The world of DeFi has been creating many opportunities to monetize all kinds of actions through the introduction of blockchain and cryptocurrency, which many call the X2Earn model. The idea behind this model is to reward people engaging in activities such as creating content on social media, gaming, consuming educational content and many others.
Web3 gamers are very familiar with this concept, as Play2Earn is one of the biggest segments in the X2Earn model. Making money while having fun playing games is the dream of many and while it's debatable whether web3 games are actually fun, the potential of this idea is huge.
One of the latest additions to the X2Earn "family" is Trade2Earn, which aims to reward people who engage in prop trading.
What is Prop Trading
For those who are not familiar with this concept, proprietary trading, or prop trading, occurs when traders trade financial instruments using a firm's money as opposed to customer funds.
The idea is quite simple: firms make their funds available to traders who use them to make a profit, which is shared between themselves and the firm.
The Prop Trading market moves close to $7 billion a year, and a new firm is looking to take a piece of it. With a twist.
FX Guys and Trade2Earn
FX Guys is a Propietary Trading firm looking to revolutionize TradFi Prop Trading with DeFi capabilities, giving birth to what they call Trade2Earn.
In essence, what they propose is funding traders in exchange for a share of their profits while rewarding them with their $FXG token.
According to them, every trade, profitable or not, is eligible to earn $FXG, meaning you can potentially be rewarded just by engaging with the platform and if you perform well, you can "double-dip" by taking a share of your profits and earning the token on top of it.
According to their website, FX Guys splits profits 80/20 in the trader's favour. I'm not familiar with this market and a quick search revealed that on the traditional Prop Trading market, there are many compensation models for prop traders and, although I found a couple of sources mentioning that 80% or even 90% are typical fees, I don't feel qualified to assess whether what FX Guys propose is a good deal or not.
Why fund traders?
FX Guys claim good traders can be found anywhere in the world, and the internet provides the potential to uncover this talent. According to them, the main thing that stops these traders from thriving is access to capital and they believe they can break that barrier.
Getting started seems to be straightforward, although it is not free. Candidates must pay a fee ranging from $50 to $1100, depending on the chosen category, and then they must go through a series of trading challenges. There is no substantial information provided on what those challenges consist of, only that they are meant to evaluate the candidate's trading and risk management skills.
Once approved, traders will be granted access to a funded account of up to $500k per user. There are no KYC requirements, and candidates don't need to have any previous trading experience, although that is an obvious advantage for the challenges.
Final thoughts
Blockchain and crypto currency enable tokenization of just about anything these days and that leads to the creation of all sorts of monetized activities.
Trade2Earn is one of the newest editions to this "family" and it can be a good way for traders to monetize their skills and earn more rewards on top of the profits of their trades.
FX Guys believes there are many talented traders out there who don't have a chance to shine because they can't get access to capital and they are trying to bridge that gap with their Prop Trading program.
If you are a trader or wish to become one, it may be worth taking a look.