Security and trust

How PolyTortoise handles your money, keys and data, what it charges, and how to reach us. Version 1.3.3; see the changelog.

Your money

• Paper mode moves no money. You start with $10,000 of virtual USDC, and paper trades never touch a wallet.
• Live mode uses a wallet that is yours alone. /go_live creates a Polymarket deposit wallet for your account. There is no pooled balance: your USDC and positions sit in that wallet on Polygon, where anyone can look them up.
• The bot can sign for that wallet. Its signing key and your Polymarket API keys are stored encrypted so the bot can place the copies you set up, redeem settled positions if you turn on auto-redeem, collect the 1% fee, and send the withdrawals you confirm. It also means the service could move those funds, so only deposit what you are prepared to trust it with.
• Withdrawals start with /withdraw in Telegram and need your confirmation there.

What it costs

• Paper mode is free.
• A live copy buy costs 1% of the filled amount: a $100 copy is a $99 order plus a $1 fee. Exits are free, and failed or unfilled orders are not charged.
• Polymarket charges its own taker fee on some markets. That fee goes to Polymarket, not to us.
• Every fee and every fee collection is listed in the Mini App under Settings, Fees.

Keys and data

• Signing keys and Polymarket API credentials are encrypted at rest (Fernet: AES-128-CBC with HMAC-SHA256). The master key is kept only in the server's environment, never in source control.
• Each account's files can be read only by the service's own system user.
• The daily backup is encrypted on the server (AES-256) before it is copied to Cloudflare R2, and kept for 30 days.
• The audit log records which command you used, not your messages or keys.

Paper and live results

• Paper and live positions, history and P&L are kept apart.
• Paper results show what copying would have done at the prices the bot saw. They do not predict live results: live fills, fees and timing differ.
• The results page shows platform-wide paper numbers. The leaderboard lists only accounts that opted in.

Stopping and leaving

• /pause stops copying, and /stop clears your copy targets.
• /forget deletes your account data. If your live wallet still holds USDC or positions, it asks you to withdraw first so nothing is left behind.

Help and contact

• /support in @PolyTortoise_bot reaches the operator.
• /bugreport attaches diagnostics with keys and credentials removed, so a broken trade can be traced.
• Community help is in the #community-support channel of our Discord server, which PolyTortoise shares with PolyTraderBot.

Infrastructure

PolyTortoise runs on a single server behind Cloudflare. The privacy policy lists every service that handles your data, and the terms set out the rules of use.