Twenty traders gathered in Bali in August for the final of Alpha Arena S03, competing live in a simulated trading environment for a share of $100,000.

The competition, backed by MEXC Ventures and held during CoinFest Asia, was won by Japan’s Arumando, followed by Murasaki Trades from the Philippines and Coin6097 from South Korea. 

For MEXC CEO Vugar Usi, the competition proved that a trader can enter the market with a small amount of money, catch the right trade, and become wealthy almost overnight – an idea that has long been fundamental to crypto’s appeal.

Exposing Trading for What It Is

During Alpha Arena, Usi pointed to the difference between watching traders during an entire session and following them on social media, where successful trades can receive far more attention than the losses, uncertainty, and emotional decisions surrounding them.

At the Bali competition, traders could be observed throughout the process. Organizers even measured participants’ heart rates, allowing viewers to see how they reacted as markets moved and whether they followed their original strategy or made decisions under pressure.

“You see what kind of decisions they make. Are they panicking? Are they panic buying or panic selling? Are they good at following their instinct, or are they more practical?” Usi said.

That is part of why he believes trading has an unusually low barrier to entry compared with many professional fields. Someone can study markets independently, develop a methodology, and potentially compete against traders with formal financial training and access to far more expensive technology.

For exchanges trying to attract the next generation of users, this also changes the job. Aside from access to markets, traders also want information, analytical tools, and products that help them interpret what is happening once they arrive.

On Zero Trading Fees

Competition has become particularly fierce as major exchanges fight over trading costs.

MEXC has made zero-fee trading a big part of its strategy. Its current offering includes zero maker and taker fees across spot markets, alongside selected futures products, although eligibility and fee arrangements vary between products and campaigns. The exchange said its zero-fee initiatives saved 3.44 million users approximately 1.1 billion USDT during 2025.

Usi argues that reducing price to zero forces exchanges to compete elsewhere.

“When price is zero, it means the user is not choosing you because of just price,” he said. “That is where the competition actually starts.”

Once an exchange cannot meaningfully undercut another platform on fees, he argues, product quality, speed, available markets, trading tools, and other user benefits become more important.

Of course, the company now offers exposure to equities through several formats, including more than 300 stock and index futures, over 200 tokenized stocks, and more than 7,000 global stocks and ETFs through RealStocks, according to figures released by MEXC.

It forms part of Usi’s longer-term plan to take MEXC beyond the conventional definition of a crypto exchange.

AI Could Give Retail Traders Institutional-Level Tools

Artificial intelligence was a big part of the conversation with Usi. 

His background in traditional finance influences how he thinks about trading technology. Professional firms have historically paid large sums for products such as Bloomberg Terminal because access to data, communication tools, and analytics can materially improve how traders process information.

Naturally, retail traders are put at a disadvantage. 

Usi believes AI offers an opportunity to reduce that divide by taking capabilities that once required specialist software and presenting them to individual traders at a much lower cost.

In his own trading, he said he uses an AI assistant to study order books and identify where capital is concentrated, something that would be difficult for a person to continuously calculate across large amounts of market data.

“The opportunity with AI is not just to automate things,” he said, describing its potential to bring institutional-grade trading tools to retail users.

Demand appears to be coming from users themselves. Usi said a recent campaign inviting customer feedback produced more than 2,500 pages of responses, with AI emerging as the most common subject.

The important question will be how far exchanges take that assistance. Tools that summarize data, monitor markets, and surface relevant information can support traders without removing the need for judgment. Alpha Arena itself demonstrated how differently people can interpret the same market even when they have access to similar information.

Competition for Trust

Better tools and cheaper trading have limited value if users are uncomfortable holding assets on an exchange, particularly after a succession of failures and security incidents across the crypto industry.

Usi said transparency has therefore become one of his priorities since taking over as CEO of MEXC in April 2026. The appointment was something of a homecoming for BeInCrypto, where he previously served as Chief Marketing Officer before later joining Bitget and eventually MEXC.

“I don’t want the user to assume trust. I want the user to be comfortable,” he said.

MEXC publishes monthly Proof of Reserves reports audited by blockchain security company Hacken. Its August disclosure reported reserve ratios of 115% for USDT, 114% for USDC, and above 100% for other reported major assets.

The exchange has also been building its Guardian Fund. MEXC announced in May that it plans to expand the fund from $100 million toward $500 million over two years and acquired 1,000 BTC as part of its reserve arrangements.

Separately, its futures insurance fund stood at approximately 751 million USDT in its August disclosure.

Traders Want Different Things, Depending on the Market

The Bali event also gave MEXC a close look at traders across Asia-Pacific, where Usi sees different economic motivations from those common in wealthier markets.

Where disposable income is lower, a conventional investment returning several percentage points per year may make relatively little difference to someone’s finances. Some traders therefore accept considerably greater risk in search of returns large enough to have an immediate impact.

In wealthier countries, people who have already accumulated substantial assets may care more about preserving that wealth and earning steadier returns.

“In developing markets, people are more prone to make much riskier, much more leveraged trades,” Usi said, contrasting wealth generation with the greater emphasis on wealth preservation he sees in developed economies.

Usi previously worked on institutional adoption, but said one reason he joined MEXC was the company’s heavier emphasis on individual users.

“Retail comes first,” he said, noting that institutional participation is becoming a major source of crypto trading activity and exchanges are expanding products aimed at professional capital.

The Exchange of 2031?

Earlier in his career, Usi expected exchanges to gradually resemble banks. Now, he argues that the opposite has happened as banking apps have added investing, crypto, commodities, payments, and other financial products.

“In the next five years … we will be seeing these financial super apps, super platforms, gateways where we can meet all our financial needs in a single place,” he said.

MEXC is already pursuing parts of that model through crypto trading, stock products, yield products, AI-assisted trading tools, and its planned card offering.

Whether users ultimately want all of those services from one company remains an open question. What is already becoming apparent, however, is that cryptocurrency exchanges are competing across far more than the number of tokens they list.

Alpha Arena saw how traders from different countries entered the same market with the same objective, yet used different strategies and reacted differently as circumstances changed.

The exchanges serving them face a similar contest. Once access becomes cheap and trading fees approach zero, differentiation has to come from somewhere else.

Source: BeInCrypto