Trade the past, and get graded
Trading is easy to describe and hard to do, and the gap between the two is mostly discipline. The Bitcoin Lab lets you find out which side of that gap you are on, with virtual money, against real prices, with the future hidden.
Replay a year you think you know
Start a replay of the 2018 bear. The chart stops on the last day of November 2017, with everything before it visible and everything after it hidden. Each press of Next reveals one more day.
Knowing roughly what happened helps less than you would expect. You do not know which week the bounce comes, or how far the next leg down goes. If you remember too much, try a blind year instead: the dates are hidden and the price is rescaled to start at 100.
Plan every buy before you make it
The order form starts every buy with three numbers filled in: where you buy, a stop-loss below it and a take-profit above it, sized so that being wrong costs 2% of the account. Change them if you have a reason. The form tells you what each change costs before you place it.
A buy without a stop is allowed, as on any exchange. It is also graded down, because nothing limits its loss.
Read the grade before the return
When the replay ends, every trade is scored out of 100 on five things: whether you kept to the plan, how much you risked, how far the target sat against the stop, whether the stop was clear of ordinary noise, and whether you waited after a loss instead of buying straight back in.
A loss taken at a sound stop scores full marks. A lucky win sold on a whim does not. That is the point: a year's return mostly measures the market, and the grade measures you.
Each finished replay is kept, so over a few of them you can see whether your discipline is improving.
The halal part is built in
Everything is spot. You buy with dollars you have and sell coins you hold. Nothing is borrowed, nothing is sold short, and there is no leverage. Whether trading suits you at all is a separate question, and worth answering first.
In one line: replay a year with the future hidden, plan every buy before you make it, and judge yourself on the grade, not the return.
Replay the 2018 bear with a stop on every buy and 2% at risk, then read your grade before you look at your return.
Investing or trading? Which one you are doing