Contest Rules

1. Definitions

These words have one meaning on the site, in the app and in every message from support.

Simulated account: a trading account the platform creates for one ticket. It holds a virtual balance, follows the contest's rule set (allowed tickers, leverage cap, liquidation level, time window) and is isolated: nothing that happens on one account touches another, and nothing on it touches any real market. Ticket: one paid entry to one contest. Buying a ticket creates one simulated account. A Counter ticket has a fixed price, a Journey ticket is your stake, a Career ticket is the $50 entry. Virtual balance: the starting balance of a simulated account. It exists only inside the contest and is never paid out. Round: one Counter contest, from its open to its bell. Bell: the moment a round ends. Positions are valued at the bell and the ranking becomes final. Entry time: the second at which the platform records your ticket as paid. It is the tie-breaker. Pool: the sum of every ticket fee paid into one round, re-buys included. Equity: the virtual balance plus the unrealised profit or loss of the account's open positions, valued at the platform's recorded prices. Return: (equity − starting virtual balance) ÷ starting virtual balance, as a percentage. Every ranking, ladder step and level is measured in return. Leverage: the multiple of the virtual balance a position may control. The cap is a rule of each contest. Liquidation: the automatic closing of a simulated account when its equity reaches the contest's liquidation level. A liquidated account cannot trade again. Cash-out: ending a Journey run by your own choice before its 24 hours are over. Ladder: Journey's reward table. Level: one +5 % step of return in Career. Win: a Journey run that ends at +10 % or more. Trophy: a permanent badge on your profile. A later loss never removes it. Settlement: the step after the bell, or after the end of a run, in which the platform fixes the result from its recorded data, signs the ranking, publishes the books and pays the prizes. Service fee: the 15 % of a Counter pool that Propy Market keeps. Void: a round or run cancelled under these rules. Every ticket of a void round is refunded.

2. What is true of every contest

Every contest is a contest of skill on a simulated account. Propy Market never buys or sells a real security, future, option or crypto-asset for you, mirrors nothing to a brokerage and holds no balance for you. You buy a ticket, you trade, and if these rules award you a prize it is paid out.

The rules of a contest are published before you enter, are the same for every entrant and contain no random element. Nothing is drawn: the ticker of a round is chosen by the platform from its published universe and announced when the round opens, the ranking is arithmetic on recorded prices, and every reward is a fixed figure in a table you can read before you pay.

A prize comes from one of two things. In Counter, from your rank among the tickets of your round. In Journey and Career, from the return your own account reaches, measured against the table published for that contest. In every contest the prize follows from what you did on your account, under the same rules as everyone else.

Values set per round are shown on the round card before you buy and do not change once the round is open. For Counter they are: the ticker, the ticket price, the virtual balance, the leverage cap, the liquidation level, the time entries close, the ticket cap, the re-buy cap, the outage limit, and either the minimum field or the guaranteed pool. For Journey: the day's ticker list and the top reward. For Career: the starting virtual balance.

The Terms of Service, the State Eligibility page, the Responsible Play page and the Privacy Policy apply alongside these rules. Where a round card and this page disagree, this page governs; where the Terms of Service describe a figure differently from this page, this page governs.

3. Counter 30 and Counter 60

Counter is a round on one ticker, played against the other tickets of the same round. Two sizes run side by side.

Counter 30 — Round: opens every hour on the hour and on the half hour; the bell rings 30 minutes after the open. Counter 30 — Ticket: $25. Counter 60 — Round: opens every hour on the hour; the bell rings 60 minutes after the open. Counter 60 — Ticket: $100. Ticker: one per round, chosen by the platform from its published universe and announced when the round opens; the same ticker for every ticket in the round. Virtual balance: the same for every ticket in the round, shown on the round card (launch setting: $1,000). Leverage: up to 100× of the virtual balance. Liquidation level: shown on the round card, as a percentage of the virtual balance. Entries: open at the round's open and close N minutes before the bell; N is shown on the round card (launch setting: 5 minutes). Tickets per user: the cap on live tickets held at one time, shown on the round card (launch setting: 10). Re-buys: tickets bought after one of your tickets was liquidated, up to the re-buy cap on the round card (launch setting: 10 per round). Minimum field: a number of tickets shown on the round card, or a guaranteed pool instead. Prizes: 1st 60 %, 2nd 20 %, 3rd 5 % of the pool. Service fee: 15 % of the pool. Payout: at settlement, right after the bell, to the wallet address linked to the entry (section 7).

A round is scheduled only while its ticker's market is open. Crypto tickers trade around the clock; stock tickers run during the exchange session.

3.1 Entering and re-buys

Buying a ticket creates a fresh simulated account with the round's virtual balance. You can trade on it from the moment it is created until the bell. Each ticket trades on its own: positions, equity and liquidation are per ticket, never pooled across your tickets.

You may hold several tickets in one round, up to the ticket cap. Every ticket is an entry with its own entry time, and every ticket ranks on its own.

Entries close at the time shown on the round card. A payment that is confirmed after entries close is not an entry: it is refunded to its source. A card payment confirms within seconds; a crypto payment confirms when the platform sees the transfer confirmed on chain, so send early.

After a liquidation you may buy another ticket in the same round — a re-buy — while entries are open and while you are under both the re-buy cap and the ticket cap. A re-buy is a new ticket with a new account and a new entry time. Before every re-buy the screen shows your spend for the day and the week against your limits; a re-buy that would pass a limit is refused (see the Responsible Play page).

3.2 Liquidation

A ticket is liquidated when its equity falls to the round's liquidation level. Liquidation is decided on the platform's recorded prices and fires only after two consecutive recorded prints past the level (section 6). All positions on the ticket close at the recorded price, the ticket is out of the trading, and it cannot trade again in the round.

A liquidated ticket stays in the results. Its return is fixed at the figure recorded at liquidation, and it ranks by that return like every other ticket, ties broken by earlier entry (section 3.3).

3.3 Ranking and ties

At the bell every open position on every ticket is valued at the last recorded price before the bell. Each ticket's return is computed, and the tickets of the round are ranked from the highest return to the lowest.

Ties: two tickets with the same return are ordered by entry time, the earlier entry higher. Return is compared exactly, to the cent of equity, so a tie is rare; when it happens the entry time is the only rule.

Every ticket ranks on its own. One user may hold several places, including several prize places.

Tickets of platform accounts and of persons who cannot win (section 8) are listed in the results but skipped for prizes: the remaining tickets take the prize places as if those tickets had not entered.

3.4 The pool and the prizes

Pool: every ticket fee of the round, re-buys included. 1st place: 60 % of the pool. 2nd place: 20 % of the pool. 3rd place: 5 % of the pool. Service fee: 15 % of the pool, kept by Propy Market. Example: 40 tickets in a Counter 30 round make a $1,000 pool — $600 to 1st, $200 to 2nd, $50 to 3rd, $150 service fee.

The pool figure shown in the room is the money actually paid into the round, card and crypto tickets alike, held for the round until settlement; the prizes are paid from it at the bell [COUNSEL].

A prize place with no ticket to take it — possible only in a guaranteed round with fewer than three tickets — is not paid and does not move to another place. Prizes are paid to the cent; a fraction of a cent is rounded down.

3.5 Minimum field and guaranteed pool

Every round card shows one of two things: a minimum field, or a guaranteed pool.

Minimum field: if, when entries close, the round holds fewer tickets than the minimum, the round is void. Every ticket is refunded to its payment source; there is no ranking, no prize and no service fee.

Guaranteed pool: the round runs whatever the field. The prizes are calculated on the larger of the actual pool and the guaranteed figure, and Propy Market funds any difference. The service fee is 15 % of the ticket fees actually paid, never of the guarantee.

3.6 Voids and refunds

A round is void when any of these happens before settlement:

Field: fewer tickets than the minimum when entries close, with no guaranteed pool shown. Feed: the platform's price feed for the ticker stops delivering prints for longer than the outage limit on the round card (launch setting: 5 minutes) while the ticker's market is open. Market: the ticker's market halts or closes before the bell. Data: a data error in the round's price record is identified before settlement (section 6). Platform: a fault on the platform prevents settlement on a complete price record.

A void refunds every ticket of the round in full to its payment source — liquidated tickets and re-buys included. Nothing is ranked, no prize is paid and no service fee is kept. The void is announced in the room and by e-mail, with its reason.

A round that has been settled is not reopened, except as the fair-play rules (section 10) and the disputes process (section 11) provide.

4. Journey

Journey is a 24-hour run on one ticker of your choice, with a reward ladder on the return you reach. The reward is paid by Propy Market from its own funds, on your own result; no other entrant's result affects it [COUNSEL].

Ticker: one, your choice from the day's list — four lists of 15 names, refreshed daily and shown on the Journey card. Ticket: your stake, from $100 to $10,000, chosen by you. Virtual balance: equal to your stake. Duration: 24 hours from your entry time. Leverage: up to 5× of the virtual balance. Liquidation: when equity falls to 80 % of the starting balance (a return of −20 %). Cash-out: at any moment before the 24 hours end. Reward: the ladder step at or below your return when the run ends, times your stake.

4.1 The ladder

+10 % to +19.99 %: 1× your stake (your stake back). +20 % to +29.99 %: 2× your stake. +30 % to +39.99 %: 3× your stake. +40 % to +49.99 %: 4× your stake. +50 % to +59.99 %: 5× your stake. +60 % to +69.99 %: 6× your stake. +70 % to +79.99 %: 7× your stake. +80 % to +89.99 %: 8× your stake. +90 % to +99.99 %: 9× your stake. +100 % and above: the top reward shown on the Journey card before you enter (launch setting: 10× your stake). Below +10 %: no reward.

The reward replaces the stake: at 1× you receive your stake back, at 3× you receive three times it. A run that ends below +10 % pays nothing and the stake is not returned. The reward is a prize and is paid as section 7 describes; a reward of $3,000 or more needs the identity verification first.

Example: a $500 stake cashed out at +23 % pays 2× = $1,000. The same run ended by the clock at +9 % pays nothing.

4.2 How a run ends

Cash-out: you press Cash out. Every open position closes at the last recorded price, the run's return is fixed at that moment and the reward is the step at or below it. The 24-hour mark: every open position closes at the last recorded price before the mark; the return and the reward are fixed the same way. Liquidation: equity reached 80 % of the starting balance, decided on two consecutive recorded prints. The run ends at −20 % with no reward. Void: a feed outage longer than the limit on the Journey card, a market halt or a data error (section 6) voids the run; the stake is refunded and the run is not counted.

Only the return at the end of the run counts. A run that touched +40 % and ended at +12 % pays 1×; a run that touched +10 % and ended at +4 % pays nothing. Cash-out is how you lock a level.

Opening a position needs a fresh recorded print, so while a stock's market is closed you cannot open a new position on it. You can always cash out, and the 24-hour clock keeps running through a market close (section 6).

4.3 Wins and milestones

A run that ends at +10 % or more — any run that pays a reward — is a win. Wins are counted per run over the life of your account, whatever the stake. A void run is not a run.

5 wins: a trophy and VIP status on your profile. 10 wins: $10,000 and a trophy. 50 wins: $50,000 and a trophy. 100 wins: $100,000 and a trophy.

Each milestone is reached once per account and its reward is paid once, at the settlement of the run that reached it, to the wallet address linked to that run's entry. A milestone reward is a prize: the $3,000 verification and the tax rules of section 7 apply.

5. Career

Career is the long game: one account, up to five tickers at a time, no clock, and a trophy for every +5 % you reach. Its only cash reward is at level 20, paid by Propy Market from its own funds on your own result [COUNSEL].

Entry: $50, the ticket. Virtual balance: shown on the Career card before you enter. Tickers: up to five open at a time, any from the platform's published universe; buy and sell freely. Time limit: none. Leverage: up to 5× of the virtual balance. Liquidation: when equity falls to 20 % of the starting balance (a return of −80 %). Level: one per +5 % of return; you reach level n the first time your return reaches +5 × n %. Trophy: one per level, permanent. Level 20 (+100 %): $1,000, a special trophy and the 'real trader' status with access to special events. Careers per user: one running Career at a time.

Levels are measured on the account's return as a whole, not per ticker, on the platform's recorded prices. A level, its trophy and the status are kept once reached, even if the return later falls. Level 20 is the last level that carries a cash reward; the trophies continue for every further +5 %.

A Career ends when the account is liquidated, when you end it from the Account page, or when a self-exclusion starts (see the Responsible Play page). Your trophies, levels and status stay on your profile. A new Career costs a new $50 entry and starts at level 0. The $1,000 is paid once per Career, at the moment level 20 is first reached, to the wallet address linked to that Career's entry; the Career continues after it.

The Career account's balance is virtual. Apart from the level-20 reward, nothing on a Career is ever paid out.

6. Prices and settlement

Every contest runs on the platform's own price feed: dated prints from the platform's market-data providers, each carrying its provider's trade time. The platform keeps one price per ticker — the newest print it holds — and keeps the full print record of every round and run.

Fills: a market order fills at the platform's recorded price at the moment the platform processes it. Opening a position needs a fresh print: a recorded price no older than two minutes. Closing a position, cashing out, and the valuation at the bell or at the end of a run use the last recorded print.

Triggers: a liquidation, and any stop or target you set, fires only after two consecutive, distinct recorded prints past its line. The same print re-read is one print; a print back on the other side of the line disarms it. The fill is at the recorded price at the moment it fires.

Final: the platform's recorded prices are the prices of the contest. They decide every fill, every liquidation, every level, every ranking and every reward, and they are final. A difference between the platform's price and a quote you saw elsewhere — another vendor, a broker's screen, an exchange's official print — is not an error under these rules.

Data error: a print or a gap in the platform's own record that the platform identifies as wrong before settlement — for example a print attributed to the wrong ticker, or a provider print that arrived with the wrong trade time. A data error voids the affected Counter round or Journey run (sections 3.6 and 4.2). On a Career it reverses the fill, level or liquidation the error produced; if the account cannot be restored, the Career is void and its entry refunded, and the trophies earned before the error stay.

Outage: the feed for a ticker stops delivering prints while that ticker's market is open. In Counter and Journey an outage longer than the limit on the card voids the round or run. On a Career nothing opens, nothing triggers and no level is awarded on that ticker until prints resume; nothing is voided.

Settlement is one step, run once per round or run from the recorded data: the valuation, the ranking (or the ladder step, or the level), the prize rows and the public book. The ranking is signed and stored. A settlement that cannot complete on a complete price record is a void, not a guess.

7. Prizes, payouts and refunds

Counter prize: paid at settlement, right after the bell. Journey reward and milestone reward: paid at the settlement of the run. Career level-20 reward: paid when level 20 is first reached. Where: to the wallet address linked to the entry — the sending address of a crypto ticket, or the MBW Connect wallet linked to your account for a card ticket — in USDC or USDT as shown on the ticket. Under $3,000: paid automatically. $3,000 or more: held until you complete a short identity verification through MBW Connect, then paid. Tax: where the IRS reporting threshold applies — currently $600 of prizes in a calendar year — we ask for a taxpayer form before the payout that crosses it and file the required information return [COUNSEL]. Refunds: to the original payment source — a card refund through Stripe, or a transfer back to the sending wallet address.

A held prize stays reserved for you until the verification is completed; it is not forfeited for waiting [COUNSEL]. A verification that fails is answered with its reason, and the prize stays held until a verification succeeds. A prize won on a ticket that was not eligible to enter is treated as section 8 says.

A prize is paid once, to one address, and every payout is recorded against its ticket. If a transfer fails for a technical reason it is retried to the same address; it is never redirected.

Ticket prices and stakes are paid in full at entry; there is no account balance on Propy Market to fund or to withdraw. Card payments go through Stripe, and the platform never sees or stores your card number.

8. Who may enter, and the spend limits

The full conditions are in the Terms of Service and on the State Eligibility page; the ones that decide a contest are these.

Age: 18 or older, or older where your state requires it [COUNSEL]. Location: not a resident of, and not physically located in, a state on the State Eligibility list when buying a ticket [COUNSEL]. The list may change; location is determined from your IP address and other signals. One account: one account per person. A second account is a fair-play breach (section 10). Staff: employees and contractors of Propy Market and the members of their households may enter but cannot win a prize; their tickets are skipped for prizes as section 3.3 describes. Platform accounts: accounts run by the platform itself are marked as such in the room, play for display only and never take a prize place. Sanctions: wallet addresses are screened against sanctions lists (OFAC) at entry; an account held by a person on a sanctions list is refused.

A prize won on a ticket that was not eligible to enter — a restricted location, an under-age player, a sanctioned address, a second account — is not paid. The ticket fee is refunded only for an honest mistake about location; a hidden location, a false age, a sanctions match or any fair-play breach gets no refund, as the Terms of Service set out [COUNSEL].

Spend limits: you set a daily and a weekly cap on ticket spend (the platform applies a default until you do), you can take a cool-off period and you can self-exclude. The platform may apply its own limits as well. Your running spend is shown before every re-buy, and a ticket that would pass a limit is refused. The Responsible Play page explains every control.

9. What is public

Propy Market is played in the open. These are public to every visitor:

Usernames: every entrant's username, in the room, the results and the leaderboards. Rankings: the live leaderboard of a round (the top tickets by return) and the final ranking of every round, run and Career level. Finished books: after the bell, after a run ends, or after a Career ends, every ticket's simulated book — every trade with its time, side, size, leverage and recorded price, and the equity curve — with a replay on the chart. Profiles: trophies, levels, wins and win rate. The room gauge: the entrants' aggregate long and short exposure and the average leverage on each side, delayed 30 to 60 seconds, as totals only — never per ticket, never per user. Room chat: messages posted in a challenge room are visible to everyone in it.

Not public: your name, e-mail address, payment details, wallet address and balance, your identity documents, and whether a prize of yours is held for verification. A live book — the positions of a ticket while its round, run or Career is still running — is visible only to its owner.

10. Fair play and penalties

A ranking is only worth something if every ticket was traded by one person, by hand, on the same information as everyone else. These are breaches:

Automation: any bot, script, API client or tool that places, modifies or closes orders for you, or reads the room to do so. Multiple accounts: holding or using more than one account, yourself or through another person, including to pass a cap or a limit. Collusion: coordinating trades or results with another entrant, sharing or splitting a prize by agreement, holding a ticket for someone else, or any arrangement that makes two tickets play as one. Non-public information: trading a contest on material information about the ticker that is not public [COUNSEL]. Exploits: using a platform fault, a stale or erroneous price, or any behaviour of the system that these rules do not describe, to gain a return. Evasion: entering from a restricted location through a VPN, a proxy or a false address; buying a ticket with another person's card or wallet; selling or transferring a ticket. Chat abuse: scams, links to outside offers, impersonation or harassment in a room (the Terms of Service carry the full chat policy).

Detection uses device, IP, wallet, payment and trading-pattern signals and a review by the platform's risk desk. A review may hold a payout until it ends.

Found before settlement: the ticket is removed from the ranking, the remaining tickets rank as if it had never entered, and the ticket's fee stays in the pool and is not refunded [COUNSEL]. Found after settlement: the prize is forfeited. The remaining tickets are re-ranked as if the ticket had never entered and each entrant who moves up is paid the difference. If the prize was already paid out, we recover it and withhold any pending payout to that account until it is recovered [COUNSEL]. Repeated or serious breach: the account is closed, its wins, trophies, levels and status are removed, and pending payouts are forfeited [COUNSEL]. Journey and Career: a breach voids the run or the Career — no reward, no win, no level, and no refund of the stake or the entry.

A penalty applies to the account that breached and to every account found to be the same person. We tell you which rule and which evidence by e-mail, and you can dispute it under section 11.

11. Disputes

Write to support@propymarket.com from your account's e-mail address within 7 days of the settlement of the round or run, naming the round or the ticket and what you believe is wrong. A result not disputed within 7 days is final [COUNSEL].

The platform's recorded data decides: the print record, the order log, the ranking as signed at settlement and the payment records. We answer by e-mail with the data that answers the point. If the review finds an error on our side, we correct the result and pay any prize the rules required; a settlement error is corrected for every entrant of that round, whether or not they disputed.

A prize already paid to another entrant is not taken back because of a correction; it is taken back only under the fair-play rules.

Binding arbitration and class-action waiver: [COUNSEL — placeholder. The Terms of Service will state whether a dispute that support does not resolve goes to binding individual arbitration, whether a class-action waiver applies, and the governing law and forum. Until counsel decides, this section is the support process above and nothing more.]

12. Changes to these rules

These rules are version 0.1, dated 22 October 2026 — a draft for counsel review, not yet in force. Every later version carries its date and a change log at the foot of this page, and we announce a change by e-mail to every account.

A Counter round runs on the rules and the card values in force when it opened. A Journey run runs on the rules in force at its entry time, for the whole run. A Career has no end, so a rule change can reach a running Career: it takes effect 30 days after it is published, never removes a trophy, a level, a status or a reward already earned, and you may end the Career before it takes effect [COUNSEL].

13. Operator and contact

These rules are published by [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME], a company organised in [STATE OF ORGANISATION] with its registered address at [REGISTERED ADDRESS], the operator of Propy Market at propymarket.com (proppymarket.com redirects here). Questions about a contest: support@propymarket.com.