I recently saw this trading competition and did some careful calculations, and I feel the participation logic is a bit absurd.

There is one day left until the deadline, and based on the rankings, the reward mechanism indeed has issues. Taking the first place as an example, you need to complete a trading volume of 22 million to earn a $2,800 reward, but just the trading fees alone amount to about $10,000, plus the cost of hedging which might start at $5,000. Calculating this way, the costs alone are more than five times the reward. If the market price fluctuates and you add some hedging risk, a slight drop of half the value could lead to a total loss.

Even more ridiculous are the tiers from 6th to 20th place. To reach a trading volume of $2 million, the reward is less than $300. This is clearly a pure loss-making participation. With only one day left until the event ends, if more people continue to compete in these last two days, the competition standards will only skyrocket, and participants will lose more and more.

If someone actually makes money from this kind of activity, how can their logic be self-consistent? Is it all just to boost the leaderboard’s popularity? Or is there some trick I haven't thought of?