Coinbase built its entire habit loop around one thing: you open the app, glance at a price chart, and decide whether to buy, sell, or just watch. Millions of people check it the same way they check a weather app, except the number moving is their money. We built a free browser version of that exact loop, minus the money part.
Play Practice Portfolio now
Tap a Buy or Sell button to start. No account, no wallet, no download.
How it works
You start with $10,000 in practice funds and four made-up coins, each with its own live price chart. The prices move on their own every second, driven by a random walk seeded from today’s date, so everyone who opens the page today sees the same market. Set a trade size with the slider or type an amount, then hit Buy or Sell on any coin. Your cash and holdings update instantly, and the total at the top moves with them.
Come back tomorrow and the market reseeds into a fresh one. Your best-ever return is saved on your device the moment you beat it, and it stays there across visits. Nothing you do here leaves your browser, and nothing here touches a real exchange, a real wallet, or a cent of real money.
How it compares to Coinbase
Practice Portfolio keeps the one thing that makes Coinbase compelling: watching a price line move and reacting to it. The buy and sell buttons work the same way, the portfolio total updates the same way, and the daily reset mirrors how markets reset every day. That is where the similarity ends.
Everything you see in our simulator is fake. The four coins, Nimbus, Quill, Marrow, and Ferro, do not exist anywhere outside this page. Their prices come from a random number generator running in your browser, not from Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any real exchange. The $10,000 balance is a starting number for practice, not a deposit, and there is no way to convert anything here into real currency.
Real Coinbase is a different product entirely. It moves actual money into actual Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more than 250 other assets, which means it has to verify your identity, hold your funds in custody or help you self-custody them, and run the account security most people never think about until they need it: two-factor authentication, withdrawal whitelists, hardware key support, and proof-of-reserves reporting. It also runs on live market data that updates by the millisecond and can go up or down based on world events, not a fixed seed.
Use our simulator to get a feel for watching a chart and making a call under a bit of pressure, with zero financial risk. Use Coinbase when you are ready to buy or hold a real asset with real money.
Get the full app
Coinbase is free to download and available on Android and iOS. Sign-up takes about ten minutes and requires a photo ID, since converting real money into crypto is a regulated activity almost everywhere.
If you want a broader look at the category, including self-custody wallets and price trackers, see our roundup of the best crypto apps.
FAQ
Is this real money? No. Practice Portfolio uses a fixed starting balance of fake practice funds and four coins we made up. Nothing you buy or sell here can be converted to real currency, and no real money ever enters or leaves the page.
Is this the real Coinbase app? No. Practice Portfolio is an original tool built by our team, inspired by the buy-and-watch loop that makes Coinbase engaging. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Coinbase in any way.
Does the price data come from a real market? No. Every price you see is generated by a random number sequence that runs entirely in your browser, seeded from today’s date. It never fetches data from Coinbase, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any live exchange.
Do I need to sign up or download anything? No. The simulator loads instantly in the embed above and works on a phone or a computer. Your progress and best return are saved locally in your browser, not on our servers.
Can I practice with a strategy before using real Coinbase? You can use the simulator to get comfortable with the mechanics of watching a chart and placing a buy or sell order under time pressure. It will not teach you about custody, fees, or security, which is what real Coinbase and its downloadable app are for.
