Recently, players participating in trading competitions should have felt it— the difficulty and cost of ranking are continuously increasing.

Taking the latest Kgen project as an example, the leaderboard size is about 350,000. Calculated with a typical slippage loss of 2 per 10,000, the theoretical cost is around 70 USDT. But the actual situation is much more complicated.

Where is the problem? The project team and market makers are working more closely together. A large number of bots repeatedly trade within trading pairs, creating fake liquidity, which is actually setting a trap for ordinary traders. You think you're just doing order刷, but in fact, you're being squeezed. I personally spent 370,000 on this round, and ultimately lost about 110 USDT. It sounds like a lot, but the reward is only 50 USDT, resulting in a net loss of 60 USDT.

The key issue is: the points gained from this trading competition are about 12 points higher than stablecoin mining (6.6WU). These points are not enough to participate in airdrops, which typically have a value of around 30-40 USDT for mainstream projects.

The math is simple:
- Trading competition route: 110 USDT cost - 50 USDT reward = 60 USDT loss, and you might still not rank high
- Stablecoin route: stable returns, zero additional cost

Someone might ask, is it still worth participating in trading competitions? If you're an expert and can keep the loss within thousands or even achieve positive returns, it's definitely worth trying. But most ordinary players have losses around 0.3%, and in this case, stacking stablecoins is clearly more cost-effective.

The biggest risk in trading competitions now is being robbed of your ranking— once your position drops, it's a double blow. Don't be fooled by the small rewards of a few tens of USDT; after careful calculation, you'll realize that the era of trading competitions might really be over.