The Singapore based Bybit is a derivative exchange born in late 2018 and focused on perpetual contracts, putting it in direct competition of the likes of Bitmex and Deribit. As the new kid on the block with an aggressive and very efficient affiliate system, it faced immediate skepticism by the crypto community, but dissipated every doubt month after month with consistent upgrades and deep liquidity, as well as innovative gamified elements. It is now in our opinion one of the very best derivative exchanges out there. Let’s see why.

The first thing you’ll notice while signing up to Bybit is how simple and fast the process is and how clean the interface looks. This simplicity and user friendliness will permeate our whole experience on the exchange, something not too common unfortunately in the often overcomplicated derivative exchange world. Bybit operates as a strictly crypto to crypto exchange so it doesn’t require its users to perform stringent KYC verification making it a great choice for all the privacy focused users out there. It currently generates over $1B worth of daily trading, providing deep liquidity on all of it’s trading pairs, especially BTC and ETH.

In terms of security Bybit offers all the features that we have come to expect as industry standards : 2 factor authentication, a deep insurance fund, Ip address white listening. Most of the funds are kept in cold storage, with a multisig system in place : a welcome sight.

The trading engine is extremely powerful and on their website they boast a 99.9% uptime : after our extensive “stress test” we are pleased to report that those numbers are not overstated, we never had problems of any kind and, even more important, never ever incurred in any “bitmexesque” overload issues, even at the most volatile of times. This gives a certain peace of mind when logging in to trade those volatility spikes, and we found ourselves more and more prone to use Bybit as the go to exchange in these situations.

Bybit also employs a really efficient strategy in new user acquisition : gamification. There’s a number of task-related bonuses, pretty significant too, that user can unlock with the completion of very simple actions that pertain either to the social media sphere, compounding Bybit’s exposure further, or to mastering the trading engine, encouraging signups to actually familiarise with the exchange. Those bonus also rotate often and new ones pop up regularly. The total signup bonuses usually amount to about100$ of completely free real money capital that trader can use to master the exchange. Another aspect of their gamification is tournaments : although unfortunately they don’t happen as often as we’d like, Bybit does occasionally run some of the best and biggest crypto tournaments in the space. One of the most spectacular ones being the BTC Brawl, with a 100 BTC prize pool up for grabs !

Together with more tourneys, the only other thing we’d like to see is possibly a few more pairs added, although streamlining operations can also be a choice, and a feature and not necessarily a flaw, and allows them to focus more on liquidity. Right now Bybit offers BTC, ETH, EOS and XRP perpetuals.

All in all, we believe Bybit to be the best up and coming derivatives exchange, with a concrete shot a becoming number one if they expand their offering and continue with their innovative approach.

Part 1 – what is a crypto tournament?

Tournaments are a relatively new format to crypto. The definition of what a crypto tournament is, is in itself pretty vague, and open to interpretation. So let’s try to clarify that, and introduce you all to one of the most exciting and lucrative new trading niches!

A lot of times I hear trading tournament or crypto tournament used in a way that I consider improper : most of the times is some incentivised volume competition, which tends to cater to whales only, and is used to bring liquidity to a newly listed asset. Nothing wrong with this at all, and some of these are actually quite lucrative and might deserve a separate guide for them, but this are not tournaments properly intended.

DEFINITION

By crypto tournament, we intend a Trading Competition with a fixed buy-in, usually held by an exchange, where as well as the actual wins/losses of each unique trade, you have a prize pool distributed on top of it proportionally to the best performers. So you have a winner that gets the lion’s share of the added prizepool, and then usually top 10% of the field shares the rest. More importantly, you tend to have like we said a fixed buy-in and an equal starting stack, which levels the playing field. And finally, they tend to be ROI ( return on investment ) based. As in : whoever makes the highest return on investment in the predefined amount of time wins. Usual timeframes are daily, weekly and monthly

VALUE

So, the concept is pretty simple, but why should you be interested ? Well, quite a few reasons, actually.

For starters, it’s an amazing and relatively inexpensive testing ground for your trading skills. Usual buy-ins are around 100$. Some are as low as 10 bucks. And for that amount you get to compete on a levelled playing field versus some of the best traders in the world, all starting with the same stack. On top of that, technically you are not forced to take any trade at all if the situation doesn’t look profitable. So the extra prize pool is basically a freeroll.

All that being said, you’ll want to trade, because of course the value is in the added prize pool. Yes, you read that correctly, added. The vast majority of exchanges simply adds those prizes as a bonus, and as an incentive for traders to choose their platform. The more asymmetrical this prize to stack ratio is, the more aggressive it makes sense to be with your stack. But we’ll get to that in part 2 of this series, when we’ll talk about strategy.

Finally, there’s the gamification element : Tournaments are simply a lot of fun ! Climbing the ladder, and going head to head with some of the best in the world during the final minutes of a competition, where every small percentage on every little trade matters is pure adrenaline. Having a definitive win – bragging rights and all – will be morale boost, but also a real testament of your successes as a trader. In such an impermanent line of work, it’s a great way of keeping score. Money per se Is not the all inclusive motivator for some, competition matters. This is all accentuated in Team Tournaments, which we will discuss extensively in part 3 of the guide.

And finally, it will make you a better trader. Having a predefined timeframe, with a limited asset array – Bitcoin and ETH usually – will tend to remove all bias, focus your mind on price action, on the chart. It’s distilled trading in a competitive metagame – it’s not just you in a vacuum, you are adapting your strategy to what others do. Depending on who is ahead or behind you and what they are doing – usually openly and simply displayed – will influence your every decision and add a layer of complexity and psychology to the game. Most tournament grinders ( that’s what an habitual tournament player is called ) I know became much better in all aspects of trading as a result of this.

EXAMPLE

To bring all this together and clariy, let’s make a concrete example. We’ll start with the weekly tournament on Interdax, an up and coming exchange that focuses on tournaments, providing daily opportunities for grinders. You can read this exchange’s review here and get the best fee discount on the market : those do tend to add up quite a bit if you play tournament regularly.

Here is the tournament’s interface, pretty Cleary displayed. At itpagina we have a Tournament resources section as well as a tournament calendar if you want to dig deeper and always stay up to date with all the action !

Up top you see the buy-in, 0.1 BTC in this case. By clicking register, that amount will be “invested” in the competition. A sub account just for the battle will be created, and you’ll simply start trading BTC normally. Any win and losses, will be normally calculated, and you’ll keep/lose them when the competition is over.

Next to the buy in you see the prizepool – 0.25 BTC – which is added for free by the exchange. This is where the value lies. On top of your winnings and loosing, the top 3 players, based on ROI will share that prizepool.

And here is the live view of the battle. There are only 12 players competing in this battle, with top 3 sharing the prizepool progressively : 0.14 btc for first, 0.07 second and almost 0.04 for third. Again, ON TOP of your winnings. As you can see, with 25% of the field getting a prize, and with prizes being so asymmetrically important, there is a lot of strategy involved. On the right, you also see all of your opponents names, their ROI and if they are currently long or short, adding to the metagame element we mentioned before.

Moreover, as I’m sure you are wondering while running these numbers in your head : yes, you are early. Fields won’t be this small forever, nor this soft, with free prizes simply added. There is literally nothing to lose, only extra money to be made if you are going to trade BTC anyways. Team competition are even bigger and more fun, with the recent Binance competition totalling a whopping million dollar prize pool!

We can’t wait for the next one, and itpagina will always have it’s own team competing. You can join us for free here on the telgram and on the dedicated ( tournament only ) mailing list.
Allright, now that you are getting excited about this, it’s time to hone your skill, and prepare an appropriate winning strategy. We’ll talk about this in the second part of our tournament guide.