League Re-Entry, Your First League Free, and Crypto Pick Three

Published August 27, 2026 · MongoTrader Team

Three changes to how leagues work on MongoTrader: you can now re-enter a league mid-competition to reset your standing, the entry fee on your very first league is waived, and Crypto Pick Three gives you a draft-style way to compete in crypto. Here's how each one works and when it makes sense to use it.

Leagues are the competitive core of MongoTrader. You enter with $MON, trade real-time markets with simulated money over a fixed window, and get ranked on a live leaderboard by percentage return. The format has stayed deliberately simple, and these three updates keep it that way — each one changes a single rule and leaves the rest alone. The one with the most strategic depth is re-entry, so we'll start there.

League re-entry: a fresh baseline, mid-competition

Until now, a bad first hour in a league was a bad league. If you got caught on the wrong side of a move early, your only options were to grind back or wait for the next one. Re-entry gives you a third option.

If you're already in a league, you can re-enter it for the full entry fee again. When you do, your performance baseline resets to 0% at your portfolio's current value. From that moment on, the league measures your return from where you are now, not from where you started. Re-entry resets the baseline, not the portfolio — it changes where you're measured from, not what you hold.

The rules are tight on purpose:

• Timing. Re-entry is only allowed while the league is open or trading. Once a league locks, it's off the table.
• Limit. A maximum of three re-entries per league.
• Cooldown. Five minutes between re-entries.
• Endgame. No re-entry in the final 20% of the trading window. In an hourly league, that means the last twelve minutes are locked.
• Cost. The full entry fee, every time.
• Exclusions. Not available in Crypto Pick Three leagues.
• Where. From the league page on web and iOS. There is no API endpoint — an agent can read a league's re-entry rules in the reentry block of GET /v1/leagues/:id, but re-entering is a human-only action.

When re-entry is worth it

Re-entry is a tool for one specific situation: a deep drawdown early in the window. The arithmetic of recovering from a loss is unforgiving — a portfolio down 20% needs a 25% gain just to get back to flat, and it needs that before it can start competing for the top of the table. If most of the trading window is still ahead of you, paying the entry fee to compete from 0% can be a better bet than paying nothing to climb out of a hole.

It is not a tool for small dips. Spending a full entry fee to erase a 1% drawdown is rarely a good trade, and the three-per-league cap is a ceiling, not a target. Be honest with yourself about why you're reaching for it. If the answer is "to make it back," that is the same impulse as revenge trading, and re-entry will not fix what caused the drawdown in the first place. Reset your baseline only when you've also reset your plan.

One more thing to keep in mind: re-entry puts you at 0%, and every player above 0% is still ahead of you. It's a clean slate, not a lead.

Your first league is on us

Your very first league entry ever has its $MON entry fee waived. It's a career-first waiver — one time, on the first league you enter — and it applies to the whole platform, not to a specific league.

The reason is simple. $MON accrues daily — 3 a day on Free, 10 on Premium, 30 on Max — and we don't want a new player waiting to bank enough to try a league. Competition is the fastest way to learn what the platform is for. Solo paper trading teaches you the mechanics; a live leaderboard teaches you discipline, because your position sizing and your exits suddenly have consequences that show up in a ranking. We'd rather you find that out on day one.

There's nothing to claim or activate. Sign up, head to the leagues page, enter one, and the fee on that first entry is waived. After that, entries cost $MON like any other player's.

Crypto Pick Three

Crypto Pick Three is a draft-style, head-to-head crypto league mode. At entry, you pick three cryptocurrencies. MongoTrader builds a locked portfolio from those three picks, and you ride the window. Standings rank by percentage return, exactly like any other league.

What makes it different is what it takes away. In a standard league you're managing entries, exits, sizing, and timing across the whole window. In Crypto Pick Three, all of that collapses into a single decision made up front: which three coins do you want exposure to for the next hour, day, or week? The portfolio is locked once it's built, so there's no execution to manage — just the quality of your picks against everyone else's.

That makes it a good fit for a few kinds of players:

• Crypto-first traders who want a pure test of selection without the noise of intraday execution.
• Players short on time who can't sit at a screen for the length of a window but still want to compete.
• Agent builders — Crypto Pick Three has its own API endpoint, POST /v1/leagues/:id/enter-crypto-pick-three, so an automated strategy that ranks coins can put its picks on a live leaderboard. See the API docs for details.

Because the portfolio is locked, re-entry does not apply in Crypto Pick Three leagues. Your three picks are your entry, and the window decides the rest.

A quick refresher on how leagues work

If you're new, or you've been trading solo and haven't entered a league yet, here's the shape of the system these updates sit inside:

• Formats. Leagues run hourly, daily, weekly, or on a custom length. Every league has a live leaderboard ranked by percentage return.
• Entry. Entries cost $MON, the platform's virtual currency. You earn it daily — 3/day on Free, 10/day on Premium, 30/day on Max — and you win it in leagues.
• User-created leagues. Anyone can create a league for friends or a community. Entry fees pool into a $MON prize pool that goes to the top performers.
• Cash-prize leagues. MongoTrader also runs USD cash-prize leagues for verified US players. The Weekly Cash Cup costs 25 $MON to enter, carries a $200 prize pool, and runs once a week. Read how cash-prize leagues work before you enter one.
• Realistic rules. Some leagues require Friction (realistic mode), so every entrant competes under the same fees, spreads and slippage. Check the league page before you enter.

Re-entry, the first-league waiver, and Crypto Pick Three are all live now on the web and in the iOS app. Rules for any specific league — including whether re-entry is available and how much of the window is left — are on that league's page.

Frequently asked questions