Bentley Academy
Learn the market before you trade it
A free video course for complete beginners. In ten short lessons you go from never having placed a trade to running an honest paper-trading routine alongside Bentley's public market report.
- Free
- Paper trading first
- Education only
Lesson 01: What you're actually trading4:03 · Video with captions and transcript
Who it's for
Anyone who has never placed a trade, or has placed a few and isn't sure why they won or lost. No jargon assumed: every term is explained the first time it comes up.
What you need
Nothing but a free chart and Bentley's public report. No exchange account, no login and no money. You practise every idea on paper.
How each lesson works
A short video with captions, then a written summary, key takeaways, a try-it exercise and the full transcript. Four lessons come with a calculator or a journal you can use right on the page, and the calculators also have their own pages.
Part one
How the market works
Lessons 01 to 04
- 01What you're actually tradingA price is simply the last place a buyer and a seller agreed, and it moves when one side gets more impatient than the other. This lesson walks through the order book and the spread, why prices on different exchanges stay in line, and the two ways to trade: spot, where you own the coin, and futures, where you trade a contract that can go long or short with leverage.
- 02Reading a chartMost charts are built from candles, and each candle packs one slice of time into four prices: open, high, low and close. This lesson shows how the timeframe sets the zoom, why the four-hour and daily charts carry more weight than the one-minute, how to spot a trend from its highs and lows, and why support and resistance are zones, not lines.
- 03Leverage and liquidationLeverage lets you control a position bigger than the money you put up, and every price move is worked out on that whole position, not on the money you posted. This lesson shows what 5x, 10x and 50x really mean, where your liquidation price sits, and why high leverage can wipe out your margin on an ordinary day's move. Your stop, not the exchange, should always be what ends a losing trade.
- 04Funding, open interest and the crowdFutures traders leave three numbers anyone can read: funding, open interest and the long-short ratio. This lesson shows what each one measures, why funding is a real cost on your whole position, and how a crowded trade stacks liquidations that can turn a small move into a sharp one.
Part two
Risk before reward
Lessons 05 to 07
- 05The 1% rule and position sizeLosing streaks happen to every trader, so each trade should risk only a small, fixed slice of your account, and 1% is a common starting point. Your stop distance then sets the position size: risk amount divided by stop distance. With a $10,000 paper account, 1% risk and a stop 2% away, that is a $5,000 position that loses about $100 if the stop is hit. Fees, or a worse price in a fast market, can push the real loss past that.
- 06Anatomy of a trade planA trade plan answers five questions before you enter: where you get in, where you're wrong, where you take profit, whether it's worth it, and what would cancel the idea. This lesson builds one example plan on a Bitcoin four-hour chart, line by line, and checks it with reward to risk. Then it shows how the setups in Bentley's free market report use the same five parts.
- 07Market regime: when not to tradeMarkets move through regimes: trending up, trending down, or going sideways in a range. The same setup can work in one regime and fail in another, so the first question before any trade is what kind of market you are in. Sometimes the best trade is no trade, and sitting out is a position.
Part three
Trading with Bentley
Lessons 08 to 10
- 08Reading Bentley's setupsEvery setup in Bentley's report uses the same layout: a long or short badge, an entry zone, a stop, two targets, risk to reward, a score and a "Wrong if" line. This lesson reads one example line by line, shows you how to sketch its price ladder and work out its state yourself, and explains what the score does and doesn't tell you.
- 09Managing the tradeThe entry is one decision. Managing the trade is every decision after it, which is why two traders can take the same setup at the same price and end up in very different places. This lesson follows one example trade through Bentley's default style: take half off at target one, move the stop to break-even, close early when the "Wrong if" line happens, never widen a stop, and let a missed entry go.
- 10Your paper-trading routineThis lesson turns the whole course into one short loop you run once a day alongside Bentley's free report: check the regime, the calendar and the setups, choose one setup or none, plan it before price arrives, manage it on paper and log it. The trade journal is where that routine becomes evidence, as long as you log every trade, grade each one on both result and process, and review in batches of 20 to 30. Real money waits: paper is the easy version, and a plan you cannot follow on paper only gets harder with real money.
Straight talk
What this is, and what it isn't
This is
- A free course on how crypto markets and futures actually work
- Practice on paper: real prices, pretend money, honest records
- A way to read Bentley's public report and check its thinking for yourself
This isn't
- Financial advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell anything
- A promise of returns, or a system that wins every trade
- A tip service that tells you what to trade
- A shortcut around risk: you can lose money trading, and leverage makes it faster
Before you start
Common questions
Is it really free?
Yes. There is no sign-up, no email and no card. The videos, calculators and journal all live on this site.
Will this make me money?
Nobody can promise that, and you should be wary of anyone who does. The course teaches you to size trades, plan them and review them honestly on paper, long before real money is involved.
Is this financial advice?
No. Bentley Academy explains how the market works and how to manage risk. What you trade and how much you risk is always your decision.
What is Bentley?
Bentley is an AI market analyst for crypto traders. It reads price, funding, open interest and positioning across many exchanges, then writes a market read and trade setups, each with an entry zone, a stop, targets and what would prove it wrong. It works as a co-pilot: you still make every decision, and results depend on how each trader manages their trades.
Do I need an exchange account or the Bentley dashboard?
No. Every exercise uses the public report at bentleymarkets.com/report and any free charting site. Paper trading means pretend money, so a notebook or the journal in lesson 10 is enough.
Where is my progress saved?
In this browser only. Completed lessons and your trade journal stay on your device and are never sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data clears them too, so the journal has a CSV export.