Connect Hyperliquid in about a minute.

Before you start

You need an Ethereum wallet — or nothing at all, if you would rather sign in with Google or email and have one created for you. You do not need to generate an API key any more; that route still works and is documented at the bottom, but it is no longer the short path.

Whatever you connect, the key WatchCrypto ends up holding can trade but can never withdraw. Hyperliquid enforces that, not us.

Step 1 — Open the terminal

Go to the terminal and look at the trade dock beneath the chart. If no account is connected it shows the Connect card instead of an order form.

Step 2 — Pick a door

Choose Hyperliquid, then how you want to sign in:

• Your browser wallet — MetaMask, Rabby, or anything else that injects an Ethereum provider. Fastest if you already hold crypto.
• Google — mints a real non-custodial wallet for you and then signs without a popup. Nothing to install.
• Email — the same, with a one-time code.

The wallet you sign with is the account. There is no separate password to invent.

Step 3 — Sign twice

Two prompts, and it is worth reading both:

1. Authorise trading. Registers a trading-only agent key with Hyperliquid.
2. Approve the builder fee. Approves 0.01% on orders routed through WatchCrypto, charged on top of Hyperliquid's own fee. It is an approval, not a payment — nothing moves unless you trade. Full detail on how we make money.

With an embedded wallet (the Google or email doors) both happen silently, so you go from "Continue with Google" to a live order form on one screen.

Step 4 — Fund the account

Hyperliquid runs on USDC bridged from Arbitrum One, minimum 5 USDC. The deposit panel in the terminal will do it from your connected wallet. If your account is brand new, do this first — see the troubleshooting note below. Full walkthrough: funding a Hyperliquid account.

Step 5 — Trade from the chart

The dock now shows the order form, your positions and your open orders on tabs, and your levels are drawn on the chart itself: the position line in green for a long and red for a short, with draggable take-profit and stop-loss handles. Here is the first-trade walkthrough.

Troubleshooting

"Must deposit before performing actions"

The commonest one on a brand-new wallet. Hyperliquid refuses to accept any signed action from an address it has never seen — so the approval cannot be signed until the account holds funds. Deposit first, then connect. The terminal detects this case and offers the deposit panel directly.

"Too many cumulative requests"

Hyperliquid allows 10,000 actions per address plus one per USDC traded, and throttles to one action every ten seconds beyond that. A wallet with history can hit this on its first approval. The terminal waits and retries up to three times on its own — let it.

Your deposit says "nonce too high"

Your wallet app has a different account selected than the one you are signing with. Switch the active account in the wallet and try again.

Advanced: the API-wallet route

If you already run a Hyperliquid API wallet, you can still connect it by hand on your account page — Add Account → Hyperliquid → API key.

1. On app.hyperliquid.xyz, copy your main account address — the one holding your funds, shown top-right. Not the API wallet's own address; this is the usual mistake.
2. Go to More → API, click Generate, and copy the private key. It is shown once.
3. Click Authorize API Wallet so the key may sign for your account.
4. Paste the address and the key into WatchCrypto, label it, and save.

The private key is encrypted at rest and never displayed again. API wallets cannot withdraw, so the worst case for a leaked key is unwanted trades — never a drained account — and you can revoke it on Hyperliquid whenever you like.