It’s really fun.
Buy in with as little as $1 into a competition.
Get $10,000 in simulated capital and perp trade to win the top prize.
It’s pretty wicked and fun.
$SPEC
I discovered a bit of a trader in me) and took third place in one of the tournaments. It turns out I can do more than just draw) I'll try to get to first place)
Open to tips on what can make a project similar to ours hit the mainstream attention?
A competitive perp trading platform.
It’s a need in the industry but getting it to people’s hands seems to be an uphill battle.
2 years later�� I’m back apes and friends.
I’ve been building for over a year and recently launched @SpeculateTrade - perp trading competitions.
Why did I build Speculate and what is it?
Let’s start with a little bit about myself.
The start of my crypto journey dates back to 2014/2015 when BTC was still frowned upon as an illegal tender.
The decisions of many, made by a few - this never chimed very well with me. That’s where my views and beliefs began to shift towards being pro-decentralization. Bringing power back to the people in everyday life was important to me.
When I began purchasing BTC it was a form of supporting the ideology of decentralization. Minimal use-cases for BTC at the time but it was a first glimpse at what the world was beginning to recognize as the decentralized financial system.
As time progressed, the belief strengthened and my contributions to the space began to increase. I was involving myself in every aspect of voting in the early EIP’s of the ETH ecosystem to supporting BTC and ETH infrastructure by mining.
I was an avid holder and believer…they classified my breed of individuals as “diamond hands”.
As years continued to progress in crypto, the ideology and fundamentals remained. Allowing us to focus on the mission without any focus on the price.
As time went on, the investments that were originally made for an ideology became a pathway to financial freedom in the real world. An ability to take control of my schedule and to be able to dictate how I spend my time.
I was able to retire from my short lived career in crypto and from my previous as a mechatronics engineer.
In 2021, I began to focus largely on real-world asset diversification. Taking some well deserved profits and ensuring I have a quality life with security.
I came back into crypto to involve myself with NFT’s from 2022 to 2024, largely avoiding social media (X, Instagram, etc.) channels and staying primarily looped in to the NFT communities via Discord etc.
I went through my fair share of Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, etc.
This was my first X that I made to try and build a persona for my crypto personality to live through.
This was short lived as I realized my passion wasn’t for fame or attention, so this social media stint would be rather short lived.
My passion for the space came from the innovation and creativity that lived in the individual on the decentralized ecosystems.
Over the last years, the ecosystem has changed.
Enter Binance, enter institutional funds - new players and new intentions.
Extraction became the focus.
This is why we built Speculate.
Crypto sold retail a fantasy. They told retail open access, 24/7 markets, 100x leverage.
What it actually delivered was the most efficient extraction machine ever built. Funding rates bleed you while you sleep. Liquidation engines hunt your stops. Market makers see your flow before you do.
The exchange holds your funds, takes the other side of your trade, and profits whether you win or lose.
Perps aren’t a fair fight — they’re negative-sum by design, and retail is the resource being mined.
Speculate ends that.
We don’t touch your money. Ever.
Speculate is fully non-custodial. We never hold, move, or have access to user funds. When you enter a competition, your buy-in goes straight into an on-chain smart contract — not a Speculate wallet, not an exchange treasury, not an account we control.
The funds sit locked in that contract until the competition completes, at which point they disperse automatically to the winners based on performance. No withdrawal queues.
No frozen accounts. No trusting us to stay solvent. The code does what the code says, and you can verify it on-chain.
Real money in. Simulated capital to trade. This is the part that kills extraction at the root.
You put up a real buy-in to enter — that’s the stake, that’s the prize pool. But inside the competition, you’re trading with simulated capital. That means there’s no real position to liquidate out from under you, no funding rate quietly draining your balance, no spread or slippage skimming every tick.
You compete on one thing only: how well you trade. The buy-in is fixed and known. The skill is what decides who walks away with the pool.
How this differs from the entire space: The rest of crypto — every CEX, every perp DEX, every leveraged casino — is built so the platform extracts from the participant. Speculate is built so participants compete with each other, and the platform takes none of the position risk and none of your capital. We’re not the house betting against you. We’re the locked, transparent contract holding the pot until the best trader wins.
This is the end of the extraction era for perp trading. Real stakes, real competition, real payouts — without the hidden machinery that was always quietly trading against you.
Speculate is the way.
Sincerely,
SwingXBT 🫡
2 years later… I’m back apes and friends.
I’ve been building for over a year and recently launched @SpeculateTrade - perp trading competitions.
Why did I build Speculate and what is it?
Let’s start with a little bit about myself.
The start of my crypto journey dates back to 2014/2015 when BTC was still frowned upon as an illegal tender.
The decisions of many, made by a few - this never chimed very well with me. That’s where my views and beliefs began to shift towards being pro-decentralization. Bringing power back to the people in everyday life was important to me.
When I began purchasing BTC it was a form of supporting the ideology of decentralization. Minimal use-cases for BTC at the time but it was a first glimpse at what the world was beginning to recognize as the decentralized financial system.
As time progressed, the belief strengthened and my contributions to the space began to increase. I was involving myself in every aspect of voting in the early EIP’s of the ETH ecosystem to supporting BTC and ETH infrastructure by mining.
I was an avid holder and believer…they classified my breed of individuals as “diamond hands”.
As years continued to progress in crypto, the ideology and fundamentals remained. Allowing us to focus on the mission without any focus on the price.
As time went on, the investments that were originally made for an ideology became a pathway to financial freedom in the real world. An ability to take control of my schedule and to be able to dictate how I spend my time.
I was able to retire from my short lived career in crypto and from my previous as a mechatronics engineer.
In 2021, I began to focus largely on real-world asset diversification. Taking some well deserved profits and ensuring I have a quality life with security.
I came back into crypto to involve myself with NFT’s from 2022 to 2024, largely avoiding social media (X, Instagram, etc.) channels and staying primarily looped in to the NFT communities via Discord etc.
I went through my fair share of Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, etc.
This was my first X that I made to try and build a persona for my crypto personality to live through.
This was short lived as I realized my passion wasn’t for fame or attention, so this social media stint would be rather short lived.
My passion for the space came from the innovation and creativity that lived in the individual on the decentralized ecosystems.
Over the last years, the ecosystem has changed.
Enter Binance, enter institutional funds - new players and new intentions.
Extraction became the focus.
This is why we built Speculate.
Crypto sold retail a fantasy. They told retail open access, 24/7 markets, 100x leverage.
What it actually delivered was the most efficient extraction machine ever built. Funding rates bleed you while you sleep. Liquidation engines hunt your stops. Market makers see your flow before you do.
The exchange holds your funds, takes the other side of your trade, and profits whether you win or lose.
Perps aren’t a fair fight — they’re negative-sum by design, and retail is the resource being mined.
Since I got so many DM’s about #DePin
Here a one-liner:
The idea behind DePIN is to decentralize the ownership and operation of physical infrastructure, allowing individuals or organizations to contribute to and benefit from these networks in a decentralized manner.
🦍🔥