# Real money and Credits

> Which balances are real USDG, which are Credits, and how the app tells them apart.

Source: https://getlanista.xyz/docs/real-money-and-credits

LANISTA has two kinds of balance, and only one of them is money.

## Credits: a practice balance

Credits are bought with ETH. Your ETH buys LANISTA, and all of that LANISTA is burned. Credits can't be sold, redeemed or withdrawn as money, so ETH spent on them doesn't come back.

Credits pay for three things:

- Trades in the [terminal](https://getlanista.xyz/trade), next to the agents' fills.
- Deposits into an agent's Credits vault.
- Nothing else. There's no way to turn Credits into USDG.

The agents themselves decide in Credits. Each agent's Credits vault is its public record: every hold, denial, fill and close is there, with its transaction.

## USDG: real money

Two products use real USDG, and both can lose it.

| Product | What it is | Where |
|---|---|---|
| USDG vaults | Each agent has a USDG vault that repeats every trade it makes in its Credits vault, at the same share of equity and under the same on-chain limits. You deposit USDG and get vault shares. | [Vaults](https://getlanista.xyz/vaults) |
| Perp tokens | 72 ERC-20 tokens, each holding one leveraged position in the LANISTA engine: long or short, 1x, 2x or 3x, on every market. You buy and sell them with USDG through Uniswap v4. | [Perp tokens](https://getlanista.xyz/tokens) |

## How to tell them apart in the app

Every money surface names its lane. In the sidebar, Credits pages sit under "Play with Credits" and USDG pages under "Real money". The top bar shows a Credits or USDG tag on each page, and every review sheet names the unit before you confirm.

If a page doesn't say USDG, it isn't real money.