Trading Basics & Glossary

This page is for traders who are new to leveraged crypto trading — or new to ZoneX. It explains what is real, what is simulated, how position sizing works, and the vocabulary you’ll meet across the rest of these docs. Read it once and the rest of the platform will make far more sense.

Real money vs simulated money

The single most important thing to understand before you place an order: whether the account you’re trading is real or virtual.

Account	Where it trades	Can you lose real money?
Free trial	A real exchange account you connect with API keys	Yes. Trades are live on your exchange.
Subscription	A real exchange account you connect with API keys	Yes. Trades are live on your exchange.
Challenge	A virtual (simulated) account created for you	No. It’s a simulation until you pass.

This is not a demo

A free trial or subscription connects to a live exchange account. Every order you place is a real order with real money and real losses are possible. If you want to practise without risk first, start a Challenge — challenge accounts are fully simulated until you pass them.

Challenge accounts stay virtual through the entire evaluation. Only when you pass and receive a funded performance account does real capital come into play — and even then you trade the firm’s capital under the rules, not your own deposit.

How ZoneX works

ZoneX is a trading terminal, not an exchange and not a wallet.

• You connect your own exchange account (Binance, Bybit, CoinW, Gate.io, Hyperliquid, OKX, or Phemex) using API keys.
• ZoneX sends orders to that exchange on your behalf and streams your balances, positions, and market data back into one fast interface.
• Your funds never leave your exchange. They stay in your exchange account the whole time.
• ZoneX never takes custody of your money. The API keys you create should have Read + Trade permissions only — withdrawal permission is never needed and should stay disabled.

Note

Because ZoneX only ever needs Read + Trade access, a leaked key can’t be used to withdraw your funds — as long as you left withdrawal permission off when you created it. See Connecting an Exchange for the exact permissions to set.

Glossary

The terms you’ll see most often, in plain English:

Term	What it means
Long	A bet that price will go up. You profit when it rises.
Short	A bet that price will go down. You profit when it falls.
Leverage	Trading a position larger than your cash by borrowing from the exchange. 10× leverage controls $10,000 with $1,000. It magnifies both gains and losses.
Margin	The portion of your balance set aside as collateral to hold a leveraged position.
Isolated margin	Only the margin assigned to that one position can be lost. A liquidation is contained to that trade.
Cross margin	Your whole balance backs the position. It’s harder to liquidate, but a bad trade can take your entire account with it.
Liquidation	When your losses eat through your margin, the exchange force-closes the position. On a challenge, liquidation ends the evaluation immediately.
Realized PnL	Profit or loss on trades you have already closed — it’s locked in.
Unrealized PnL	The live gain or loss on positions you still hold. It moves tick by tick and isn’t final until you close.
Perpetual	A futures contract with no expiry date — you can hold it indefinitely. Most crypto futures are perpetuals.
Funding fee	A small periodic payment exchanged between longs and shorts on a perpetual to keep its price near spot. You either pay or receive it while holding.
Stop-loss (SL)	A price at which your position auto-closes to cap your loss. Your safety net.
Take-profit (TP)	A price at which your position auto-closes to lock in a gain.
Risk %	How much of your account you’re willing to lose on a single trade if your stop is hit. ZoneX uses this to size the position for you (see below).

Risk % sizing, explained

Beginners usually pick a position size first and hope the stop-loss lands somewhere sensible. ZoneX does it the professional way — backwards:

1. You choose a Risk % — how much of your account you’ll lose if the trade goes against you (e.g. 1%).
2. You choose a stop-loss price — where you admit the trade was wrong.
3. ZoneX calculates the position size automatically so that if the stop is hit, you lose exactly that Risk %.

Risk % + stop distance → position size. You never do the maths yourself.

This means a tight stop lets you take a larger position for the same risk, and a wide stop gives you a smaller one. Your dollar risk stays constant either way.

In the Order Form, 2% is the highest one-click risk preset and the point where the risk readout turns a warning colour — it is a soft warning line, not a hard cap (you can type a higher value if you insist). For a beginner, start well below it.

Sensible starting point

Risk 0.5%–1% per trade while you’re learning. At 1% risk you could be wrong on 10 trades in a row and still have ~90% of your account. That survivability is what keeps you in the game long enough to improve.

Leverage & liquidation: a safety primer

Leverage is where most beginners blow up. A few habits prevent it:

• Always attach a stop-loss. It’s the difference between a small planned loss and a liquidation. On challenge and funded accounts a stop-loss is mandatory — see How the Rules Work.
• Keep margin to spare. Don’t commit your whole balance to one position’s margin. Spare margin is the buffer that stops a normal adverse wick from liquidating you.
• Start with low Risk %. Small size means a mistake is a lesson, not a disaster.
• Prefer isolated margin while learning. It caps the damage of any single trade to that trade’s margin.

Liquidation is the worst outcome

Liquidation isn’t just a loss — on a challenge it ends the evaluation on the spot and cannot be reversed. A stop-loss set before the exchange’s liquidation price means you close on your terms, not the exchange’s.

Spot vs Futures — which should a beginner pick?

When you connect an account you choose an account type: Spot or Futures.

	Spot	Futures
What you own	The actual coin	A contract tracking the price
Leverage	None (1×)	Yes — magnifies gains and losses
Can you short?	Not directly	Yes
Liquidation risk	No	Yes
Complexity	Lower	Higher

First-timer recommendation

If you’re brand new, Spot is the gentler place to start: no leverage, no liquidation, and you can only lose what you put in. Move to Futures once stops, sizing, and margin feel natural. Note that Challenge and funded accounts are evaluated on Futures trading, so learn futures before attempting one.

Spot trading is available on a subset of supported exchanges; Futures is available everywhere. See Supported Exchanges for the current list.

What it costs

Access	Cost
Free trial (7 days)	Free — no payment required. Real exchange connection, limited terminal access.
Subscription	Paid — recurring plan for full terminal access.
Challenge	Paid — a one-off evaluation fee based on the account size and type you pick.

On top of platform access, remember that your exchange charges its own trading fees (and funding fees on perpetuals) on every real trade — those are separate from ZoneX and are paid to the exchange.

Where to see live prices: market prices stream live inside the terminal — on the charts, order book, and tickers for whichever symbol you’ve selected. Product pricing (subscription plans and challenge fees) is shown on the dashboard “View Plans” page and the Challenge configuration page before you commit.

Device & browser requirements

• ZoneX is a responsive web app — it runs in your browser and adapts to desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes.
• There is no native mobile app to install — you use the same web address on every device.
• Use a current version of a modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari, or Firefox). Keeping your browser up to date ensures the real-time data streams and charts work correctly.

Note

For serious trading, a desktop or laptop with a larger screen gives you room for charts, the order form, and the positions table at once. Mobile is great for monitoring open positions on the go.

Where to go next

• Quick Start — get connected and place your first trade.
• Placing Orders — every order type and option in detail.
• How the Rules Work — if you’re heading for a challenge, learn the rules first.