Bybit's flagship trading tournament is no longer a crypto-only affair. The exchange's World Series of Trading 2026, better known as WSOT, now ranks participants on both crypto and stock trading volume, and perpetual futures on traditional assets — gold, oil, stocks and indices — join the lineup on November 19. Perpetual futures are derivative contracts with no expiry date, a format long familiar to crypto traders. Bybit has put up to 3 million USDT — a US dollar-pegged stablecoin — on the line for its Global Assets track alone.

How the Competition Is Structured

WSOT 2026 runs from October 29 to December 2, 2026, and registration opens on October 29 at 10 a.m. UTC. The headline number remains the total prize pool: across the full event, Bybit is offering up to 10 million USDT.

Two leaderboards anchor the event. The Spot leaderboard covers spot trading in both crypto and stocks. It runs from November 5 to November 26 and awards up to 1 million USDT. The TradFi Perps leaderboard — TradFi being common industry shorthand for traditional finance — opens on November 19 and closes on December 2, with up to 2 million USDT up for grabs. Taken together, the two boards form the Global Assets track, whose combined rewards reach 3 million USDT.

Squads, Deadlines and Last Year's Turnout

WSOT includes a team component alongside its individual rankings. Squad creation closes on November 11, 2026, and the main competitions begin on November 13.

The 2025 edition offers a concrete benchmark for this year's field: it drew 520,451 participants, who formed 1,474 squads. The host exchange is itself no small operation — Bybit says it has more than 80 million users, and it has been leaning into the idea of a single platform where those users can trade across asset classes.

Why Bybit Is Blending Crypto and Traditional Markets

Adding gold, oil, stocks and indices to WSOT nudges a crypto-native audience toward products that resemble what a traditional brokerage or commodities desk would offer. The expansion also fits a broader industry pattern, as crypto trading platforms have steadily broadened their catalogues beyond digital assets to include instruments tied to traditional markets. The prize split underlines the emphasis on the new format: the TradFi Perps leaderboard carries up to 2 million USDT, double the Spot leaderboard's ceiling. The rollout follows the same order — TradFi Perps open on November 19, a full two weeks after the Spot leaderboard starts on November 5.

What Traders and the Wider Market Can Watch

Two measurable points stand out. The first is whether participation tops the 520,451 traders who joined in 2025, especially after the TradFi Perps leaderboard opens on November 19. The second is where volume actually concentrates across the spot and perpetual formats. Either way, the leaderboards running through December 2 should offer a fairly public scorecard of how far that appetite really goes.

This report was originally published by CryptoBriefing and edited by John Chen.