Connecting Your First Exchange

So you’ve poked around in paper trading, your strategy looks decent, and now you want to connect it to a real exchange. Good. That’s the whole point. Here’s how to actually do it without setting off any alarm bells on your exchange account.

Generate an API key on your exchange

Every exchange calls this something slightly different, but the idea is the same everywhere: you’re creating a set of credentials that let TradeFIQ place orders on your behalf without you handing over your login.

A few quick notes depending on where you’re trading:

• Binance: Account → API Management → Create API. Give it a label you’ll recognize later (future you, staring at a list of five API keys named “test”, will appreciate this).
• Bybit: API → Create New Key → System-generated API keys.
• OKX: Profile → API → Create V5 API Key.

The one rule that matters everywhere: only grant trading permissions. Never enable withdrawals. TradeFIQ never asks for withdrawal access, and honestly, no legitimate trading tool should. If something is asking you for it, close the tab.

Most exchanges also let you restrict the key to specific IP addresses. It’s optional, but it’s a nice extra lock on the door if you’re the type who likes extra locks on doors.

Add it to TradeFIQ

Head to Settings → Exchanges and click “Add Exchange.” Pick your exchange from the dropdown, paste in your API key and secret, and hit Save. We’ll ping the exchange right away to confirm the key actually works, so you’ll know immediately if you fat-fingered a character (it happens to literally everyone, don’t worry about it).

Right now we support Binance, Bybit, OKX, Kraken, Coinbase Advanced Trade, Bitget, KuCoin, Gate.io, and MEXC. If your exchange isn’t on the list yet, tell us, we’re adding more all the time and “someone asked” is genuinely how most of them get prioritized.

Test it before you trust it

Once your exchange is connected, don’t immediately switch every strategy to live and walk away. Run a small test order first. Better yet, keep the strategy in Test mode (paper trading) for a while even after connecting the exchange. The two aren’t linked: you can have a live exchange connected and still run in Test mode while you get comfortable. If you want the full case for why, we’ve got a whole article on paper trading versus the real thing.

When something goes wrong

The most common hiccup is an expired or revoked key, usually because someone regenerated it on the exchange side and forgot to update TradeFIQ. If a strategy suddenly stops executing, that’s the first thing to check, right after “did I actually fund the account.”

That’s genuinely it. Five minutes, maybe less if you don’t get distracted reading the permissions dropdown twice like everyone does the first time.