Skip to main content
Quick answers to the questions that come up most. For the full detail behind any of these, follow the links.

​
General

Speculate is a competitive social trading platform — you go head-to-head against other traders in Competitions and Duels, climb a live leaderboard, and win real USDC prizes.
Both, in different places. Competition trading runs on a $10,000 simulated practice balance, priced off real Kraken market data — it’s not routed to a live exchange. What’s real is the USDC that moves through entry fees, prize pools, Duels, and HyperStake. The trading is simulated, the stakes are real.
Log in with an email or a wallet — it’s a one-tap login, no separate registration form. The moment you sign up, Speculate creates a self-custodial trading wallet for you automatically.
Not yet — there’s no native app. The web app at app.speculate.trade works great on mobile browsers in the meantime.

​
Competitions

Joining a paid competition is gasless. You sign a permit and an authorization — that’s it. Speculate’s relayer submits the transaction and pays the gas.
A competition goes LIVE one hour after its lobby fills, giving everyone time to get ready. Private and whitelist competitions skip the wait and go live immediately once full. See the full lifecycle.
If a competition never fills by its cancel date, it’s automatically cancelled and every entry fee is refunded in full — no action needed on your part.
Rank is decided by ROI — highest first — not raw dollar PnL. The top 40% of the lobby gets paid; everyone else risked only their entry fee. See Payouts for the full math.
Front-loaded: Rank 1 gets 50%, Rank 2 gets 20%, Rank 3 gets 8%, Rank 4 gets 5%, and the remaining paid ranks share a 17% tail, weighted toward the higher ranks. Full breakdown and a worked example on Payouts.
A player who never places a single trade — but would otherwise land in a paying rank — takes a −20% inactivity penalty and gets re-ranked below every active trader. You can’t sit on your hands and collect a prize.

​
Duels

Duels are winner-take-all: beat your opponent’s ROI and you take 2× your entry fee, with no platform fee taken off the top.
Every Duel has a 24-hour acceptance window. If nobody accepts before it closes, the Duel is cancelled and the creator is refunded in full.
An exact draw — for example, neither player trades — isn’t scored as a win or loss. Both players are refunded their entry in full. See the full tie-break rules.

​
Wallet & funds

Speculate supports deposits from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, BNB Chain, Optimism, HyperEVM, and Solana. Deposits on the same network your wallet is on are instant and fee-free; anything else routes automatically through a bridge. See Deposits.
Yes. You sign a permit and a withdrawal authorization — no ETH required. Speculate’s relayer submits the transaction and the gas cost is deducted in USDC, not charged separately. See Withdrawals.
Yes. Your Speculate trading wallet is self-custodial — you hold the keys, and you can export it at any time to use anywhere else.

​
XP & $SPEC

Every competition you enter and every social action you complete adds to your XP total. See Earning XP for the full breakdown of what counts.
XP is your claim on the **SPEC∗∗tokensupply.Attheendofthe∗∗Genesisphase∗∗,allaccumulatedXPconvertstrustlesslyintoSPEC** token supply. At the end of the **Genesis phase**, all accumulated XP converts trustlessly into SPEC and is distributed straight to your wallet — no claims process to fumble.

​
Fees

Speculate takes an 8% platform fee on every paid competition’s prize pool. Duels charge no platform fee — winner takes the whole pot. Withdrawals are gasless, with the network gas cost deducted in USDC. Full rate card on Fees.
Need help? Reach the team on X at x.com/SpeculateTrade, on Telegram at t.me/speculateapp, or on Discord at discord.com/invite/speculate.