Guides · Guide 08
Crypto copy trading: how it works and how to choose whom to copy
Copy trading routes someone else's orders into your account. The mechanics are simple; choosing whom to copy is where the money is made or lost.
- Binance minimum copy
- 10 USDT
- Default lead profit share
- 10%
- Copies our book can place at $1,000
- 93% of orders
What copy trading is
A lead trader runs an account; copiers link their own capital to it, and every order the lead places is reproduced in each copier's account, sized to that copier's allocation. The copier does nothing after the initial setup, keeps the ability to stop at any time, and pays the lead a share of profit. It is the retail version of allocating to a managed strategy, without a fund structure, a minimum ticket or a lock-up measured in years.
Two implementations dominate crypto futures, and they differ in a way that matters:
| Binance Copy Trading | Hyperliquid vaults | |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanism | Orders are mirrored into your own account, one copy per copier | Deposits are pooled into one on-chain account the leader trades |
| Custody | Your Binance account | The vault's on-chain address; the leader cannot withdraw your funds |
| Minimum | 10 USDT by default | Set by the vault; protocol minimum is small |
| Leader's cut | Profit share, default 10% on public portfolios | 10% of profit on user vaults (per Hyperliquid's published terms) |
| Exit | Stop copying at any time; open positions close or transfer per your settings | Withdraw after a 1-day lock-up |
| Per-order minimums | Apply to each copier: small copies skip orders | None for depositors; the pool trades as one account |
Binance figures from Binance's copy-trading FAQ; Hyperliquid figures from its vault documentation, which Hyperliquid has marked as subject to revision. Check the live terms before allocating.
What you actually get
Not the lead's return. You get the lead's orders, minus your own trading fees, minus funding on your positions, minus the profit share, minus whatever drifts because an order could not be placed at your size. For a systematic book that turns over 45× equity a year, fees and slippage alone are about 3% of equity a year and funding another 2.7%. Guide 13 works through the full stack.
Five checks before copying anyone
- Drawdown, not ROI. Find the deepest peak-to-trough fall and its duration. A lead showing 300% ROI and no drawdown figure has not shown you anything. Our backtest's figure is −18.8%, and it is on every page of this site next to the return.
- Length of record, unbroken. In our 300-week backtest, 52% of weeks and 42% of months lost money in a strategy that compounded at 41.8% a year. Anything under three months is noise, and a "since" date that resets is a deleted drawdown.
- Exposure and leverage. The leverage figure on a profile is a margin setting. Ask what fraction of equity is actually held in positions; ours averaged 0.30× with 5× available. A lead running 1.5× exposure at 20× leverage is one bad day from a liquidation cascade.
- Whether losses are visible. Every real record has losing trades and losing months. A record without them is edited.
- Whether the numbers are net. Net of funding, net of fees, computed on equity rather than on margin. Ask.
Setting up a copy
- Use fixed ratio, so your positions carry the same share of your capital as the lead's do of theirs. Fixed amount overrides the lead's position sizing and with it their risk management.
- Copy with enough that the strategy's orders can execute. Binance accepts 10 USDT; for our book, $1,000 is the practical floor and $2,500 a faithful copy (Note 06).
- Set the copy-level stop-loss wider than the lead's documented worst drawdown, not tighter, or it fires in a normal drawdown.
- Decide the amount once, size it to a 20% drawdown you would not react to, and then do not touch it. Guide 05 has the arithmetic.
Where this site fits
RealPnL is the public record of one systematic strategy that will be copyable on both venues once its live record is long enough to judge. Every check above can be run against it: every trade, the tear sheet, the research. Hold any other lead trader to the same standard.