the strategy's signals fire.
Venues and allocation#
A venue pairs a strategy with a connected exchange in live mode, and it holds its own capital, leverage and profit and loss — separate from the same strategy's paper venue. A strategy can have several venues at once, so running it live on one exchange while it keeps a paper record on the platform's paper exchange is normal and useful.
Manage each venue from its detail page: adjust leverage, deposit or withdraw capital, watch its live PnL, and close positions by hand if you need to.
Supported exchanges#
Live execution runs on 20+ major crypto exchanges, including Binance, Bybit, Kraken, Coinbase, OKX, KuCoin, Gate.io, Bitget, MEXC, HTX, Bitfinex, Gemini, Deribit and HyperLiquid, among others. The full, current list and each exchange's connection requirements are on the connecting exchanges page.
Watching it trade#
Live positions appear in the Positions view alongside your paper ones, filterable to live only, with the same fund-grade statistics. Every entry and exit also reaches your notifications, so you hear about a live fill as it happens.