Crypto's total market value climbed 39.6% in the third quarter of 2026, but spot trading volume across the ten largest centralized exchanges slid 14.2% over the same stretch, according to CoinGecko. The split — rising valuations, thinning activity — is the backdrop for a compensation push at Zoomex, which is paying some customers back for early losses.
Zoomex Marketing Director Fernando Aranda said most major platforms have started offering loss compensation for a blunt reason: users weren't sticking around and were moving to brokers or platforms outside Web3.
Paying users to stay
Zoomex runs a monthly campaign that hands partial loss compensation to eligible customers. The current version, which ran September 16 to October 13, offers up to 50 USDT in bonus compensation for eligible copy traders' net realized losses in their first week.
There's a catch, and it's a big one. The bonus can't be withdrawn or converted into cash. It only works as trading credit on the platform, which means it keeps users in the market rather than letting them cash out.
The exchange's 2026 championship leans on the same logic. Zoomex advertises a conditional prize pool of up to 5 million USDT, with some rankings tied to trading volume and eligible captains potentially taking 20% of their team's rewards.
The regulator's warning already exists
The UK Financial Conduct Authority ran an experiment in 2024 with more than 9,000 consumers and found that push notifications and prize draws could increase trading frequency and risk-taking. The study didn't assess Zoomex, but it's the closest official read on the mechanics these campaigns use.
Aranda's own read on the market is less about marketing than about where experienced traders go when things get rough. He said they shift to traditional markets during bear markets, chasing more volatility and faster-moving opportunities.
Contracts, prediction markets and bots
That's the gap Zoomex is trying to close. The platform offers contracts tied to traditional assets, access outside conventional market hours, and prediction markets — including a World Cup launch — to pull in new users, including people coming from Web2.
It also lets every trader connect their bots and trade directly, pitching itself as a gateway for outside developers rather than a walled garden.
Aranda flagged a quieter problem in the promotions playbook: newer users often don't pay attention to fees, which stay baked into each trade's result even after a temporary campaign ends.
September's messy close
A Zoomex social media post said Bitcoin closed September 2026 up 6.4% after $87,400, citing a Fed hike, a failed CLARITY vote and $766 million stolen in the worst hack month of 2026.
The next test for Zoomex's retention math is whether the loss-compensation cycle keeps running on the same monthly schedule into the fourth quarter, and whether the championship's volume-linked rankings pull in enough trading to offset the bonus credit it hands out.
