Who we are and why this exists

My name is Scotty Mikul and I have been primarily a software engineer most of my life. I got a brutal introduction into how markets work when I first invested in Bitcoin. I had heard from numerous Bitcoin experts and enthusiasts that Bitcoin was going to reach $220k back in 2021, and — scared I was too late — I bought in, only to learn later that it was actually the worst time to be buying in the past four years. I was buying at the very top, convinced I was missing the hyperbitcoinization to a million dollars. After that trading disaster I became more sceptical but no less interested in figuring out how to make money from market patterns.

I started taking the people claiming Bitcoin would go to millions of dollars far less seriously. They were saying one thing and the market was telling a completely different story. I wanted to understand how people actually traded these assets profitably, and I quickly learned that it was not simple. Sure, the general rule is that if you hold Bitcoin for more than four years at almost any price you would most likely have profited — but what about making shorter-term trades? I lost a significant amount of money trying to figure that out.

That experience is the reason Paper Trader exists. I wanted a paper trading tool that simulated real exchange conditions, journalled every trade, and automatically analysed the data to show whether a strategy was actually working. I wanted something that let me experiment endlessly — blowing up accounts, testing ideas, running strategies in parallel — without losing real money in the process. I could not find exactly what I had in mind, so I built it.

Paper Trader is the tool I wish had existed when I started.